Lowering his new ship out of the clouds, Arch-Mage Jennings opened communications to Dorchester. His console lit up with a hologram of the local traffic tower attendant. Although they probably hadn’t seen a sky ship in the last decade, all cities were required to have an available docking port.
The attendant looked like he was trembling at attention. “Dorchester sky-dock 1 sees you Mage 1. You are currently flying royal flags, is there someone on board we should be aware of?”
Snorting to himself as he brought the royal yacht down toward the landing platform, Jennings replied, “Yes. I’m on board. That’s more than enough for you.”
Standing even straighter, if that were possible, the attendant replied, “Yes Sir, of course Sir. We’re ready for you to begin landing procedures.”
While Jennings listened to the man blather, he was sealing the docking clamps. In no time at all, he walked to the door and checked the time. ‘One hour and 36 minutes. Not bad for a trip from Hennings to Dorchester. ‘Top of the line’ ship indeed.’ he thought with a smile.
Outside the ship, standing on the platform, was the local transit agent with a bunch of papers. Jennings could tell that the woman would be a stickler for procedure, so he started talking as he walked up.
“Good Afternoon. Depending on what happened after I left Hennings, I either borrowed or stole this boat. In any case, I’m leaving it here. There is a very real possibility that someone from the capital will be sent to collect it, so don’t be surprised if someone shows up with paperwork to that effect. Now, I’ll be the new court mage here, so if you have any questions, feel free to call my office. Thank you for your diligent service, and may your path remain wide and clear,” he said, then with a loud ‘woooosh’, he flew off into the city.
The transit agent hadn’t had a chance to say anything, or confirm receipt of the yacht. Grumbling to herself, she went back inside and started a scathing report to the Council of Leadership on their new court mage.
Meanwhile, Jennings was hurtling through the air toward the local mage tower. Using his link, he deftly inserted himself into the local thought hub. Using authorization protocols, he updated his local identity, and looked up the current whereabouts of his target: Mage Adept Cranston.
Finding that he was currently at the city lord’s castle, Jennings veered toward the keep. ‘Hiding like a little bitch isn’t going to save you,’ Jennings thought to himself while growling in anger.
Within three minutes of arriving in Dorchester, Arch-Mage Jennings was landing in front of the castle gate. The guards on duty were standing at attention and didn’t say anything, or even make eye contact. ‘So, someone is expecting me. Interesting,’ he thought.
Once inside, he started toward Cranston’s current position. Walking the hallways, everyone stayed out of his way, some even bowed. Overconfidence has killed many a man, so Jennings took the time to strengthen his essence shield. He even added a filter to ensure his air was clean. After his defenses were set, he spread his psychic field out as subtly as he could. His feather light touch was nearly impossible to detect.
As he progressed through the halls, his senses found Mage-Adept Cranston arguing with a group of people near an arena in the basement. Smiling, he quickened his steps. As he walked down the stairs, he saw the doors to a large arena were open, and a bunch of fancy nobles were facing off against Cranston. Some of them were trying to calm the man down, while others were looking at him like he was already dead.
Jennings enhanced his voice with essence and spoke loudly into the room, “Mage Adept Silas Cranston, you have been found guilty of refusing an assignment given to you by the Mage Council of Oglivarch. Do you wish to dispute the charges?” Jennings was vibrating in anticipation.
The Dorchester Council of Leadership were in awe of the essence storm that was accumulating around the Arch-Mage. Lord Heleema Cosgrave had considered delicately intervening, maybe attempt to prohibit the duel on the grounds that Cranston was her subject. However, that idea evaporated in the face of Jennings' wrath given form.
Cranston stepped back from the nobles and faced Jennings at around 30 paces. The nobles realized that there might actually be a fight, and promptly ran to the side of the arena. Jennings chuckled as he watched them all hitch up their robes and skedaddle.
“The orders were ridiculous, and I will not waste my-” Cranston started.
With a blast of essence, Jennings interrupted the blithering idiot with a personalized plasma lance spell. Hitting Cranston’s essence shield head on, it sent the mage adept flying into the opposite wall.
Walking forward, his control spreading out like a fog, Jennings spoke in a cold voice, “Your refusal to follow your oaths has been noted. Many years ago, you managed to save your hide by begging for royal intervention, but now this is a matter of mages. It will be settled like mages. Get up you sniveling piece of shit.”
