“You’re a really hard person to track down cousin.” I was back in the meeting hall in Necropolis, but I knew it was a dream. Across the table from me was Eric, Argos by his side. Though Argos looked like he had seen better days. “Worried about your pet? Its fine, he’ll be back to normal after eating a few corpses. I was more interested in seeing how you were faring after the first of my gifts arrived.”
“I’m doing just fine Eric.” I answered, glaring at him.
“Oh I’m sure you are. After all, you went into battle with a spear. A spear of all things! If Uncle found out, well. I’m sure the consequences would be unbearable.”
“Funny. Your puns almost did what the bear couldn’t. Kill me.” I said with a smile. “Now, what are you really here for? I’ll never give you the legacy.”
“And here I had hoped that asking nicely would work instead of chasing you down. Darn. Guess I’ll have to slaughter that entire village in front of you. How many are there again? It might take me a few days to revive them all. Are there any you are particularly close with?”
“Eric. I’m giving you this one chance. Much more than you and father gave me. Leave now. Leave, and I won’t pursue you. If not, well. I would gladly kill you to protect my new family.” Staring him down, I grabbed the thread he had re-established and tore through it with death mana. As the cord finally snapped, I was thrust out of the dream, but not before I could see the smile on his face.
“I’ve packed a few gifts, you should get them today.” I faintly heard as the dream disappeared.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
I woke up, but this time I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t sweating. Instead my mind was going through different ways that I could both protect the town and keep my secret, at least for a little while longer. The major problem I kept running into was that Eric knew at least one way into town, but the other entrance was on the other side. There was nothing I could do to guard both entrances.
“Is it bad dear?” Ellie asked, interrupting my mechanical eating of breakfast.
“Hmm? Oh, no. It’s great as always. I’m just a little distracted because of that bear.” I answered, patting her hand. Smiling at her, I decided that I would have to enlist some help. “Hey Scott. Can I have a word with you?” I asked.
“Sure. Barn?”
“I knew it. You two are plotting against me.” Ellie said dramatically. “What can I do? I guess I’ll get the dishes and let you come up with your dastardly plans.” We both chuckled as she got to work in the kitchen. Following Scott out the door, I looked at his chest and frowned. I could see the life mana concentrating again, but it wasn’t to the point where I could intervene. Maybe tonight.
“Bear got you scared?” he asked as we entered the barn.
“Partially.” I said, sitting down and staring at the spear. He had shown me how to maintain it last night, and we kept it out here to keep Ellie from worrying too much. “Scott. Thanks. Thanks for not prying into my past. I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok son.” He said. “We all have things we would rather not talk about.”
“But now it’s going to effect the town. I didn’t really come from a wandering tribe. I was born and raised in Necropolis, the home of the necromancers. I managed to get something very important to them, but escaped. Now one of them is following me. My cousin, Eric.”
Scott froze at my words, looking at me for a long time. I didn’t interrupt, just let him think things through. “Ah hell. Any chance he will go around us?”
“None.” I answered. “He’s got a way to magically track me, a way that I can’t completely block. The only thing I can do is sever the connection once per day. From what it sounds like, he is close.”
“How do you? Ah. The dreams.” Scott nodded. “So how long do we have?”
“Not sure. Days probably. It sounded like he was the cause of the bear yesterday. If I had to guess, he will send something today to try and weaken us while he builds what strength he can.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“I need to talk with Father Tomas, but I can’t guard both entrances to the village.”
“Afraid of a pincer?”
“Exactly. Can you and Ben watch this entrance?”
“Sure. I’ll need the spear though.”
“I know. Eric might think us out of options, but I’ve still got a few cards he doesn’t know about.” With that, I headed out. I was marching through the town with a renewed sense of purpose, only to be surprised when I saw Tomas waiting for me.
“Morning.” He nodded, falling into pace beside me.
“Morning.” I nodded. We headed out in silence, coming to the meadow where Nick and Sheila were already working. “Father.”
“I noticed you don’t have your spear today.” He interrupted. “I don’t know why you left it, but I was planning on teaching you the detect life spell today anyway. Anything you need to get off your chest?”
I stopped, furiously debating with myself. I had told Scott I was going to talk to Tomas, but he was already planning to teach me the spell I needed. “I’ll be ok. I don’t actually need a spear now that I can cast magic again.”
“Oh?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Telekinesis.” I shrugged. “I can’t lift a bear, but I can lift a rock as big as Dax and drop it on its head.”
