Norman jerked awake in a cold sweat, his heart hammering in his chest. He swung his feet out of bed and sat up, rubbing his face.

Princess mewled in concern.

“I’m fine,” he spoke softly, rubbing the hellhound's large head. “Just a bad dream.”

She seemed content by this and laid back down. He only wished he could shed this concern as easily as her.

This had been the third night in a row since returning from the jungle that he had had this nightmare. It was always the same. Somehow the secret of using souls leaked and the power was used against Normenia.

It didn’t matter who the person behind the attack was. On the first night, it was Donovan, then it was the shadowy princes that ruled the Golatian Empire. Tonight it was the Gorfan.

The outcome was always the same, death. Lots and lots of death and destruction. He couldn’t help wishing that he had never stumbled across this power. He only wanted to find a power source, not a weapon.

He got out of bed and headed toward the bathroom to take a hot shower and wash away the dream. Logically he knew nobody was likely to figure out what he had done or how to replicate it. He had even lied to everyone when he returned and said the spell was a bust. Even Grobert had seemed accepting of his excuse for destroying the teleporter. However, if the man ever went to investigate, he would quickly realize Norman’s deception. If anyone would understand though, it would be Grobert.

He didn’t like lying or keeping things from his friends, but he didn’t trust anyone with this information. If he could erase it from his own mind, he would.

As he stepped out of the shower and got dressed, he looked at the time. It was early, around four in the morning.

Knowing there was no point going back to sleep, he headed downstairs. Soon the lingering terror and fear from the dream subsided. Even if it hadn’t, he couldn’t dwell on what-ifs.

There was nothing more he could do to hide his experiment. There was no written record of the spells or test, the site was vaporized, and the closest teleporter to that location was now over a hundred miles away. He hadn’t even told anyone what he had been working on. It was about as secret as secret could be.

He entered the testing chamber, shivering a bit. The room was always quite cold in the mornings. Even more so now that Fall was approaching rapidly. Luckily he had a fix for that. He ran his hand across a brass plate set in the wall next to the door. The plate seemed to glow slightly before the color spread across inlaid lines of brass located along the walls.

It was a simple thermal regulation enchantment that Saliu had installed when the castle was rebuilt. Since it wasn’t a permanent enchantment, it didn’t need to be made from gold. Although the brass would deteriorate over time and need to be replaced. Even so, it was a much cheaper option.

As the enchantment worked to drive off the chill, Norman activated the magical lanterns.

The best thing to do to get his mind off the dream was to keep it occupied. Thankfully he had plenty of things to focus his mind on.

Today he would be testing his idea about combining spells with the capacitance symbol. He had yet to make much headway in that direction, but he was determined to figure it out.

As he mentally pictured the spell forms in his mind, he prepped the animals for the test. By the time the animals were ready, he had gone through eight failed spell forms in his mind. His ability to construct these spells had increased significantly due to his practice with the soul magic test. That didn’t mean he was always successful though. He was certain the reason for this growth in aptitude was due to the complexity of that spell as well as how many times he had died while attempting it.

Now he could visualize one of his earlier spells, like Plague Ray, in less than a second. It took at least three seconds for him to cast the spell using his hands. So it was certainly a better option. It also allowed him to queue up spells while also casting with his hands.

He was getting off track.

…Or was he?

He pictured Plague Ray again, holding the image in his mind while he built a second spell form for Flaming Skull. Plague Ray wobbled slightly but he firmed up his focus and it didn’t fall apart. Despite how simple the first spell was, he was sweating and shaking as he continued to build the second spell.

From experience, he knew he was close to dying. He checked his nose, but no blood was leaking from it or his ears so he continued. As he closed in on the final parts of the second spell, his body started seizing. He gritted his teeth and pushed through the last hurdle, wrapping the second spell with the capacitance symbol.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Almost immediately, the strain on his mind stopped and the seizing ended.

He picked himself up off the ground and wiped the blood from his nose, eyes, and ears. He hadn’t died, but it had been close. It seemed that holding two spells in his mind was infinitely harder than one. But he had done it.

The spell form circled in his mind, and he could now see what he had been missing from his previous attempts. It was that damn null symbol. He wasn’t even sure how it had gotten into the final spell form, he hadn’t added it, but when they had been combined, it was now there, covering the second spell like a blanket.

Wanting to see if his effort had been worth it, Norman pulled the spell focus from a pouch and aimed the bone at the caged animal while pouring his newly constructed spell into the bone.

The ray of deadly energy struck the creature and it burst like normal, spreading the disease to the other animals. But as soon as it burst, a Flaming Skull rose from the corpse. Three more Flaming Skulls popped up from the other corpses and Norman staggered as his mana took a huge hit.