Stumbling to his feet, Cranston pulled on the ambient essence to reinforce his shield. His face set in a snarl, he held his arms to his side and started gathering what he could. “You were a commoner once, I’ve heard the stories. Know that I will tear down your -”
With a flick of his wrist, Jennings pulled Cranston’s weave apart. As the weave broke into pieces, Jennings made sure to pull as much of Cranston’s center as he could. With a shriek, Cranston fell to his knees and clutched his chest.
“I don’t want to hear your blather. This is a kingdom of merit. I’ve been here a thousand years, and I’ll be here a thousand more. We have never stood for incompetent leaders and we never will,” Jennings said with a growl.
Arch-Mage Jennings ripped into the ambient essence and forced his control into all of the essence in the giant room. He could hear the shocked gasps of the onlookers as they felt, probably for the first time in a long time, that they could not feel anything anything outside their body. Cranston just looked up in horror as his meager shield was violently torn from his body.
“While technically this execution is for refusal to follow your oaths, I want you to know that for me it is about Moorshire. Your laziness and dereliction of duty resulted in the death of over 150,000 people, and today they get the justice that they were denied by petty politics,” Jennings said, his voice echoing with power as the walls of the arena shook.
Waving his hand, a pillar of fire erupted over Cranston. Extending from the floor to the ceiling, it was 3 units wide and so bright that the nobles hiding in the corner had to avert their eyes. As the pillar went out like a light being turned off, the arena seemed dark in the aftermath. It was as though the light that remained was ashamed it couldn’t compete with the pillar’s brilliance.
Jennings looked at the charred remains, and wiped his hands like he just finished throwing out the trash. Turning to the nobles, Jennings said with a smile, “I read on the Mage Tower calendar that there is a dinner for a new noble tonight. What’s on the menu? I haven’t had anything to eat in hours.”
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Vera took advantage of the stupefied silence in the dining hall, and said, “That’s good advice Mr. Walker. Dessert’s coming soon, so focus on that.”
Nick looked to Arch-Mage Jennings and said, “Young Nero here hasn’t had any formal mage training. He has been getting into books on magic and experimenting. I’ve looked at his notes, and I don’t think he will be casting like a regular mage. He seems to interact with essence flows directly. I don’t know why, and I haven’t had a chance to ask him. I’d be honored if you wanted to aid in his first lesson. We keep having to reschedule it.”
Lord Bennings interrupted any response. “That’s all well and good. But he shouldn’t be practicing at the table. Furthermore, there are more important things to address. Like we need to have him make the pledge, and figure out what we’re going to do about his trials. He can’t take them at 14, that would be barbaric. We also have to formally induct him into the nobility, and Lord Cosgrave still has to decide the distribution of spoils from the noble war, not to mention assigning responsibilities to House Walker,” she said in frustration.
Immediately, the entire table heard Nero mutter, “I’d rather have that magic lesson if it’s all the same to you.”
Arch-Mage Jennings burst into laughter and chuckles came from everyone, including the two military men.
With a smile, Lord Cosgrave said, “I understand young man. But soon you’ll be Lord Walker, and with that comes some responsibility. You and I have some decisions to make.”
Nero looked at Vera, then turned back to Lord Cosgrave. “No I don’t, the first round of negotiations is with my counsel. Mrs. Salvatore will represent my interests. You guys can rough out a plan, then she’ll explain it to me. It’s better for everyone… well it’s better for me, but Mrs. Salvatore seems to approve, so I’m going with it,” he said as he saw Vera’s smile widen and her face morph into a fighter gearing up for battle.
He looked to the arch-mage and Nick and said, “You guys wanna take the dessert to go and head somewhere to talk magic and drink?”
Without waiting for a response from the table, Jennings shot to his feet and said, “Gods yes. Come along director of research, let’s show this young man how magic is supposed to be cast.”
Nick stood up and gave a wry grin to his wife. He said, “Vera dear, please don’t go overboard. They haven’t done anything to us. Just look out for Nero, there’s no need to unleash hell.”
Jennings and Nick were already heading for the door, so Nero stood up. He bowed deeply and said, “Thank you very much for dinner, Lord Cosgrave. It was lovely, but I guess I have to go with them. Until I’m officially a noble or whatever, they both outrank me.” He leaned over and gave Vera a side hug. “Thank you Auntie Vera, let me know what you decide.”
As he went to meet Nick and Jennings at the door, he heard Vera’s reply. “I know what you're doing, and I find it amusing enough to play along. Don’t worry, your interests will be looked after, have fun.”
With a quick wave over his shoulder, Nero and the two overgrown children went to go play with magic.
Arch-Mage Jennings said, “I know the perfect place to walk you through some beginner spells. I was there earlier, they should have cleaned it up by now.”
