“Go on ahead without me, kid.”
“What?” The kid stared at me, eyes wide like I had said something crazy.
“I said go on without me. The Pond is just up this path; you’ll find a small cave opening. It’s in there.”
“What about you?”
There it was again, that expression like he was worried for me.
I smiled, my teeth growing sharper by the second.
“Well, I guess it’s time I finally show off a bit.”
The kid looked between me and the path ahead. I could see the resistance on his face.
One more push.
“Kid, each one of the mages is likely to have the magical reserves akin to a fourth ring sage. You haven’t even reached the point of a single ring Sage. Do you really think you can help me at all?”
That did it. His face hardened as he tried to mask his thinly veiled emotions.
“Fine!” The kid shook his head, turning his back to me. “But you better be here when I come back.”
“Sounds like a deal,” I said, my back turned to him as I awaited the oncoming squadron.
One…two… bah, numbers are tricky.
After several tries at counting them up, I figured there was something like fifteen or sixteen.
Challenging but manageable.
While it would still be another minute or two before they reached me, I couldn’t let them catch me with the kid by my side. As far as I knew, no one had connected us past the Eorial girl. Plus, I hadn’t lied about what I told the kid. Each mage would be a significant threat; his being around would only slow me down.
Well. I looked over my shoulder, watching Rook disappear over the crest of the oversized hill we had been traveling up. Nothing to do but wait.
--------------------------
“You there.” The first of the mages had finely reached me, disembarking off horseback. “You are Imako Regul, are you not? Whisper of the Woods, the Dark Knife, Third star of Nochesuki?”
“Why yes, those would all be titles or names I’ve held at one time or another,” I said with a wolfish grin.
“You are hereby sentenced to immediate execution for your crimes, most notably, for being a danger to humanity.”
“Labeling me a danger to humanity is a little extreme, don’t you think?” I said with a tone of mock hurt.
“Silence Void Mane.”
“Oh well, looks like you’ve done it now.” I sighed, standing up from the stump I had found and sat at. “As a general policy, I don’t let those throwing that identity about so willy-nilly live, on principle. The name Void mane always seems to inspire stories of terror and horror, and really, I want nothing more than to relax in my downtime.”
The enemy mage said nothing more as his fellow mages hopped down from their horses, pulling on white fingerless gloves.
Tough crowd.
Well, the easiest way to deal with a tough crowd was simply to soften them up.
Preferably by dismemberment, but then I had no actual preferences.
Feeling my form begin to flicker and flow like a living shadow, I made my way toward them slowly, before speeding up, until finally, I sprinted on all four.
“Here it comes!” The captain of the mages yelled out, but it was too late. I was already on him, my hands, now savagely clawed paws shredding the sides of his head. I leaped free as his head exploded in a shower of gore, several of the mages recoiling at the sight.
“I- what is that?”
“Magic.”
“But you’re not using any commands.”
“For something this simple? Of course not. Anyway, I don’t use magic the same as most do.”
Humans were bound, handicapped, and unable to freely control the depths of magic without the words of power they relied on. While I often looked like a human, I was anything but human.
I was a magical beast of the highest caliber, and mana was my lifeblood. I could call upon all but the highest forms of wild magic without uttering a single word, magic flowing freely from my intention alone.
I was lunging toward another mage, but I felt a disturbance within the local mana as it swirled and reshaped itself, the weight of mana within each of the remaining mages becoming denser.
Well, that’s novel.
They were linked, a soul-bound mana corridor formed between the members of the subjugation squad. I wasn’t privy to how it worked; only those within the spacious halls of the capital who’d fathomed such magic could explain it in detail. Still, at the very least, we had discovered that they’d found a way to bind the very essence of individual mages together, their mana cores linked as a part of a synchronistic sum. When one died, their mana would be released through their connection, revitalizing and aggrandizing the collective.
Or, in simpler terms, they would grow stronger with each death.
Need to be fast about this, then.
Reverting further into my bestial form, the world appeared as if suddenly dunked in a vat of ink, everything projected in a million differing hues of grey and black.
“Scortar!” One of the mages shouted. The word sounded muted as a black steel stalagmite exploded from beneath me. I flipped through the air with reflexes a human body could never have hoped to match. The mage who had made the mistake of attempting to skewer me found his efforts rewarded by my jaws snapping through his throat, leaving him to drown in a pool of blood.
Next.
The mana distributed again like a pulse flaring from the dying mage, the remaining mages growing more powerful.