“Good to know,” he muttered. If he cast that spell in a large group, it would probably kill him from the mana drain alone.

For most of the morning, Norman lost himself in experiment after experiment. Until the chime of a bell interrupted him.

As he turned around, he saw Kalia standing in the doorway.

“There you are. I’ve been worried about you, I haven’t seen you for days. I thought something might have happened with your experiment.”

“Oh, sorry about that. I meant to come to see you. The spell was a bust, I guess I just didn’t want to dwell on it.”

She chuckled. “I can totally understand that. I was going to ask you about it yesterday but I got wrapped up in a project of my own.”

“Oh, anything interesting?” He asked, changing the subject.

“You could say that,” she responded coyly.

“Well, now I must know. Care to join me for…” he looked at the clock, “lunch to discuss it?”

“I don’t know…”

“I must insist. A Lord can’t be seen dining alone, that would be unacceptable,” he responded in the fakest most imperious tone he could come up with.

“Well, we can’t have that, can we,” she responded with a laugh.

He offered the enchanter his arm and she accepted as they both talked and laughed on their way to the dining room.

After lunch the two parted ways with a quick kiss. Norman had some meetings and leadership stuff to do while Kalia needed to get back to her new project. Their relationship was growing slowly, but he was more than okay with that. Heaven knew he had jumped into enough failed relationships and attracted enough crazy women that he was understandably cautious.

Their lunch discussion was interesting, but if he was being honest, he only understood about half of what she was talking about. Something about thermodynamic decay and mana resonance. Although she used more scientific terms.

The project she was working on was part of her and the other enchanter’s work on replacing fossil fuel as an energy source. He understood the process of heat transfer, even if he had only gone to ninth-grade science class. But all of her talk on mana resonance was lost on him. It wasn’t something he had to worry about with spells. But it was apparently quite important when it came to enchanting. He supposed that made sense.

Even if he didn’t understand most of what she said, he was happy that she was so engaged.

“Morning Grobert.” His chief advisor had set up an office in the Ministry building. Which made sense since that was what the building was meant for.

“Ah, Norman, I was wondering if you were going to stop by today.”

Norman rolled his eyes at the man’s lack of address. The old coot was one of the few people who could get away with addressing him like this in front of others. Not that Norman much cared for being called Lord all the time. It was others who bristled at the lack of decorum.

“What’s on the agenda today?”

“Surprisingly little. A few trade deals you need to look over and approve of. And an update on what the Council is up to.”

“Oh?” Norman asked, sitting up in the chair he had been reclining in.

“It’s nothing to get too excited about. We are now certain they know about the type of spies we use. Within the last few days, the Wraiths have lost access to all sensitive areas. But it seems they haven’t quite cracked exactly how we create them. Whatever enchantments they have implemented block all undead from an area.”

Norman sat back in the chair and crossed his legs as he rubbed his chin in thought. “Huh. I guess that would work for them. Not like we could implement something like that here. That does give me concern that they could create a wall that our people could not cross though.”

Grobert grunted. “I don’t think that should be a concern. If it works like other enchantments, the power requirements would be too absurd to bother with.”

“You’re probably right,” Norman conceded.

Even he didn’t have a way to power a spell circle larger than half a mile wide. Well, not without using souls as a power source, and he wasn’t about to open that can of worms. No, that array he had used to turn all those mindless undead into greykin was a one-off thing. It took so much blood and life energy to power it that using it repeatedly would begar the entirety of Normenia. His enemies didn’t need to know that though.

“We have learned the identity of one of the new Councilors.”

“About time. Who is it?”

“Some woman by the name of Marte. She is that portal mage they have been hiding from us.”

Norman frowned at that. “But why? It’s not like we care about their portals. We can make teleporters.”

Grobert shrugged. “Who can say? Maybe they feel like she is a strategic resource and they want to protect her.”

“I guess. What about the last one?”

“No word yet, but our spies suspect she isn’t even based out of California.”

He sighed, it had only been a matter of time. “So they are already expanding their reach. It now makes more sense that they would hide this Marte from us. Have we verified that they don’t have portals set up in Normenia?”

“As much as we can. The Normal routes have been checked. But we don’t have the manpower to search the entire countryside anytime soon. Unless you wish to make it a priority?”

Norman shook his head. “Just have them clear the land out to a day’s ride from any location of significance. That should give us ample warning if they do launch an attack on us.”

After that discussion, he reviewed the trade agreements, signing the ones that he found acceptable and turning down others. Although he did hold off on the Matron’s wanting Eugene to see it before he decided. He knew the big man would get a chuckle out of it.