At some point, magic will become old hat. The wonders of simply willing reality to bend its implacable foundation to your whims . . . will become the norm. The shock of endorphins ransacking your body as raw untamed power flows out and through and around you will become commonplace. The sheer volume and absolute variety of wickedly cool lifeforms will become expected and commonplace.
On that day, please, someone, anyone, put me out of my misery, because watching two hamadryads, female tree spirits born from magic, simply call out to their earthen brethren in the last light of the evening sun was breathtaking. Meliad and her grove sister sang the soft disjointed but hauntingly beautiful melody of the evening breeze, motes of light taking the message away. Disparate clouds of mana wove themselves into magics that hung from nearby branches, each shifting sigil whispering a different tone as the wind rustled through the forest.
“Quick great sorcerer, conjure a body. Quickly now! The elemental needs a stone vessel, one that is freely given, to stay here on this plane.”
Easiest task a woman has ever given me.
It was child’s play to me with the experience I’d garnered so far. Even flexes of will steadily conjured my Sorcery-empowered imagination into being. A basketball sized heart of solid granite grew to fill in the void in the middle of the ‘soft’ tissue part formed of thick Virginia clay mixed with good ol’ dirt. The rough body shape thickened even more as I structured the ‘bones’ with obsidian flecked with quartz and then padded the outer layers of the body with gravel and sand. The lifeless golem lay on its back in front of me as I quickly shaped thick limbs and coarse digits.
After fitting two conjured rubies in its face for eyes, I obeyed an odd impulse. Remembering my kind of unfinished experiment from earlier this morning, I pulled out the golden runed diamond marble from my pocket and stuck it inside of the golem’s head where the brain would be. I barely had time to close up the ‘face’ before I was interrupted.
“Be prepared, it comes!” Meliad warned, her voice rapturous as brown streaks of light flowed through the ley lines underneath the glade up into the conjured golem. Using just a bit more energy, I quickly slapped on made-up yet inspired runes of cohesion and energy storage on its torso while grabbing three of my energy crystal batteries and shoving it in its chest where the lungs would be.
“He’s here!” Meliad began jumping around, clapping as if she were a three year old girl on her birthday. She sang as she celebrated. “Oh, and he’s gonna like this! Not many sorcerers make a vessel this complex, they usually just shape one out of mud and say ‘that’s it!’”.
Massive flows of power sprang up from the earth beneath us as the ten foot titan of earth sat up, its ruby eyes glowing brighter and brighter as awareness flooded in. I watched in awe as a pulsing core of aetherial power erupted up through the dirt and flowed up the legs and trunk of the golem. One hand slowly reached up to touch its face, the other held in front of itself, almost, inspecting it, as if it were a thinking sentient being.
A minute went by with me watching dumbfounded.
“So,” I snarked with my usual irreverent aplomb. “Got a name?”
An overly large mouth opened and a deep, crumbly voice cascaded out as the golem focused its imposing stature on the feeble fleshling standing confidently in front of it. Its voice was steady in tone but shaky in execution as if it were trying to contain or convey an emotion that I could understand.
“Is, this, for, me?”
Looking at Meliad who gave me the slightest nod, I happily replied to the living boulder who spoke too damn slow. He just had to grind out each word. “If you agree to guard this glade, the forest around it, and most importantly, that tree,” I clarified as I pointed at Yggdrasil’s offshoot. “And allow those I wish unfettered or partial access to all of the above, then yes. Yes it is.”
The gashed mouth of crumbly dirt became a crescent of cobbly happiness as it began to shake the ground with a thunderous jig. “This, is, so, generous, master!” The gushing was a bit painful to listen to as its voice sounded like someone had thrown pebbles into a blender. I did have to hold in my laughter as its joy was amusing to watch, like a child overcome with the fact that it got a puppy for christmas.
“You’ve made a friend for life,” Meliad whispered behind me.
Turning to face her, my raised eyebrow communicated its own question.
“Silly sorcerer. You didn’t just give the simple elemental a body, you gave him far more. That was a vessel for a Duke.”