“Scoess!” I briefly heard the word of power before I was yanked through the air. The mage had created an atmospheric vacuum to my right, which I was drawn toward as the air pressure equalized once more. It was a clever use of Scoess as I was swept along the tides of the sweeping winds.
Clever, but clever alone isn’t enough to best me.
Drawing upon the mana that comprised my flesh and blood, I countered the mage’s spell using one of my specialties.
In the human tongue, it was the fusion of Scorz and Kinzar, Scorzar.
Burst.
Nullifying the vacuum, I narrowly avoided another spear of black steel bursting free. I flicked a hand, or rather a paw, toward the closest of the mages. A gout of fire lanced forward, but the mage was the first of the group to survive an attack from me, flicking his wrist upward as he matched my attack.
“Aultar!”
A geyser of grey liquid erupted from below, forming a wall that intercepted my fire. Whether by chance or quick thinking, the mage has opted to use quicklime as his magic of choice to defend himself from my fire. Bare earth would have shattered like clay left in a kiln for too long. The quicklime, hydrated as it was, used the heat of my fire against me, hardening in response as I found myself standing between three mages with their hands outstretched.
“Kintar!”
“Renzar!”
“Kinzar!”
Instantly I was being battered by a sandstorm centered directly upon me, the three mages combining their magic into one swirling vortex of tiny particles that grated on me like blasting sandpaper.
If you want to play that game, I’ll show you how it’s done.
I reached within myself, drawing forth mana as I felt it collect and coalesce into something grander.
“Kinaulorz!” Even to my ears, it sounded strange to hear human words spat out from my wolf maw, but I couldn’t help it. As a magical beast, I could wordlessly use all but the highest forms of magic.
But deviant magic was one of those highest forms.
A wave of liquid fire rushed from me, swallowing up their cheap imitation of the deviant magic Renscorzar. The wave of liquid fire didn’t end there; it continued sweeping out before it washed over three of the remaining mages, who began to scream in agony. They beat their bodies in frantic desperation, but the fire could not be put out, a burning gel that clung to everything.
“Watch out! It’s capable of deviant magic!”
I grinned, my fangs poking out from my maw. The magic I had cast was powerful; it took much more out of me than the base strands of magic would have when used individually. Still, watching unease and fear spread through the mages was worth it; I could taste their negative emotions in the very air.
It was one thing to hear the theory behind deviant magic, to know that it might exist, but to see it was something else entirely unnatural to humans who had been raised to fear the depths of magic.
At least, that was the case in Haerasong, where great efforts had been made to squash out the powerful magics of the past.
I’m not the Third Star for no reason.
I had transformed the area into a hellscape, but the fight was far from over. There were still one… two… several mages left, and as with every death, I felt the mana flow from the bodies of their compatriots.
Going to have to finish the rest of them off in one go, or this might become a problem.
“Behind me!” One of the mages shouted, and I watched the group crowd behind a single mage, a woman who raised her hands toward me, beginning to glow with an uncomfortably bright light.
Using magic without the words of power, ergo, Kin magic.
The world turned back to the everyday shade and hues of color as I transformed back into my human form. Without knowing what her kin magic was, I wanted to respond with my full magical capability, including deviant magic if need be, which was easier to do from my human form.
I waited several seconds longer, readying my defenses, until my eyes twitched, struck by a sudden realization.
She wasn’t readying offensive magic. She was layering themselves with defensive magic.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Damnit.
I waved my hand toward the gathered group, sending a chain reaction of burst magic toward them. The explosion of kinetic energy shook even the ground beneath our feet, an impressive display of my power that would have killed most, reducing their innards to liquified jelly as the shockwaves washed over them. Yet, it wasn’t enough, the cacophony of kinetic energy fizzling in a golden shower of sparks as it neared them.
“Have to make things more difficult, don’t you,” I growled, watching as the mages spread back out, about as many left as I had fingers.
“Of course, foul beast.” The woman snapped a finger toward me. “In the name of the Holy who watch, we will cleanse the world of your vile contamination.”
Holy, and a glow that protects. Sounds like a derivative of light-based magic.
“If you wish to test ideals against me, be my guest,” I scowled at the woman, readying a hand as I drew power forward. “But do not trust so highly in those who will fail to answer your prayers when it matters most.”
The woman opened her mouth to respond, but a lance of ice was launched behind her, racing toward me as fast as an arrow.
Really, attacking someone mid-conversation?
