Specialist Howard had known he was going to hate this assignment. There had been no doubt in his mind, and so far, there had been very little to change his mind.
One of his main tasks was to train a promising young mage. They wanted him… a war mage… to personally train some freshly awakened lord to fight with magic. Regardless of how clever the young man turned out to be, it was still just as annoying as he expected it to be.
And now, out in the wilds, his worst fears had been confirmed. Being assigned to a permanent position with the elites was a complete waste of his time.
Sitting in his chair on the roof of the recently built command post, he had his feet up on his stool. Both the personally made chair, and his chosen stump, had been with him for years. Normally, he’d be using them to recover his center after an exciting battle, but now their noble purpose was being contaminated with stupidity.
With his perception field spread out as far as possible, he observed some of the teams dealing with the planar events. His range had increased drastically after several teams completed their assignments, smoothing out the local essence flows. Nevertheless, at this range, his field was still extremely diluted. While it wasn’t capable of any real detail, he was able to track several teams’ progress and observe the local essence flows. A war-mage of his caliber… acting as a monitoring system. The situation was ridiculous.
‘What did the general expect me to learn from this? How to look like I’m doing something while mentally reading a book?’ he mentally complained.
He had tried convincing the Captain to send him out in the field, but the man had refused to see reason.
Recalling their latest conversation, Howard grimaced at the memory. The Captain had told him, “Every camp needs a scry-mage, and until command sees fit to assign us one, that’s your assignment. Deal with it. I expect hourly updates, and you WILL notify me immediately if there is anything I should know.”
Feeling a slight disturbance in his perception field, he turned his attention away from the book he was reading inside his personal space. Howard focused on his perception field, looking for what had caused his mental process to alert him. Finding some new signatures, he narrowed his field on them. From their essence signatures, he could tell the little lord’s team had finally returned to the area. ‘It’s about time,’ he thought.
Apparently, after the excitement of the assassination attempt, command had insisted that Wesker’s team stay within range of the elite’s encampment. The Captain had ordered Howard to report to him immediately when they entered the area.
Currently, they were heading toward a blind spot in his field, which meant it would be a pain in the ass to overcome the local essence disturbances. Howard debated whether or not to waste some center scrying on the young lord, but eventually decided that it wasn’t worth the effort.
Grunting a little at having his rest disturbed, he stood up and stretched his back. He walked over to the edge of the building, looking for the Captain.
Seeing the man ordering around some elites, Howard infused his voice with some essence and shouted, “Hey Captain! Wesker’s team is back in the field. They’re heading toward their first mark. Consider yourself updated.” He then turned around and returned to his chair.
He was oblivious to the annoyed look the Captain was shooting him, or the uncomfortable atmosphere his antics were causing among the hunters. Even if he’d noticed, he wouldn’t have cared. As far as he was concerned, his place was out there fighting for humanity, not behind walls he wasn’t even defending. He couldn’t even train as he needed to keep his center full in case of an emergency.
Putting his feet back up on his stump, he crossed his arms and closed his eyes. ‘Maybe I’ll get lucky and a horde will show up and assault the camp,’ he thought with some hope, while mentally falling back into his personal space and returning to the book he’d been reading.
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A veritable wave of 2ft tall squirrels rushed toward them, leaping over bushes, bouncing off trees, and kicking up leaves and dirt. The leading edge of the mob’s essence field was creeping closer by the second. Nero could see the ambient essence in the air quickly falling under its influence. The first of the squirrels were only thirty or forty feet away, he was running out of time.
The spell-form ‘fire-stream’, which he had learned from Specialist Howard, hovered in front of his chest, his hands anchoring it to his center. Through his field, he could see the essence being greedily pulled in to power it. Streams of heat, air, fire, and several other essences he didn’t recognize charged the spell with potential. This was the highest level spell he’d learned from the fire section of the elemental wheel, a pure expression of fire aimed and fueled by the caster.
With a scowl full of madness, he unleashed a torrent of flame at the oncoming mob. A two foot wide scorching ray shot out into the forest, heading toward the oncoming wave of vicious little monsters who dared to interfere with his efforts to finally figure out his mage-armor. Upon contact with their powerful essence field, the pillar shrunk and dissipated almost immediately. Yet, Nero wasn’t worried, because it was all part of the plan. He had no intention of pitting his center reserves against the mob’s.
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Nero’s focus was sharp as a scalpel, his mind split between the spell, his mage-armor, his senses, and his plan. The moment his spell found the edge of the mob’s essence field, he began angling it down toward the ground. Upon contacting the forest floor, he increased the amount of center he was putting in the construct. He only needed his spell to cause the initial effect… science would take care of the rest.
Keeping the spell active, he turned in place, running the bar of condensed flame across the ground. His smile widening in lunacy as he saw the leaves and brush ignite in a glorious conflagration. As if he were painting the forest floor with a brush, he quickly ran the beam of fire in a half circle in front of their party.
Barely a few heartbeats later, there was a 4ft deep wall of fire eating into the trees and shrubberies. The kicked up dirt and leaves were doing their part in spreading the destruction. Nero cackled at the sight of the squirrels attempting to jump through the fire. As each little monster passed through the flame wall, their fur ignited and their barks changed from threatening chattering to fearful screeching. Tens of squirrels hit the ground in panic, their charge broken before it began.
Feeling the mob’s essence field finally overtake him, he felt the essence charging his spell thin dramatically. Not bothering to try and fight to maintain it, he recaptured what center he could, and pulled out his two swords.