My other eyebrow joined its partner. So sick of everyone but me being in the goddamn know. Where’s my new age magical internet when I need it?
Meliad let out an exasperated sigh. “You know? A Duke? Not just the elementals who call boulders and dirt their home, but rather a proud owner of a mountain. Their realm is just a boring expanse they share with the fire elementals, nothing there but dirt, magma, and some crystals. But here, here they can grow and become more or less than what they were. All Elementals from every Realm function within a hierarchy of power and age. You provided a large body with powerful workings, a veritable powerhouse of a Duke willing to serve for millenia.”
My eyebrows didn’t go down. I made a little ‘go-on’ motion with my hand.
“How are you this powerful, yet know so little?” She teased, one hand playing with her leafy hair, the other resting on her hip.
“I keep asking myself the same question,” I said jokingly, tossing up a small duplicate of the runed diamond brain marble that I put in the golem’s head. “Anyways, do you know his or its name? Bah, is it a he or an it? I didn’t put a dick down there so I’m not exactly sure.”
“It will have a gender when you name it.”
I looked at Meliad, then at the grumpy younger hamadryad skulking behind her.
“What about that one? She got a name? Cause if not, I’m callin’ her Barky.”
Meliad’s giggle was cut off by Barky’s indignant scream.
“My name is Lyra!”
“Whatever you say Barky!” I teased, turning back towards the golem. “And you, damn, all the cool mountain names are really fucking long, like, Monongahela, or Killamanjaro. You know what? Your name is Everest, cause you're a gigantic rock and I’m all out of creativity.”
Everest shook the earth as his knees crushed the ground in front of me. “Everest, me? This, is, my, name?”
“Yeah big guy, you’re a dude and you got a name. Good one too,” I replied. “And . . . what could I get or what would you do if I gave you this?”
I tossed up the second golden runed diamond to his eye level and his ruby eyes followed it back down as it landed in my palm.
I grinned as the diamond rolled around in my palm. Flares of stray mana flickered in and out of the gold whorls. “Something tells me that this pretty little thing is quite valuable to you, considering how happy you are with your body.”
“Heart, stone, is . . . “
I cut him off. “No, this is your brainstone. There’s one where your brain is but this is brain number two.”
“Great sorcerer,” Meliad gently interrupted. “Spirits do not have brains. His spirit is contained in that stone, making it a heartstone. Stones such as that allow for him to grow mentally as well as in power and in size. This is why he is so grateful. The most powerful of elementals can think and feel.”
I casually tossed it up again. The sunlight twinkling off the sheared planes was pretty to see. Such a simple thing that took so much work to create. What a headache. “Ok then, heartstone, what would you do if I gave you another one of these?”
“Nothing. Everest grunted.
“What?” I blanched, taken a bit aback. “What do you mean nothing? It’s a whole nother’ heartstone?!”
“Already, have, one.”
Damn it. There goes my dream of a literal mountain protecting my wife-tree. Fuck.
“Why not simply summon another? I’m sure there are plenty of elementals who would love to be elevated above their intangible station?”
Meliad’s simple question combined with my observations of Everest’s joy to form a devious idea. Unable to contain my absolutely staggering genius, I grabbed her by the shoulders, my words spitting out rapid fire.
“Can you find another? Can you summon another elemental who would be willing to do this but travel with me and not have to be out summoned all the time? Is that possible? Can you do it!?”
“Uh, uh, of course,” she whimpered just a tiny bit. “Please, you’re overly rough.”
“Do it and you can be in charge of the forest except for me,” I bargained even as I shook her shoulders before letting go. Grabbing Gungnir, I slammed the butt of my spear into the ground. “And I’m pretty sure I can make that happen.”
“You swear?” Her tone softened as my grip eased up.
“As long as I don’t have to do anything crazy.”
Barky couldn’t take it anymore. “That’s not fair!” She screeched. “I won it fair!”
Lyra’s wooden fists were balled up, thorns sprouting from her knuckles while vines wrapped around her to form ropy body armor. Thickening layers of bark covered the impact points of her body, her knees and elbows, while a literal crown of giant thorns sprouted from her head.