The world shifted black and white as I slipped through the shadows, stepping to the right as the ice lance sailed past where I had just been standing.
“If that is how you wish to react, I will show you exactly why we are called Void Manes.” I continued scowling, my mood soured by the woman’s zealotry.
“Scorlousbral,” I whispered the word, and from the few who saw what I muttered, I could see the confusion on their faces.
Wild magic was formed through the words of powers, elements assembled from differing prefixes and suffixes, each containing the primal elements. Five primal elements, twenty composite elements, and sixty theoretical forms of deviant magic, though only a handful of those deviant magics had been officially documented.
Regardless of to what degree one could utilize wild magic, the quantity would never change, an absolute of the world.
Scorz for fire.
Frecezz for frigidity.
Aulous for water.
Rentar for earth.
And finally, Kinzar for force.
That’s not to say, though, that such a fact applied to nonhumans.
A sixth element existed, rarely spoken of and even more seldomly used.
Bral, the magic of magical beasts.
Shadow.
And I, as a Void Mane, was especially adept with it.
From below the mages who had conveniently grouped themselves together, a swamp of living shadows emerged like a hungering beast that had been awoken from a deep slumber, tendrils of pure darkness lashing out and ensnaring those within, ripping through the protective aura of the light magic as if it may as well have never been there.
The mages struggled, fought, and flailed, but to no avail, drowning within the darkness as it dragged them into its depths. They had seconds at best until they were submerged completely, lost within a hostile world of living shadows. Fates sealed, I watched as they exchanged one final look amongst each other, seeking solace in-
Wait, what are they doing?
Simultaneously the group seemed to bite down, all save for one, before they sank beneath the waves of darkness, their eyes lifeless.
Oh, damnit.
It was already too late as I recognized what they had done. Like a tidal swell, their mana crashed forward, harnessed entirely by the single mage who hadn’t bitten down on whatever suicide pill they had prepared beforehand. My shadow swamp, which had been dragging them in, now seemed unable to pull the remaining man into its depths, the weight of his soul too great to be constrained by the darkness.
“Your sacrifices won’t be in vain.” The man bowed his head low as the dark swamp faded into nonexistence, leaving us as the last living things within the burning hellscape I had created.
“That’s one way to gain power.” I whistled as I felt the waves of mana rolling off from the man. The amount of mana radiating out from him was enough to drive those weak of will to their very knees.
“Is that all you think about, beast? Power, the food chain? Those people were my friends. Do you even understand what friends are? Family?”
His words struck me like a hammer, and suddenly I felt myself flare up with anger.
“Friends?” I scoffed, spitting at the ground. “Family? Do you believe that you, pup, are one to lecture me about friends and family? When it was your empire that rose hot off the heels of the fallen Sages that was responsible for the deaths of all those I loved?” I shook my head. “No. You do not deserve even the right to think of lecturing me!”
I flicked my hand out, and a ball of fire shot forward, a dense encapsulation of my sudden flaring rage.
The man raised his hand, a bubble appearing around my ball of fire, extinguishing my rage and anger, gone as if insignificant.
“Aulscorzar.” The man stared me dead in the eye as he uttered the word. “I did not believe myself to ever be one to reach the heights of deviant magic, but now I am here, and I must do what I must to ensure such a dangerous, rabid dog such as yourself is put down.”
“Kinscorlous!” I snarled, hundreds of droplets of acid shooting forward like a swarm of angry bees.
“Renscorzar!” A blast of sand collided with my storm of acid, negating each other as I shapeshifted, dashing around him as I blipped in and out of existence, slipping through shadows like they were doorways only I was privy to.
The man seemed to relax, pressing his fingertips and thumbs together as if praying.
“For the light cast aside the darkness!”
As if being yanked out of the shadows, I found myself cast out from the darkness I called home.
He even has that woman’s Kin magic.
“You may believe wrong what was done to you and your family, but it was for a better world. Haerasong will be a land free of the sins of magic and the dark shadow cast by magical beasts. The first land of this world which is free from such evil.”
I’d been born near the birth of the empire of Haerasong as it rose from the ashes of the once peerless Sages. Dedicated to eradicating such evils that the Sages came to represent in the eyes of the lesser, the kingdom of Haerasong was meant to be a bastion of divine purpose.
At least, that was what they liked to preach. Had that been the case, I reckon magic and magical beasts would have been wiped clean from this continent hundreds of years ago. Still, magic and, by extension, magical beasts were simply too valuable for total eradication. A convenient boogeyman that could be pointed at to garner support from the countrymen when needed.