While the forest fire spread across the ground, Nero ran his center through his blades, imbuing them with his center. Protected and fueled by his own essence field, the swords ignited with fire, blue flames flickering wildly across the blades. ‘Did I mean to make them blue?’ he wondered absently, quickly dismissing the thought as irrelevant.
Nero saw the squirrels running around in terror, spreading the flames and kicking up more fuel into the air. His fire wall had split the mob in half, and his mad grin grew a little wider every time a new squirrel spawned on top of a fire.
Not wanting to give the mob a chance to regroup, he sprang into action. Moving quickly, his swords slashed at anything that came near him, intending to get closer to where the mob’s center seemed to be. Before he even made it 10 feet, the flaming squirrels exploded in puffs of dark smoke. As the smoke from the fire was already getting out of hand, Nero only saw their little burning tails winking out all around him.
A few steps later, Nero appeared next to a coughing and hacking Sergeant Wesker. Nero’s face was covered in soot, his flaming swords contrasting the red hue all around them. The sergeant’s visor retreated into the top of his helmet, and Nero could see the man’s wide eyes filled with horror. “Are you insane!” he shouted.
Before Nero could reply, movement out of the corner of their eyes caused them to turn and see a 10ft squirrel come barreling through the fire wall, its fur covered in flames and its red eyes full of madness. Like a bull rushing out of a burning barn, it ran toward them not even intending to attack. It just wanted away from the fire.
Almost as if it were a reflex, Nero dropped to a knee, pointing his burning blades up at the squirrels undercarriage. While Wesker combat rolled to safety, Nero let himself be run over. He could see the head and chest of the gigantic monster pass over his head. His shoulders felt like they were being ripped out their sockets as his blades sank into the underside of the mob. Blood and viscera exploded into existence all around him, and his world turned red.
Seconds passed, and the screeching from the burning squirrel went quiet. The stark change from total insanity to silence was off-putting. Nero stood up from his crouch, recapturing the center he had imbued into his blades, feeling the fire flicker out. He turned around to see the back of the giant squirrel, its formerly fluffy tail still burning like a torch.
His lungs burned a little due to the smoke, and he looked around to see a scene straight out of a summer blockbuster about California firefighters. ‘Well, that escalated quickly,’ he thought with some pride.
He dismissed one of his swords while sheathing the other on his hip. Deciding to free up some brainpower, he stopped trying to maintain his mage-armor. The strain from trying to focus on it during combat, even if he wasn’t taking any hits, was causing his head to swim. The moment he released his hold, he felt the shield dissipate. Yet, his condensed essence field remained. He was so used to keeping it up, he barely even noticed the strain.
With his head a little clearer, he looked over to see Sergeant Wesker pulling a large cylinder out of his personal space. His eyes panned across the forest quickly, looking for the rest of the team. About 10 ft away, he saw a large dome that resembled a door-less igloo. ‘Well, that’s one way to stop squirrels from jumping over your walls,’ he thought.
Realizing he should do something about all this smoke, he turned his attention back to the burning forest. Quickly carving two simple ‘frost-wave’ spells, he figured this was the perfect time to practice dual-wielding magic. Their purpose was to conjure freezing water vapor and firing it out in small cones. Specialist Howard said that it was a great way to sap the strength of enemy combatants. Nero however thought the spell was perfect for making people cold and wet. It was a spell for summoning misery. But, it did the job of putting out the fires easily enough.
Nero walked around happily, spraying down the forest with wide arcs of frost. Even the smoke and dust got wetted down and fell to the floor in growing sopping puddles. As the air cleared, and the fires died down, Nero looked over his shoulder to see Wesker spraying water from a hose attached to the cylinder he was carrying around. It looked like he was firing off a full-on fire hose from a household fire extinguisher. ‘Well, that’s neat. That guy is really prepared for everything, huh.’ he thought.
Seeing that the fire was out, Nero looked around admiring the destruction he’d caused. The entire fight had lasted less than 10 minutes, and yet he still managed to obliterate a large swath of forest with his spell. The lesson he took away from this was that using a flame-thrower of that size in a wooded environment was probably not one of his better ideas.
He looked over his shoulder, checking to see if the mud-igloo was still up. He saw Nick holding his glowing hands above a passed out Rose, while Cathleen stood with her hands on her hips and a glower on her face. ‘What’s that about?’ he wondered.
Making his way over to the group, he asked loudly, “Hey, what happened to her?”
Nick looked up while maintaining his spell, and replied, “Some idiot decided to use up all the oxygen in the immediate area. What do you think happened?”
Shocked, Nero didn’t know what to say. He looked over at Cathleen and saw her glaring at him. Nero gulped at the sight of the pissed off warrior woman.
From behind him, he heard Wesker stomping over. “Walker, what the hell were you thinking? Are you trying to kill us all? And how are you even standing? Everyone knows you can’t cast while mobs are on top of you? I think it’s time for some answers before you end up killing us all with your secrets!” Wesker said, nearly shouting in fury near the end.
Nero took a step back from the enraged sergeant, his eyes glancing down to see a coughing Rose sitting up.
Not knowing exactly how to handle the situation, he said, “The fire may have gotten a little out of hand, but it worked, didn’t it? I don’t see what you’re all so mad about. The mob is dead, and I didn’t really use much center at all. It’s surprisingly easy to influence the environment when you’re just adding some heat. Squirrels are fluffy… did you see how their tails spread the flames? Crazy, right?” He finished with an uncomfortable chuckle, trying to lighten the mood.
He was met with several stares, each filled with varying degrees of anger. He could only rub his hand through his soot covered hair and chuckle awkwardly.