“How?” I asked, not really believing that I actually had to ask these kinds of questions. “How did you win? What kind of contest do trees have? Grow bigger? Grow bigger fruit? Let’s see who has the widest leaf? Come ooonnnn . . .” I mocked.
Meliad’s sultry voice provided a lovely contrast to my own derision. “Simple, great sorcerer. She was able to plant her tree the closest. It’s hard for us to stand the overwhelming raw energy of the Great Mother. We would be subsumed if we got too close. That is why we guard the forest and the surrounding glade instead of growing next to her.”
“So, do I have to replant you or get rid of her?” I asked with a shrug. “Cause, I’m totally willing to do either, maybe both.”
Meliad pointed at the diamond in my hand. “You could give me that.”
My eyes narrowed. “What now?” I spent way too many hours making two of these ridiculous diamonds and I wasn’t gonna give it up or my portable golem plan without a damn good alternative that would seriously benefit me. Especially since I had put a bunch of work into these little things based on a hunch. “Why, what would it do for you exactly? And how would it help me?”
“I could show you,” she started, to which I instantly closed her mouth with nature sorcery.
“Or you could fucking tell me. I like my plan better.”
Releasing her from my magical grip, I let her speak. I kept reminding myself that these things, these creatures, they aren’t human. They are not even close, which means that bargaining with them is fraught with peril as they do not think like us. And I couldn’t let my guard down, which is why I had to make sure that they knew, that they all knew, that I was the big dog round here.
“Answer, him!” Everest roared from over top of me. He lifted one giant armed and pointed his three-fingered hand directly at Meliad’s forehead.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Meliad’s eyes went wide as she cowered at my feet.
She explained as fast as she possibly could. “I could bind a minor earth elemental to myself and then move my tree on my own a bit closer to the Mother. Bonding with a minor earth elemental would change my very nature allowing me to manipulate not only the nature around us but the dirt beneath my roots. An embedded treant and an Earthen Duke would be able to fend off a dragon if we had to!”
Pinching my nose, I took a second to take a deep breath. It really hurts how much my ignorance is getting in the way.
“Treant?” I repeated, confusion mixing with a bit of self-directed exasperation. “The hell is that?”
“Like, me,” Everest answered sagely. “But, a, tree. She, would, be, more.”
Great. Less than helpful answers.
“Your turn Leafy, think you can maybe expound on that?” My gritted teeth with my fake smile was not at all comforting.
Meliad pointed at Lyra who hadn’t moved but was shaking in anger. “I will be able to do all of that but can coat myself with earth in any way I want.” She then pointed at Everest. “And, I’ll be able to grow that big if needed and have more power than he.”
I knelt down in front of her and looked her straight in the eye. “So, if I give you this . . .” I said, holding the diamond marble in front of my nose as our faces were nine inches apart, “Then you have to swear that you will protect this forest, this glade, the Great Mother, and by that I mean that giant tree, and obey me. You will also have to let people that I designate come and go as I direct you. Can you work with that? Nod once.”
As her head bobbed once, I used my nature and Consciousness Sorcery to lay her soul bare directly in front of me as I dove into the wide open glade of her spirit. There were more memories in the condensed snapshot I experienced of her life than I had ever dreamed. To be fair, most of the cascading memory flows were simply enjoying the simple pleasures of a nice sunny day or a refreshing rain in the summer, but the sheer volume of her memories was heavy.
This woman had been alive for a very long time.
After determining that she meant her words in word and in spirit, I pulled my mind out of the ocean’s worth of memories. My Nature Sorcery jealously clung to the dreams of relaxing underneath the warm sun as I shook my head, trying to bring reality back to the forefront. With my Consciousness Sorcery, I boxed up the sticky parts of ‘not-me’ and sent them to the back in a folder titled ‘Not my actual memories’.