Of course, I doubted trying to explain such to a fanatic like the man before me would likely do much regarding the impasse I found myself at.
“You’re blind.” I spat, turning back into my human form once more. “But it’s not my job to educate you.”
“As if you will have the chance.” The man pulled a sword free from his side, raising it toward me.
Of course, the ‘holy knight’ must draw his sword at the end. How very cliché.
“Our divine cause is so just that even the Sages of old, reborn as they may be, will perish once more.”
Conceited, and more impressively, is how monumentally stupid he has to be to actually believe what he is saying.
I wasn’t going to win in a fight of magical endurance, I had burnt through far too much of my mana, and the man was basically bursting with it.
“And you, a vile beast from the ages long ago, are merely a relic of times better left forgotten. Surrender now. You are near the end of your mana reserves. If you go quietly, I will at least give you a quick death.”
I slid one foot back, raising my clawed hands in front of me, a relaxed but ready stance.
“Foolish.” The man shook his head before raising a hand. “Frezar.”
I felt like I had been dunked in a tub of syrup; my movements slowed.
“While I may not be as physically superior as you ordinarily would be, you have drained too much of your mana to resist my influence.”
Frezar. Having expended so much mana by throwing out several deviant spells, I was vulnerable to the slowing effects of the magic, a composite spell born from Frezess and Kinzar.
“Bite me.” I grit my teeth, motioning him to come at me.
“It is your funeral.” The man shook his head as if disappointed in me. Grievances spoken, the man darted forward, his blade sweeping in a downward arc toward my head.
Amateur. Even Rook could see through such a basic maneuver.
Even physically reduced as I was, I managed to deflect the strike off my claws, parrying the strike as my left hand shot forward, intending to stab through his heart. As sluggish as my movements were, the man managed to step out of my strike range, eye narrowed in surprise that I had even managed to fend off his assault.
“You think I spent over a thousand years just to die to a pup of a few decades?” I laughed mockingly.
The man roared with misplaced righteousness as he charged me again, a two-handed cleave that I slipped to the side of, using minimal movements to compensate for the slowing hold of his oppressive magic.
Time to try something new.
After another heated exchange, I danced back several steps, watching the man.
“For such confidence, is it not you who appears to be on the backfoot?” The man held his sword toward me, clearly in control of the situation.
Or so he assumed.
Rather than respond, I took a deep breath, drawing mana deep into my being.
Now, in what order did he go about this?
I found myself recollecting the scene of the kid, not even a proper mage, utilizing mana in a way I hadn’t seen since… well, ever. The tome I had given him was meant to inspire him to discover the basics of mana and harness it in the simplest terms, a simple lesson in basic mana manipulation. All he had to do was subdue his personal mana signature to enough of a degree that the living tome wouldn’t automatically respond to his intent.
Instead, the boy had decided that such an obvious solution was too straightforward. Why hide one’s mana signature when you could simply overwhelm a foe instead?
I told him it was similar to integration, but that was a lie.
Integration was the reformation of a Sage’s body, building it from the ground up. For a magical beast such as myself, it wasn’t possible. My body was already interwoven with mana. Yet, what Rook had done was something that I could replicate.
And replicate it, I would.
“Prepare yourself,” I warned the mage as warmth swelled from within.
“Don’t kid yourse-” His words were silenced as he frantically blocked a slash from my claws, his eyes widening in surprise as I appeared before him in the blink of an eye.
“How?” The man questioned me, his eyes searching for understanding.
“Inspiration, something your little ‘kingdom’ lacks.” I laughed. The feeling rushing through me was intoxicating. “Dance the dance of death with me.”
My left arm zipped forward as I caught him from below with an uppercut, slamming my fist into his gut and launching him backward, where he crashed against the charred trunk of a tree. The tree exploded, a massive crack splintering the charred bark down the middle in a shower of ash and charcoal.
“For such talk, are you already depleted of your strength?” I mockingly repeated his words back to him, walking toward him with a slow, measured gait.
The man scrambled to his feet, flailing as he flicked forward a shaking hand.
“Scorz!”
Rather than avoid the rush of fire, I simply brushed it aside as nothing more alarming than leaves in the wind.
“Inner magic?” The man seemed even more shocked. “B-but magical beasts can’t use Inner magic!”