“Interesting.” He mumbled. “Very well. Let’s get you situated in that chair. It’s close enough to the center of the valley that we can make good use of it.” Heading over, he let me get situated before going into lecture mode. “Now, magic is a very difficult thing to master, as you already know. The only part that is absolutely essential is the mana and the mental image. But maintaining that image is incredibly difficult, which is why so few mages learn to silent cast their spells. They would also have to do it with every single spell they learn. It can also increase the casting time, which you now is incredibly important in battle.”
“So to make things easier, they came up with chants. These are little mantras that can be unique to each mage that help them stabilize their mental image. Some of the best mages have cut it down to one or two words, usually the name of the spell. Behold. Fire bolt.” With a flick of his hand, a dart of flame shot out and caused a miniature geyser in the lake. I was rather impressed, even if it was a low level spell. He had not only a quick cast time, but the amount and stability of the mana he had packed into the spell were both better than a lot of mages I had seen.
“Right. So the chant can really be anything you want. There are a lot of chants that start out calling out to a god or goddess, but don’t expect any divine help with the spell. This is usually done to help the mage remember what mana type or types they will be using. As for the chant itself, most mages will make it similar to what they need to imagine, but you need to be wary about assuming this will always be the case. I know several mages that use false imagery in their chants to throw their enemies off. It works a lot more often than you expect, especially when you don’t do that for all of your spells. But you’re a long way from that.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“So what is the imagery for the detect life spell?”
“Calm down, I’m getting there. No matter how good you are, it’s always a good idea to review the basics. So for this spell, you need to imagine a net expanding out from you. Once it finds something of sufficient size, usually something a little larger than a squirrel, the net will send a pulse back along the lines letting you know the exact location.”
“Why squirrel sized?” I asked.
“I thought you would understand that. Do you know what went wrong with your previous attempt?”
“Not really. I pulsed it outward, but it didn’t get very far before I was overwhelmed with voices.”
“That’s exactly it. You didn’t filter out the tiniest creatures: insects. You linked with so many that your brain basically shut everything down to protect itself. That’s why we limit the size. You can also limit by other characteristics when you master the spell. Ben is probably so adept with it that he could find a member of the village in a crowd if he wanted.”
“Ok, so form the net and limit the size. Anything else?”
“Yes. You are only detecting, you aren’t forming a connection. I know we practiced forming the connection, but that is the opposite of what we want for now. It’s a lot more important in the majority of non-healing life spells which is why it’s used as the base. As for the chant? Why don’t you try and come up with one. The one they will teach in the academy is: Reagan. Cast your magic wide, and let it return telling me all that fall within your domain.”
I nodded, then closed my eyes and slowly started my mental image. Nets were a good, but they just didn’t strike me as what I needed. I always thought them more as capturing devices than detection devices. No, if I wanted a detection device I needed a spiderweb. The jungle was crawling with funnel web spiders. These burrowing spiders leave a net of silk around their burrows, waiting for things to step on it. Touching it alerts the spider, which can then attack. That’s the kind of thing I needed.
“Let the web of life alert me to my prey as they brush against it. Detect Life.” I was imagining this massive web that would fountain into the air, expanding around me before falling to the ground. Patternless, it would not leave any exploitable paths to the exit that someone could learn. For it to be effective, it would have to cover at least a hundred yards, more if I could.
“Well done on your first try.” I heard Father Tomas say, but I was confused. I knew he was close, but he wasn’t detected by my web. Opening my eyes, I saw that I managed to cover a whopping one foot in each direction.
“Seriously? This is it?” I asked, disappointed.
“Hey, it was a good try. You actually managed the cast, and I know that you didn’t overdo it this time because part of it is covering that anthill. I’m rather more interested in your chant though. What imagery did you use?”
“Ever heard of a funnel web spider?” I asked, getting a blank look from him. Shrugging my shoulders, I filled him in on everything I knew about them. Especially how they left the web behind to alert them when things brushed against it.
“I see. I like it. That could also be why my spell always has trouble with the direction and distance of detection. So, now all you have to do is work on your image a bit and your efficiency so that you can expand your range. This isn’t a very mana intensive spell, so I want you to work on it most of the morning before you stop to meditate for a while. Hopefully you can cover the majority of the valley by the end of the day.”
Nodding at me, he gave me a pat of encouragement and headed off to talk to Sheila and Nick. I spent the next several hours working on improving my usage of the spell. Tomas had said I could cover the majority of the valley, but that seemed a bit much. Before I tried to increase the range, I worked on the strands. The ones I was producing were the thickness of my arm, and that just seemed like a waste. So step one was to make the strands smaller so that I could send out more of them. Not only would it lessen the mana consumption, but it should let me get more accuracy with everything.