“Here.” I said, handing the exquisitely detailed runed marble to Meliad. “Don’t misuse this and we won’t have a problem. And you!” Turning around to face Lyra, I pointed at her with one finger that was glowing with a bomb’s worth of mana. “Either get off your high horse or fuck off. Meliad is in charge now after me and Everest over there.”
I held Lyra’s gaze until she looked away, her thorns and armor shrinking back inside of her. Her lithe form melted into the forest. Turning around and looking down, I saw that Meliad was now a large oblong ball of wood, her form still visible but melted together as if she had grown that way. Even the gaps between her limbs were filled in with green wood. What’s with magic creatures and cocoons?
Poking her prone form with my toe, I cleared my throat, “Ah hem!”
“Give, her, time. I, will, guard.”
“Thanks Everest. Ok, you’re in charge while I’m gone. You’re the big kahuna.” I explained. My Earth Sorcery let me know that he could be trusted. Earth elementals are basic, very powerful, very simple, and honest to a fault. Lying is too much of a human characteristic for them.
I continued on, conjuring tiny dirt replicas and banishing them as I spoke. “The young kid named Johnny, about yea high with the powers of a cultivator, he can come and go. The big ass woman, Reeanth, her too. She’s about a foot and a half taller than me and she rarely takes off her silver nano-tech armor. Also, she has sorcery that centers around her eyes if you need something to verify her with. Got all that?”
A simple nod followed my explanation.
“Good. Now I got more shit to do.” I said as I walked away from where Everest knelt over Meliad. Ideas raced through my head, taking my mind off the insanity that was my life.
*******
The next couple of days went by in a whirlwind as my self imposed limit of a week helping Johnny train came closer whether I liked it or not. The good news was that the pressure forced me to be incredibly productive. I used my time to outfit Reeanth and Johnny with badass weaponry, but I was extra proud of Reeanth’s new helmet specifically. Co-opting a bit of her nano-tech with her help and some time consuming rune work, I was able to make probably the second most complex weapon I’d ever come up with so far. The helmet was outfitted with a partial face mask made out of thin, clear diamond that would absorb the latent/unused eye-based sorcery emitted from Reeanth’s eyes and store it. Then, at Reeanth’s mental command, the focal diamond at the top of her had several options. It could display whatever she was thinking like a mentally controlled hologram, project a force field, or even serve as a short ranged laser.
Johnny received a neat set of plate armor that was packed full of kinetic feedback runes cunningly worked into the metal. As he moved or was hit by anything that discharged kinetic force, his armor was designed to store that excess energy so that it could be used in a multitude of useful ways. My personal favorite effect was the bouncing effect that allowed him to move as if his hundred pounds of armor was much lighter than it actually was.
The bottom edges of the rune circles on his boots could store the downward kinetic motion of his feet hitting the ground and use that to power the upward movement by transferring the energy to the top of the plate as if given extra momentum. The stored power could also be discharged at various points at will across his body such as his gloves or boots if he wanted to make a punch or kick containing the force of a car crash. The most difficult part was making it so that Johnny could control the armor’s functions through his mind, and that tuning work took an entire day on its own even with my consciousness Sorcery.
In order to prep for anything and everything for the upcoming trip, my barely-controlled paranoia badgered me until I got around to making several general survival tools that could be incredibly useful. The first survival item set I created was a personalized healing sapphire for each of us. The healing gem held a flesh sorcery based snapshot of each person’s specific body, and if held while injured, the stored energy of the gem would follow the “fixed” framework and correct whatever injury was there. Basically, it ‘returned’ their body to that snapshot of when they were healthy. I then added a function of simple accelerated healing that would be great outside of combat for overnight healing but that function wouldn’t be fast enough if we were up against a wall.
My biggest issue with that particular healing setup is that the first enchantment came with an inherent flaw. It made it so that if Johnny worked out and then used the first function of the healing, all of the microtears associated with good muscle growth would be reversed because the new growth wasn’t included in the initial ‘screenshot’. And, the overall body snapshot would have to be constantly updated to make sure that muscle growth wouldn’t be reversed. Not my best work but it’ll serve in a pinch.