“You’d be correct about that.” I smiled as I stood before him before launching him back across the clearing with a viciously aimed kick. “I’m, in fact, not using Inner magic.”
I wasn’t merely lying to the man either; no point in deceiving a doomed man. Unlike humans, we magical beasts were interwoven with mana. It ran through our very flesh and blood. It provided a natural resistance to magic, but usually, it was nowhere near enough to simply ignore the likes of the magic that the mage had been tossing around.
Usually, that is.
By drawing even more mana into my body and using it to overclock my natural capabilities, my natural resistance to magic had likewise been heightened. For a brief period, I would be all but immune to magic.
“S-stay back!” The man held up his hands, but I grabbed him by the collar of his uniform, holding him aloft as he struggled helplessly.
“What was it you said before? Oh yes, that it was ‘my funeral.’ How very comical of you.”
The mage, brimming with zealous fervor, was now staring at me in terror, the terror of doomed prey. His fear lasted only a moment before turning into surprise, his eyes widening as he stared down at his chest.
Toward my arm, thrust through his body, and holding his still-beating heart.
“For thousands of years, the world has changed at a glacier’s pace, but now I see it. Change, the inertia that cannot be stopped.” Speaking to myself, now that the mage was dead, I tossed aside his lifeless body before I collapsed a moment later.
“Now, who will be the driver behind that unstoppable force, those tides of change, is anyone’s bet.” I huffed, aware of how exhausted my body felt, like every fiber of my being had been pulled far too tight.
Well, I understand now why he named it ‘ruptured body.’
The pain was intense, but I had experienced pain before. Not once or twice or hundreds of times, I’d felt pain hundreds of thousands of times over, the pain of loss that every morning reminded me only I remained. In comparison, this was an inconsequential ache, an afterthought.
Isolating my mind from the physical aches I was experiencing, I stared at the far sky in silent rumination.
I only took that kid on as an offhanded gamble, an investment with little potential repercussions. How could I not, given what I heard?
Laying on the ground, the memory played out through my mind. Weeks had passed, yet it was scorched into the deepest recesses of my mind, a memory I would never forget.
There I was, watching events play out. I’d come to this village when I’d sensed a disturbance, almost like the latent mana here was rupturing, like the sea parting as a leviathan rose from its depths. A young village boy had fought valiantly to defend those he cared for, a sentiment I could understand, but it was all for naught. He was too weak, a nobody, a single pebble in the grand flow of time. I was preparing to leave when I felt it, that same disturbance to the mana flow of the world. A power, a force of nature itself, had appeared. His friend, a girl I’d seen killed, was suddenly alive again, and the world seemed to be drawn toward her like she emitted her own gravity. Using magic I’d never seen before, the girl dragged the captain of the subjugation squad, who had taken the boy’s mother, back through space, before killing him as easily as I would an ant.
This was it; I was confident. They’d gone all but extinct by the time I was born, but I’d heard the tales from my parents and the older members of my pack. Mages, no, gods who wore the mortal flesh of a human, with power that even the True Dragons respected.
A Sage. There was no doubt in my mind. Whoever the girl had been before was unimportant. All that mattered now was that standing there was a Great Sage in flesh and blood.
“I see you.”
I jumped, the voice whispering in my ear.
It shouldn’t have been possible. I was hidden in the shadows that clung to the underbelly of the physical world, a world that only the likes of a Void Mane, such as myself, could freely traverse.
And yet, I could feel it. A presence had noticed me; if it really wanted, I was sure it could pluck me from the safety of the shadows.
I looked back out, the Sage still talking to the boy. Yet I instinctually knew it was her. She was the one who had noticed me, spoken to me even as I hid within the shadow world, the boy none the wiser.
A shiver passed through me, the Sage clearly content to simply point out that she had noticed me. I was alive, but only thanks to the whims of a being who may as well have been a higher power.
Fear.
That was what I was feeling, the shivers through my body.
Fear.
It had been eons since I’d last felt such primal feelings, a fear only spotted prey could understand.
But.
But with that fear came an excitement. The Sage would bring change, that much I was sure. The world was in for times of change, whether strife or pax ultima. The rebirth of a Great Sage could only lead to such an apparent reality. A storm was coming, one way or another.
But just maybe, I could throw a pebble into that oncoming storm and shake things up just an ounce more. That was what the boy represented to me.
A slight, meager chance.
But if it means tearing apart this world that has torn so much from me, I’ll bet on any slight chance I get.