Five of my young water elementals were put on border duty in the forest as the rain softly fell and the rest were all hunkered down in the clearing to charge up their extra stores of power and wait for my signal. I had done an incredible amount of preparation for the next leg of my journey; pulling out a thin plate of slate, I set that down on an inactive golem’s head right in front of me.
[You don’t need a checklist, you have me!] Kraken said from inside Gungnir. Popping out, he flew around and inspected all of the sitting golems. [Tell me why you’re doing it this particular way again? Why do you need a whole base instead of just a jump point?]
I sighed. You would think that a spirit that had access to all of my memories would be able to put it all together without me but I guess spirits aren’t perfect either. “Ok, what is island hopping and why did it suck for the United States Marines in World War II?”
A blank look was all I got.
“Good grief Kraken, ok. The question of, ‘what will we do if we lose’, is a valid question. So what I’m doing is taking the two-fold strategy of the military when we, America, fought Japan and folding it into one. I’m going to be an island hopping nuker.”
The blank look continued.
“Dude, the main base is right here!” I said, pointing all around us. “And it’s guarded by Everest and Meliad, whenever she wakes up, and a bunch of water and earth elementals that have been infused with Nephilim matter. The second base will be a freaking sunstone castle in the middle of the DESERT! See where I’m going with this?”
I scratched my head as Kraken didn’t move one ethereal muscle, looking at me as if I was nuts, which I’m not, well, not completely nuts. “And the final piece of the chain of ‘islands’ is the ice castle plan infused with holy water made from Nephilim. And to support it all is the energy pipeline of mana and sunlight straight from the desert. And I’ll have another army of elementals and of course I can’t forget about Spot.”
“So what’s the ‘nuking’ part?” Kraken asked, finally joining the conversation.
“The nuking part is the very makeup of the bases.” I said, cracking my knuckles. “If I lose my fight up in the cold, I can retreat to the ice castle, which is basically a defensive nuke. And if I lose there, then I can portal to the desert and collapse the ice castle while destroying that World Tree fragment. And if I somehow get followed to the desert, which is the worst place for the undead to fight, then I can make them suffer for every inch they take and then retreat to where all my other big cannons are, Everest and Meliad. See, I’m not the Marines in this scenario, I’m Japan, except I’m fighting offensively. The bases are the ‘islands’ and the fortresses themselves are defensive nukes.”
Shaking his watery head at me, Kraken rolled his big eye. “I knew it. You are crazy. But do you have all the things on your list? Got the Yggdrasil quick-growth seeds, the 3D-Conjurer machine, the copies of the crystal memory plates, and the bits of an angel’s bastard?”
Grinning at finally being in a place to get started, I rubbed my hands together with glee. “Yup.” Feeling the restlessness due to all of the excitement, I hopped on my hoverboard to go find Spot. The furry eating machine wasn’t too far. Our mental link let me know which direction he was in and I wished I hadn’t really gotten to see what I saw.
Hopping off my hoverboard, I stood in front of the wide mouth of a cave, one big enough to back a plane into. All kinds of weird growls and excited howls were coming out of it. Two much bigger than normal wolves who looked like they were supposed to be standing guard were lying at the sides of the cave mouth, sheepish looks on their faces.
“So weird how they can have such human expressions.” Kraken commented.
They didn’t even look at me, deliberately turning their heads away as I took careful steps towards the dark entrance of the cave, Gungnir out and glowing menacingly, my gear fully powered up with a mana shield covering every inch of me. It only took me a second to assess that I wasn’t in any danger here so I extended my senses into the cave.
Sex.
My dog was having sex, rough fucking with a she-wolf big enough to take on a tank and win. And the worst part was, I wasn’t using my eyes to view the cave but my magical senses, which means the damn image was burned into my brain.