Small flash-bang grenades were also produced by the bucket but this time they were made out of small squares of wood with inscribed runes on both sides. I went with a childlike drawing of a Looney Toons bomb for the rune, something quick and easy and it would work just fine with a bit of stored mana. The backside had a small etching of a classic battery to store the required mana.
Overall, the wood squares would be much more efficient as they would be thrown by the fistful. Them being lighter than my original idea of flash-bang pebbles meant they couldn’t be thrown as far but a handful of smaller grenades would work even better than one big flash.
My most innovative work was actually not even item related. With the consent of my companions, I used flesh sorcery to temporarily darken the skin on the tops of their heads to fashion melanin tattoos. Their hair covered up the makeshift runic formations so that nobody would be able to tell that they had magically grown arcane tattoos.
“What’s this for again?” Johnny asked, poking at his scalp. “It feels kinda weird, like you’re gonna go all mind control on us when we ain’t lookin.”
“Damn it Johnny, we’ve been over this a bunch of times!” I snapped, completely done with this kid as this was the fifth time I’d had to explain it. “It’s an anti-mind control runic tattoo. It’s to protect you from that shit, not to do it to you. The center rune is the one for self, and it is inside the rune of defense that is woven in with the rune of serenity. I got one, Reeanth has one, I’ve even put one on Spot, although I pity the person that tries to control him.”
Johnny’s brown eyes squinted at me as he chewed on that over-repeated thought for a second.
“So, what you’re tellin me, you ain’t trying to mess with my brain?”
“Johnny . .” My voice getting softer as my patience ran out. “I don’t need your brain. I need your help. Why would I mind control someone I am helping? Trust me, the help I am giving you is priceless. The help you’re giving me is personal.”
He took this opportunity to quickly change track. “So if you can fake tattoo up some anti-mind voodoo, can’t you do the same thing to like, muscles and shit? Maybe draw me up some magic powers?”
Full stop. Holy shit. From the mouth of babes, and apparently idiots and all that jazz.
Runes. One way of describing them is that runes are physical drawings or etchings that capture a screenshot of time, the frozen essence of a fragment of magic. They are not necessarily as set in stone as the English alphabet, but rather they are guided by intent, or that’s true as far as I’ve been able to figure out. The more my mind believes that the rune resembles what I think it should accomplish, the more effective it is.
For instance, using a circle to seal runes in one section to me allows for a border for containment or sealing, while somehow weaving runes together combines their effect the way combined letters make a word and combined words make a sentence. What I don’t know is how it will affect their use if other people are using it themselves.
But Johnny’s barely intelligible speech kicked off a pebble in my mind resulting in an avalanche of ideas that I didn’t have nearly enough time to work through. The simplest of these is runic tattoos, but that’s just the beginning. I already started that project, technically, but hadn’t fully thought through the ramifications. If I could make a runic tattoo on someone’s skull to prevent mental tampering, then why couldn’t I do something crazy awesome with it? Why not test out inscribing a rune of fire on someone’s hand so they can use a ‘fiery punch’?
The first rebuttal that my mind supplied for me is that it might be incredibly painful. If someone had a rune of fire inscribed on their hand, and they tried to use it, it might set their hand on fire. It doesn’t necessarily make them fireproof, or does it? My brain ran through possible scenarios, keeping some thoughts and discarding more and more with rapid speed.
I closed my eyes to focus on my racing mind.
[Maybe these runes would work on clothing, and then there has to be ways to make the runes themselves even more powerful. I mean, using flesh sorcery to darken someone’s skin into the shape of a rune was child’s play for my abilities, but what if I actually made my own ink and planned out a beautiful rune set and then painstakingly etched it on someone’s skin while imbuing that with mana? Would it work better then? What if the individual is not actually able to use magic, what then?]
All of these questions and more sprinted through my head as the deadline for our trip loomed over my head like an avenging storm ready to unleash all hell. But what if?