Step two was to not only widen the area, but also improve how everything was working. This honestly should have come to me earlier, but it slipped my mind. Spiders didn’t shoot out an entire web at a time. They built it. So what I should be doing is casting an arc of mana out and turning as it goes. That should let me increase the distance that the strands were shot as well as help me control the spell more. Why search everything around you if you know that certain areas don’t have anything living in there?
It was this thinking that actually got me close to being able to cover the area that Tomas wanted me to. It’s also what saved us, as I was searching the forest first. I could cover about half of it, and that’s when I found them. Ten forms a bit bigger than Dax stalking towards the edge of the forest.
“Nick! Sheila! We got company!” I called out, and Sheila immediately started blowing on her warning horn. Dax shot off to corral the sheep, and Nick jogged in my direction as I pointed to where they were.
“What do we got?” He asked.
“I would bet it’s the wolf pack that drove out the bear yesterday. They’re just inside the tree line. They froze when I yelled, but are starting to.”
Ahwooooo!
I was interrupted by a howl that was swiftly picked up by a few more. Slowly stepping forward, the pack emerged. The smallest looked like it would come up to my chest, the biggest would look me in the eye. Most of them were grey and black, but the leader was all white. What was more worrying were the red eyes and the whip like appendages floating around its neck.
“Ever see a wolf like that?” I asked.
“That’s not a wolf. Not anymore.” Nick said, voice going soft. “It’s becoming a monster, a flayer wolf. Don’t let those things on its neck touch your skin, they’ll peel it right off.” Turning, he saw Sheila had managed to get right next to us. “We’re all gonna need barkskin hon. Cast it individually. Terrance, you got any offensive magic you can use?”
“Not really.” I lied. “I can try and connect with one or two and instill fear though.”
“Good enough. Keep Sheila safe until help arrives.” He started forward, and Sheila immediately cast barkskin on him. I frowned as only three of the smallest wolves moved forward to meet him. Casting a thread of spirit mana, I tried to connect with one of them only to wince in pain as I was savagely rejected. Shaking it off, I looked up to see that the leader was staring at me, as if he knew what I had just tried to do.
“Nick.” Sheila whispered just as the three engaged. Nick was playing a far more defensive roll than I thought he would considering how he attacked the bears, but it soon made sense. The wolves were going with a lot of feinting and attacking from the blind side, and anytime Nick would commit to an attack another wolf would counter as his target retreated. He got in a few good blows in the beginning, using feints of his own to spin and strike at the muzzle of the attacking wolf. Unfortunately, they were swift learners, and would dart back and forth.
Watching Nick die a death by a thousand cuts wasn’t something I was willing to watch. Instead of connecting with spirit mana to cause fear, I decided that the risk of discovery was worth it. Eric already knew I was in the area, and the others would probably just think what I was releasing was an area of effect fear. What I was really doing was counting on the bestial instincts of the wolves. All animals are adept at sensing danger, and monsters are even better. And there was nothing more dangerous than a being that can control life and death. Most people reacted with the hairs on the back of their necks raising for no apparent reason.
So with a deep breath, I stalked forward as I released the control over my own aura that I had been suppressing for so long. I heard a small gasp from Sheila, and knew it reached Nick and his opponents when they all backed off for a second, looking around in fear. Except they didn’t show fear. Instead all three faced me, baring their fangs and raising their hackles, and I heard growling coming from the rest of the pack. This. This wasn’t supposed to be the right reaction. All animals feared death, especially from an aura they shouldn’t have felt. Eric. As I had closed the distance, I could see the black in their coats wasn’t a different natural coloring. These wolves had battled a necromancer and had been hit with death bolts.
“Oh shit.” I muttered, watching as the leader gave a few barking sounds to the rest of the pack. The three that had surrounded Nick now made a wall between us as four more came forward to harass Nick.
“Terrance? What do we do?” I heard Sheila ask from just behind me.
“I. I don’t know.” I whispered back, torn in indecision. Nick was now furiously defending himself against the wolves, and some that had formed the wall were darting back to add to the harassment. I had plenty of spells at my disposal, and a few things in my ring, but. Any of that would expose me. Could Nick hold out until reinforcements arrived? Surely the wolves couldn’t get through his stone fists and his barkskin?
“NICK! NO!” Sheila screamed, as one wolf managed to grab on to his forearm just behind where the stone ended, hanging off his arm and leaving him wide open for an attack.