“FUCK! DUDE! WHY!” I screamed, quickly shutting down my magical senses and turning around, completely understanding where the other wolves were coming from. They were the animal version of putting a sock on the doorknob, but wolves don’t have socks. Angrily composing a mental message in my head, I blasted it down our link and took off on the hoverboard. “Damn, gross,” I gagged. “Human sex is great, beautiful even, but that, that’s just wrong.”
Kraken chimed in. [What did you expect? You put dragon in him, and a dragon’s reproductive drive is not a small instinct to contend with. They either eat anything that moves or they fuck anything that moves. Just wait till you visit the Dragoon villages in the spring on Tythus III. It makes your Valentine’s Day look like a boring day at the office.]
“Stop it!”
[Just wait till you see the shenanigans all the fuckers get into at the Multiverse Magic Academy! You have to visit when you get the chance, it’s like your West Virginia University parties and takes up whole streets, but bigger!]
*****
The next morning -
Yggdrasil’s main root on this planet was for all intents and purposes of the layman beholding it, a tree trunk, a gigantic tree trunk that was quickly becoming a New York skyscraper in size. The fact that a multi-dimensional tree holding the universe together isn’t pure crap still boggles my mind but here it stands, gently pulsating powerful green ripples of pure life and mana as steady as the ocean’s waves.
Raw power saturating the very dirt and air of this area makes it nearly impossible for most things to even survive here, with me being the freaky exception. As my combination of sorceries allows me to survive in this zone of extremely dense mana-pressure, it’s probably going to feel odd to be somewhere else for a while. Staring at the exalted woody prison for my woman, I ran through my mental checklist over and over, procrastinating on leaving as I was still afraid of leaving this area unprotected by me personally even though I knew that this was probably the safest place in the world at any given time.
[For a badass sorcerer, you are a complete chicken. Nut up and jump, pansy.] Again, the stupid spirit was right but all I wanted to do at that moment was double-check my preparations again and again. Peering into the storage space inside of Gungnir, I checked on the most precious cargo, the six Yggdrasil seeds I’d crafted. This time, I engineered a new design, something meant to be a bit more adaptable than normal as I’d be traveling to incredibly different environments and didn’t want to screw it up.
“Easy day, easy day,” I whispered to myself. “Little road trip with my dog, that’s all it is.” Taking a deep breath, I reached over and scratched Spot’s head. Standing at a normal height for a dog right now, he wagged his tail and bumped me, vibrating with excitement. My other hand rose up to touch the rough bark of Yggdrasil, brushing past the sheathed knife form of Gungnir at my belt. The presence of my weapon filled me with confidence, the simple fact that it was there put my mind at ease.
It was the motion of a hunter cleaning a favorite gun, a lumberjack sharpening his ax or the relationship between tool and craftsman. I’ve read in books where people joked, ‘what’s a wizard without his staff’, but seriously, I get where they’re coming from. What’s a freaking gun without bullets or a tattoo artist without ink?
[The mental act of contemplation isn’t the physical act of jumping! Scoot!]
I scooted. Just a hint of irritation pushed my will forward and into the World Tree, the blindingly powerful magic of the primal scaffold of the universe sucked me and everything near me into it and spit me out in the general direction I wanted as I barely managed to wrap me and Spot up in a cocoon of power. It happened so fast but for one sheer split second I was able to use my Consciousness Sorcery to guide me where I wanted to go as the place I actually wanted to travel to wasn’t actually available.
Using a mental map that Kraken had put together from my memory of the United States, I knew where the Colorado River was in Arizona, but Yggdrasil wouldn’t send me anywhere that didn’t have enough plant life. It was shunting me towards places I had already been but it didn’t even accept the desert as a viable location. So, the closest place that qualified with dense enough plant life was in California, the land where the redwoods were still king.
The journey lasted ten seconds after the one second of split decision making I managed to force into existence. The redwood that was my magical layover spit me out like a toddler discovering lima beans.
[INCOMING!]
