All color drained from Elrith’s stunned face. “What exactly, do you mean by detonate?”
After another outward breath of a sigh, Rum explained: “The sudden and violent outward disintegration of your body, along with everything else that is close to you.” He carefully met her eyes.
Some color suddenly returned to Elrith’s face, as her expression went from shock, and then slowly into a teeth-biting expression of plain, simple, anger. She slapped his face, hard. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN!!!?” She slapped him again, this time on the shoulder. “AM I GOING TO DIE!???” She quickly looked up and into Amez’ wide-eyed expression, before back at Rum. “AM I!!!?”
“Eeeh” Amez spoke before Rum managed to say something. “You can try and discharge it. Shoot it out.” He pointed at the empty boring mountain walls to the right side of the room. “But” he added, just as terrified as before, “do it fast.”
Elrith stood up with all haste, and looked around for her Martin. The crossbow was leaning against the stone railing a few steps up the stairs. She ran for it, grabbed it, and quickly ran down again, sacrificing a split second of attention to glare accusingly at Rum. Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, she grabbed at her quiver’s contents, and began loading a bolt with the speed and steadfast determination of a warrior in the midst of a deadly battle. When the bolt was fastened, she quickly lifted Martin up and aimed for the wall.
“TELL ME! How sure are you that this is going to work?” She didn’t look up at the brothers, but watched the wall as if it was her worst enemy coming right at her.
“Eeeh” Amez produced.
“About 50%” Rum replied with a tone that was unbefittingly unconcerned.
The Heart-Piercer nearly swirled on her position and aimed her crossbow right at Rum and Amez’ position, never-mind Darmon who was still laying beside them and breathing for life.
“50%!!!?” she shouted at them, her expression in a proper crazed fury. “WHAT IN THE SHITS KIND OF AN OPTION ARE YOU GAMBLING MY LIFE ON!?”
“The next option I can think of is more like 30%” Rum replied, a little vary of the crossbow aimed at them, though fairly certain she wouldn’t blow him up. At least not while Darmon lay just at their side.
The Heart-Piercer started to breath heavily, hyperventilating again. Slowly she turned back towards the wall.
“Will–” anxiety caught her words, and she had to wait to another second to finish the sentence. “Will I die if it this doesn’t work the first time?”
“Nah, no... or” Rum thought a second. “Like 70% of a no? About the chance of hitting either a 1 or a 2 on a single die throw” Rum offered. “Or slightly lower than that. That you will die, that is.”
The Heart-Piercer closed her eyes, taking a deep, deep breath through her nose. She steeled herself. A second passed, and then another, and then... HUM! Out of her back flew the blue magic, brighter and more voluminous than ever. But whereas before it had flown in pieces and collected in front at her bolt, now it flowed out like a river over her shoulders, creating this ever-growing ball of magic at her bolt’s end. A large, and apparently unstable ball of magic, as it clearly had troubles keeping itself together. Pieces of it momentarily stuck out as the magic flung itself in every direction, before sticking itself back together as a ball.
Once again, Elrith breathed, steeling herself for calm, disciplined action.
Clasp.
Time froze for Elrith. For a moment, the bolt was in the air, and nothing, no fate, had been decided yet. Then she let go of time again, and time flowed, leading to a near instantaneous result.
BANG!
A shockwave of stone dust flew back and dowsed the woman, sending her into her second big involuntary coughing fit of the day. At the stairs Rum in particular was protected from the stone dust by the tall and impermeable railing of the stairs, while Amez’ standing position a little further up put him mostly out of way of the dust clouds forming and expanding at the ground.
The shockwave and the dust reached its peak and calmed down.
Slowed by her terrible coughing fit, Elrith walked back towards the stairs through the disorienting clouds. The 2 men coming into sight, she spoke at them, her voice hoarse. “Did–” she coughed nastily, “–it work?” She tried to steady her breathing.
“Turn around” Rum said, and gestured for the motion with a swirl of his finger. She turned. Rum looked at her back, around the area where her tattoo should be. He stood up, and turned to glance up at Amez. His little brother, still bleak in the face, understood through Rum’s momentary eye contact what his older brother wanted, and as Rum began to walk down and over to the still lightly coughing Elrith, the younger man followed.
Stopping in front of her torso, Rum reached out with his hand, and went over into the ethereal world, sensing for the abundance of mana that he was expecting. It was still there, but it didn’t feel dangerously overflowing. Of course any overflowing was dangerous, but only in the way that receiving a fist to the face was dangerous. It was unpleasant and might even result in long-term damage unless healed, but it very rarely killed anyone.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“You’ll live, I’m pretty sure” Rum said. “What do you think, brother?” he looked over at Amez.
Amez stepped over and touched the back of Elrith at her tattoo. He close his eyes too, and seemed to whisper a little spell that Rum didn’t know. When he soon opened them again, he replied. “I think so too. But I would try and discharge the enchantment again, before too long. Just to ease the structural integrity of its design.” He stared at the spot on her back, a concrete worry on his face. “I think the current level and quality of stored mana might be corrosive to my work, if left as is.” The body enchanter held a finger to his mouth, stroking his lips, deep in thought.