As Jennings led them down the hallway, they heard a voice come from behind them.
Captain Angelton was taking long strides to catch up. “Hold on. I’d like to observe if you don’t mind. I’ve been wanting to see the spell Nero developed. I’ve seen the aftermath, and now I want to see the spell.”
As they continued on, Nick turned to Nero. “So you developed a spell?” He asked.
Nero nodded as he ate his ice cream. He was the only one that picked one up on his way out of the room. It was very similar to vanilla, but it had a white chocolate syrup with some kind of jelly on the side. Overall, he liked it. However, he thought cookie dough with hot fudge would have been better.
“Well, what was the spell?” Nick asked, exasperated that Nero wasn’t paying attention.
“Hmm… Oh, it was a bomb,” Nero said. Turning to Arch-Mage Jennings, he asked, “Hey, why couldn’t I cast anything at the mercenaries. All of my essence threads fell apart when they got anywhere near them.”
Jennings raised his eyebrows, and said, “Essence threads? I’m not familiar with the term. I understand what you mean, but it isn’t right. Do you mean essence flows?”
“No, I could throw essence at them, but I couldn’t control it while it was near them. I read about essence flows, that whole coaxing and filtering essence is really hard. I just grab what I need and shove it where I want it. It’s much easier,” Nero said and then he went back to his ice cream.
Annoyed, Nick said, “Nero, what about your spell?”
Nero swallowed, and replied, “Oh right. Since I couldn’t figure out how to cast magic near them, I had to come up with some kind of area of effect. So I made a bomb. I tried to just push a bunch of air together, but it was too hard. So I used a spell form from my household spells book. It was a spell form for condensing water vapor out of the air to make water. I figured that if instead of air and water essence, I used air and heat, I could condense hot air into a more controllable space. Then the more air I packed in, the more pressure would build. Right before I lost control, I threw in as much heat as I could. The air wanted to expand, and then the containment failed, and then it exploded. I put like a room full of air into a little ball then heated it up. It was awesome. I was lucky there was a desk to hide behind, cause damn did that spell work. Unfortunately, I was a little too close when I set off the last bomb, but it still worked,” Nero finished, then went back to his ice cream.
Nick and Angelton were confused. That shouldn’t have worked at all. Jennings chimed in, “I was lucky enough to observe the fights he mentioned. Although a lot of what he just said is accurate, some of the details are a little bit off. He did use air and heat in a water condensation spell form. However, he used his psychic field for containment. Furthermore, he modified the spell form to accept an unrestricted flow of essence in only one direction. The spell form acted as the initial containment field. He also was compacting air essence, not air. He relied on the heat essence to warm the small amount of air until it almost ionized into plasma, then he flash-converted the air essence into air while right on top of the proto-plasma. The resultant change in pressure created a very large shock wave.”
Both Angelton and Nick were nodding, as if impressed with the spell. Nero, however, was not amused.
Nero said, “How come you get appreciative nods when you said exactly what I said while talking like a tool?”
Finished with his ice cream, Nero paused in the hallway and walked over to a servant who was going about their business. “Hey man, you know where the kitchens are? I gotta drop off this dish,” he asked.
The servant looked surprised, and replied, “You can just hand it to me sir. I can take it.”
Nero gave him a questioning look. “You sure man? I don’t want to put you out. I’m sure you're doing… whatever it is you're doing. I don’t mind,” he said.
Smiling, the servant said, “Yes, sir. It’s fine, I can take it.”
Shrugging, Nero handed him the dish and said, “Alright man, thanks. Let them know it was really good. But maybe they should add some cookie dough, and replace the white chocolate with fudge. They’ll love it. Take it easy.”
Rejoining the trio, Nero said, “Sorry about that, let’s go.”
Nick was chuckling, and said, “You’re going to make a terrible noble.”
Apparently, they had arrived at their destination, as Jennings waved open the doors and said, “Here we are. This is an arena room, we can use this without fear of destroying anything.”
Nero asked, “Why does it smell like bacon?”
Arch-Mage Jenning’s smile wavered as he said, “No reason.”
Captain Angelton’s expression didn’t break as he chimed in, “That’s not bacon, this is an arena. Take another guess.”
Nero looked confused for a moment, then realized that he was smelling cooked people. “OK, that’s just gross,” he said.
After having a full body shiver, he chose to ignore the smell and moved on to more important things. Nero clapped his hands in anticipation and asked, “Now who has something in their personal space that I can blow up?”