"So they just let you out, no parole, nothing. They just allowed you to walk out, no problem. Seems normal, to just let a convicted criminal who committed genocide walk free." said Alex, shaking his head. He took a drink from the glass of water he held, preferring it over milk, unlike the man of myth with the oddly inconsistent story.
"Yeah, well, I was a good soldier, and I really didn't make that big of a mistake. Things happen in war, and sometimes you have to be lenient on people for their actions committed in battle. I mean, you wave murder entirely as long as your killing the other side." said Lanetli.
"Are we almost done with the story? It seems like it kind of came to a stop," said Alex.
"Well, I went another year just living a normal life, using what powers I had in a non-combat fashion as best I could. I can skip forward to when something happens though. We had almost completely forced Carthigia into acquiescence,"
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"Sir? Are you Lanetli Nicholas?" asked a man in military fatigues as he approached me helping a young mage prospect with her conjuration magic and her understanding of the interaction of different magic matrices.
"Yes, can you give me one more moment, please? So you have to take the magic and guide it through the design here, and there is where you have to put in the dimensions of the shape you want. Some more complex shapes will take more measurements. Now here is where you input the pliability of the item you conjure, using these various symbols to determine the pliability. Getting the right pliability takes experimentation, so don't worry about getting it down quickly. Now here is where you input the color and lustrousness of the item. If you don't put this in it will simply fail to work, and different symbols will do different things as well, another thing you will have to experiment with. Finally, you have the activation, which will draw on your vision of the object you're conjuring to fill in the blanks. You can't just not put anything in for the rest of the sections and expect your mind to do all the work, because the mind is imperfect, and what you conjure will be horrid, and completely worthless." I told her, pointing at several places in her journal as I did.
"But why can't you just put in a few pieces of information and let your mind fill in the rest? What if I don't need something exact to make it work?" she asked, still clearly confused.
"Magic is all about exact measures. If you don't add the right amount of magic to something, it either does nothing or explodes and hurts people. You have to know exactly what you're doing for it to do the right thing, or even do anything but glow. Let me show you." I said, pulling my finger through the air and conjuring a common household key. "You see, I had to put in the exact spacing between the teeth of the key, how long each tooth is, how wide the key is, and the radius of the base, as well as the mixture of colors exactly and the right amount of shine, to get what you're looking at now." I let the key fade and started drawing another ritual in the air, one that seemed much less complicated than the other. "This is what happens when you don't put in enough information and the magic has to release itself before it tries to shove itself into the unstable and constantly changing image in your mind," I said. "I will be making the same key for this." I finished the ritual and directed the magic through it. It reached the finalization stage and I felt how unstable the ritual was. I activated eternal moment and pulled everyone in a hundred-foot radius away from the blast, just to be safe.
The moment ended, and there was a massive blast and fireball that shot up to the sky as the magic tried to right itself in the universe halfway through becoming matter. "And that, students, is why you never forget to put in exact measurements when making rituals!" I finished with a smile of good humor. All the students in the area nodded, and the girl I was teaching threw up from being displaced without time moving forward.
As the children were walking away I turned to the man asking after me, who had seemed interested in the lecture before the explosion, and now just had a look of horror on his face. "My good man, you called for me?" I asked to get the man's attention.
"We let kids do this?" he asked, seemingly lost in his own world.
"Well, we make sure they have the material down before we allow them to actually draw a ritual out. I have to assume you came for some reason other than to jab at the nation's training programs." I prompted. He seemed to shake off his shock before turning back to me and responding.
"We need your help. The problem is, we have the capital of Carthigia under siege, but we can't scare them into surrender because of their wards. They are almost completely independent, and even our disenchantment mages can't touch the wards. No matter what we do, it's just not working. We heard that you broke through similar barriers in the past, and we need you to break through these ones too." said the man.
"No." was all I said, my expression growing dark.
"It won't be like they said it was last time, all you need to do is break through the wall, and we can take care of the rest, keep you safe, occupy the city, and end this war once and for all," he said, trying to convince me to rejoin the war for one last fight.
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"I won't help you. If you set up outside, eventually they will grow tired of your face, and give up to make you go away. You don't need my help." I told him, walking away.
"Please, we keep losing soldiers on probe attacks, we can't wait for them to get tired of us being outside. We have to act." said the man, following me as I wove between students.
"I don't care," I said.
"If we keep losing soldiers they're going to lower the conscription age," he said. That made me pause. The current age was sixteen if you had an icon, and eighteen if you never managed it. It was already too young.