“Heh” Rum smiled a little, “seems like Darmon got his wish, just not in the way he’d want it.” He glanced over at Amez, who noticed his gaze and returned him a raised and confused eyebrow. Elrith also turned around to face the 2 of them, her face looking simultaneously sickly and more than a little annoyed. “You know, he wanted you to spare a shot of your ability.” Rum looked down at Elrith. “And, although what you have in your enchantment right now might not be very usable, since it’s more like broken magic, still, if my guess is right, which I think it is, then your body enchantment is slowly dissolving the existing mana structures, and restructuring them for your enchantment’s spelleffect. Meaning that–” he smiled at her more broadly, and she returned the expression with a continuous frown of her own, “–that in less than a day, maybe just a few hours, you will be recharged again.”
As Rum stopped talking, Elrith stared at him with hard eyes, until, without blinking or moving her eyes, she exhaled with contempt. “Does my near dying mean nothing to you?”
Rum eased his smile, and tried to look a little more serious. “I’m only trying to look at the bright side. Nobody died, you’ll all be well soon” he lightly gestured around and to the stairs, “and even more, the way I see it: we bested Jorteg’s trap. The lord probably thought whoever stepped on his trap would reliably perish.” Rum glanced up at the landing where the floor runes had been effective, but were currently disabled. “It was a pretty devious trap.”
“Which you should’ve prevented in the first place!” Elrith pointed out accusingly. And she probably would’ve been harsher on him then and there, if she wasn’t so drained by recent events. Right now, all she could do was midly glare at him with disgusted disapproval, before stepping forward and meaningfully elbowing the wizard on her way to Darmon.
“I understand why she loathes you” Amez commented as they both looked at the departing back of Elrith. “But what you did there, brother, was amazing.” He met eyes with Rum, a mild awe showing on his expression. “If anyone could do what you just did, and in the manner that you just did it, then I want to know who. Because I don’t think there is any such person. Not that I have heard of.”
Rum felt the urge to smile at the admiration, although it didn’t entirely leave out the sting of Elrith’s disapproval. Because in some sense she was quite right. Luck, if anything, made my notion materialize as success. It could’ve been failure just as easily, and someone’s death too. If anything, I should try to understand better what I just did, and what exactly happened to Darmon.
The group, quite understandably, sat down on the stairs to rest. Rum used his healing magic to bring Darmon and Rulli back to health, and while he offered to help rid the gloomy mood of their party with a simple momentary channel of Gay Aura, Elrith responded quite harshely with a “don’t you frickin’ near me again with magic!” So he didn’t, and the group rested, their moods gloomy, and their thoughts pondering the frailty of life, and the brevity of existence.
Surrounded by this mood, Rum decided to summon a Magic Mind, and study the runes, their magical residue, and the residue of the magical arterial network within him. Could he develop a spell out of this? He tried to experiment with himself, and with the aid of a Mana Ghost, managed to extract into his mental spellbook the makings of a spell. He felt at this structure, analyzing it, judging it. Finally satisfied, he named it, speaking its name out loud as he tried to cast it on himself.
“Magic Arteries.” Inside him there grew, in rapid speed, a network of mana channels from one end of himself, his left hand where he’d cast it, and to another end, his right hand, where he in the act of casting had directed the channels to head. “Success” he mumbled quietly.
He looked up at Amez. “Little brother, I have a favor to ask.” Stoking his little brother’s curiosity, and arguing for the usefulness should they come upon another comparable situation, he convinced his younger brother to volunteer as an experiment in his magical inventing.
Summoning another Magic Mind, it didn’t take long before Rum managed to figure out how to reliably extend the spell to another body. Smiling with the promise of his own ideas, Rum found the new modified structure in his mind, and with a bit of analysis, delighted in what he’d created. Speaking out loud, he simultaneously named and cast his new and splendid creation: “Transcorporal Bridge.” The result was aimed at the clasped hands of Rum and Amez, where existing magic arteries subsequently fused together in a mere second. “Magnificent” the wizard whispered, and Amez too appreciated the curious sensation and the way that his mana appeared to diffuse from his own body, over and into Rum, whose spellcasting had left his manapool recovering from partial depletion.
But the wizard didn’t stop there. Together with his cooperative experimental subject, Rum sought to take it all a step further, and create a composite spell that would understand and do both in the very same act, saving precious time and make the matter all the more convenient.
With the curious eyes of all the party upon him now, as the others lost their moodiness in being captivated by this rare – one may even justifiable call it unique – sight in front of them, with their eyes, Rum synthesized his methods until he had the final product of his efforts. A process that took several minutes, though everyone waited patiently as he labored inside himself. Like before, when he was finally done, he named his invention by casting it. “Transcorporal Arteries.”
In just a little over a second, the magic spread out and flash grew an arterial network from one end of Amez’s body, over and into another end at Rum’s body, bridging the gap between them with the fusing of magic arteries across their hands.
“What was that?” Rulli asked from his spectator position higher up the stairs. Rum glanced up at the dwarf. “What did you just do?”
“Only a little new magic trick.”
“What trick?” Rulli raised his eyebrow.
“It’d be easier to explain if you were a mage” the wizard explained.
“Anything powerful?” Rulli prodded.
“Well” Rum looked to think for a second. “That remains to be seen, I suppose.”
The group ended their break, collected their torches and weapons, and headed into the tunnel ahead.