[Is a conscious mind with the ability to intelligently think required for runes to operate? Could I tattoo a freaking deer and turn it into an indestructible idiot herbivore, or would it simply be a useless feature?] I pondered my wayward thoughts even as more ideas sprang to the fore. The biggest issue I face with my amazing abilities is that even I don’t know what I’m truly capable of. I need to put at least ten years aside to flesh out what my actual capabilities are and then another twenty years of dedicated experimentation to find the limits.
Every time I learn something new, it’s like I discovered a whole new science with its own fields of study. The only reason I’m not going insane from curiosity is that I know that I can reverse old age on myself, which theoretically gives me a semblance of immortality. I could literally be one of the most powerful semi-mortals in the universe if I kept this up. But do I have enough time right now?
Speaking of time, the answer to that is no. I had to get my shit together. My little brother is somewhere in Florida and it was killing me to have no freaking clue what’s going on down there. For all I know, he could be hurt or halfway dead and giving myself a week to get ready was more than enough.
********
2,374 A.R (After the Ripple) - (4,394 A.D.) - Distant Future
My trophy room took up my entire basement. The wonderful part about using Flesh Sorcery to live far longer than I reasonably should is that my projects can be as long and as labor intensive as I want. Who cares if my goals are lofty? Who gives a flying goblin’s ass if it’s supposedly impossible?
Not me. Fuck’em. Do what I want.
Which is why I took a few years and completely reshaped the landscape underneath the local Yggdrasil splinter to be a mountain. That’s right. Ye old shite towne of Fredericksburg went from being a flat piece of historic shit to a goddamn mountain hollowed out enough to encompass Earth’s largest indoor weapon’s testing range AND a trophy room. Pain in the ass but totally worth it.
Bowling rooms are underrated and so are theater rooms when you can just project memories directly into someone’s head. Nevermind the fact that most heads blow up cause they can’t handle the magic. But I digress.
A black amorphous crystal hung from chains of cold-wrought platinum. I forced myself to gaze at the seething mass of condensed evil as it churned over and over, endlessly dripping bits of slimy corruption that landed on a wide funnel carved from Primordial Ice. The liquid flakes steamed when they hit the True Ice and sizzled and screamed as they fell into an open pit, or more accurately, a never closing one-way portal to the darkest and hottest pit I could find in the Plane of Elemental Fire.
Greasy. Cold. Nasty. By all accounts, who would have ever conceived that this is why Hermes warned me to eradicate the goblins when I first met him. I mean, I tried. Little buggers spread worse than locusts hopped up on cocaine and PCP. It would have been far worse if I didn’t set Gungnir on his own slave beast fueled pogrom in the beginning. At least Kraken picked up the pieces for that too. And it’s only because I let them get away with their shenanigans for a few hundred years.
I grinned as each droplet of oily foulness shrieked as they fell. This beautiful, awful, glorious setup was contained within several elaborate ritual circles guaranteeing that no condensed evil could escape. This was just one of my trophies. I found this thing buried somewhere in a glacier in the North Pole. It was the only remnant I had, evidence, of goblins and the Hungry Ones working together. I didn’t know it at the time, but this poisonous chunk of aetheric radiation is one of the few things that can make goblins spontaneously appear in the vicinity. The corruption pools in low areas, poisoning everything nearby and then when it's deep enough and enough organic material is consumed, they come alive.
I turned to look at other trophies set into the walls of my under-mountain cavern. One of Jormungar’s youngest spawn, Nefflgar the Vile, his skeleton wrapped almost entirely around the entire perimeter of the cavern. His fangs hung from the ceiling providing an endless supply of red light. His ribs made for an excellent source of material for my combat staves.
The largest blood slime I’d ever encountered swirled in a massive crystalline jar that I’d shaped into a lava lamp. Damn Aelves set that bastard on me half a millenia ago. Luck and trickery were the only reasons I lived against that thing. It eats magic the way normal dogs snap up scraps that hit the ground when you’re not looking. Now it reflected the light from Nefflgar’s fangs and served as a fantastic keepsake to my ego.
Painful bastard. Still not as bad as my own damn memories.
Thankfully, Illium hated this cavern. Memory crystal, come to papa.