"To what?" I asked, pausing in my stride.
"I've heard talk of thirteen and fifteen," he said, sadness lacing his voice. "Please, my daughter's fifteen, and she has the valor icon. Please save my daughter." begged the man.
"Damn it," I said, pulling my finger through the air in a circle, leaving bright green sigils behind. Then I stepped through the portal into the command tent of General Addams, Major General Bakaw under one arm. I had taken to leaving him with Time when I didn't need him and had picked him up as I crossed through Time's room in the pyramid. "What do you want general?" I asked without hesitation as soon as I entered the room.
"Son of a bitch!" he screamed as he jumped up and reached for his sword before he saw me, still in my signature blood-red robes. "Shit man, picked up a teleportation power since last we met?" he said, putting a hand over his heart and leaning over to take a deep breath.
"Yes. Tell me what I need to do so I can leave." I told him in a deadpan voice.
"Alright, you wait wherever feels comfortable, I'll go get everyone ready to go. We march on the walls within the hour!" he said excitedly, hopping to do just what he said he would. I sat down in his desk chair when he left. It wasn't a bad chair, considering the situation it was in, but it wasn't anything worth writing home about. I waited until multiple glow stones set up on a table along one wall of the tent lit up, displaying readiness. I got up and joined them. I took the most battle-hardened group leader aside and talked to him.
"I'm a non-combat contractor of sorts, and your group is going to be making sure I get out of this without any problems, alright?" I asked.
"Sir, with all due respect, you won't need our help. You could kill whoever got in your way without breaking a sweat, I know it. What do you really think you need us for?" he asked in response.
"The price for getting me out here is that I don't fight. I stay out of the way, and break open the walls, that's it." I told him. He shrugged his shoulders and walked off to inform his squad. Most laughed, others looked confused, and one man just shrugged his shoulders. He had the Indifference icon. It made for an odd warrior, with powers based mostly around ignoring stuff, like high-powered attacks, and food.
When the troops finished getting lined up I stood with my chosen squadron and we advanced. I didn't summon my blade, I didn't activate any powers, I just walked by, dodging attacks as necessary with a bored expression on my face. As we approached the wall multiple soldiers went down in piles of ash as they met the wards. I summoned my blade and started lazily hacking at the wall, leaving deep rents in the magical matrix of the wards. It again, tried to fix itself like last time, but I didn't have to pause halfway through my strikes to fend off enemies like last time. I swung until the wards fell, then I carved straight through the stone, cutting a hole in the stone large enough for three people max. No one would be leading an army through that, but they didn't have to as stone magi shifted the wall to allow for more and more passage by the second. I let my blade fall to magical dust and stood back. I considered leaving right then when I saw something that pissed me off to no end.
Two soldiers had dragged a woman out by the hair, her children spilling out after her, crying for the life of their mother. If they simply corralled the woman and her children I would have seen no problem with this treatment, after all, war is war, but the man forced her to her knees and started fiddling with his belt as the other man laughed and pulled up her dress, revealing a round posterior as he too fiddled with his belt.
"This bitch is gonna get a nice prize, eh Chad?" asked one man by her face.
"Heh, this sniveling bitch is making me hard as my blade!" said the other.
I activated eternal moment and castigated the men right there with Sonsuz Kiyamet, the Final Moment. With Time frozen as it was, I could see other men doing the same, preparing to rape and murder women, and even some men that hadn't been sent to the front lines. I castigated everyone trying it, the only group that went by without castigation was the one with the Indifference mage, corralling the people into an empty part of the city and even watching over them with businesslike efficiency.
The worst were the men looking at the kids with hunger in their eyes. Rape was a crime, terrible and immoral. Pedophilia was unforgivable. Those men I killed outright. My moment ended, and the screams started. I dismissed my blade and started kindly guiding people through the city and to the group that was keeping them safe. I did it in groups at a time, but many still died that I couldn't help.
All of the citizens were corralled together and part of the army was heading up towards the castle, moving to unseat the king and take control. The back of the army, where the general was, was just approaching and I jogged over to meet him.
"I got you all through, can I leave now?" I asked when we met up.
"Yes, yes, get outta here you glorious bastard. Finish the rest!" he yelled as we approached the city center where all of the civilians were.
"What-" I started before getting cut off by the billowing of flames coming from a series of fire magi, headed straight for the innocent. My eternal moment was all used up, I had used it to save a family from a collapsing and burning building. It was going to waste now as I watched them all die.