Even as I landed on my face in a disoriented haze, I had enough presence of mind to engage Svalinn’s defensive features that projected a thick shield of solidified mana while covering that initial conjuration with alternating layers of stone and iron ore. High pitched whistles heralded the many impacts that I couldn’t see as my stomach tried to violently revolt. Regaining control over the internal revolution of my guts with my Flesh Sorcery, I threw out my senses to gather information from within my bunker.
[Aelves! Fucking Aelves! Run dipstick! Run!]
Going from chest down on the floor to a tight crouch, I maintained my shields as I gathered power, readying for an explosive exit before I noticed that Spot wasn’t exactly next to me like I thought he was. The ejection from Yggdrasil spat him several yards away from me. A pained howl instantly rearranged my priorities as I brought the non-magical shields down, pulling Gungnir from my belt as it extended into a wizard’s staff.
Standing straight up, my weapon pulsed with silver light as the butt of it sank into the ground, hungrily siphoning mana from the earth as I looked around and saw Spot chasing thin humanoids through the forest. Long, thin arrows stuck out from his skin and scales at various places, Spot’s own flames slowly burning them off as gouts of fire exploded from his maw. At this point, I was still willing to leave, my mouth opening to yell for Spot to stand down so I could talk us out of this when one arrow took him in the eye in a glancing blow.
It was crazy that with the forest of flying arrows that Spot had been shot so few times, but the heat field he was giving off was burning most of them before they actually reached him. There were places on the ground still burning from where his superheated paws hand landed, patches of burning brush and trees clearly marking the erratic path of his chase. In mid-leap, Spot bit three arrows out of the air on his left side when an arrow that would have missed from above glanced downward across his and down his jaw. The light skinned, slant eyed shooter of that arrow exploded into chunks of flesh as five crystal rounds from Gungnir took him in the face and chest.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Two heartbeats of silence followed the sudden gory shower as everyones’ eyes tracked their newest target once they realized that something far deadlier than a dragon dog was in their midst.
“That’s a warning fuckfaces,” I snarled to the unnaturally still attackers, not caring if they actually understood me as Gungnir pulsed softer, a menacing hum beginning to vibrate from its crystal core. “You attacked my dog and half-blinded him! One more arrow and you all die.”
A flurry of words passed between the Aelves, many of them staying in the shadows hidden from my eyes but not from my senses. Spot, at my mental command, calmed the blazing flames covering his body a bit and slowly walked backwards towards me, growling menacingly with each soft step. A soft call sounded, like a horn mixed with a lonely wind racing through the tree. At that, all of the Aelves sharply looked in that direction and ran off, each one faster than most humans could track with the naked eye. Some vanished into the shadows without moving a muscle.
Extending my senses out even further, I made sure that they were gone from the immediate vicinity as I conjured water and dirt to put out the flames. Turning to Spot, I slowly scratched one ear as I numbed his body with Flesh Sorcery and slowly began pulling out the few arrows still stuck in him. Most had already been ejected out by his own magic, his dense musculature helping with the pushing. Pouring healing magic into him to bolster his own flesh magic, I paid special attention to his eye, taking a solid ten minutes to regrow the damaged tissue back to brand new. Once my pet was back to fighting shape, I summoned my hoverboard and headed south east towards my destination, my head on a swivel.
The next two hours of traveling were nerve racking. Every root and tree further than fifteen feet away held the promise of more arrow wielding Aelves. My paranoia not letting me let Spot out of sight as we didn’t know squat about the surrounding area. All of my gear was powered to the max and Kraken was on full alert, ready to fire crystal rounds at any threat but nothing seemed foolish enough to take us on after our initial display of power. Even the forest held a quiet enmity towards us as we raced out of the arboreal kingdom, my dog effortlessly leaping over roots large enough to be suburban houses. Spot’s giant form ate up the mileage at a decent pace so we were able to go around forty miles an hour even though my plan had initially been to fly to Arizona and let Spot just catch up to me.
Constantly checking with Kraken who was acting as my own somewhat accurate GPS, we knew from my memories that my uncle who lived in Arizona near the Colorado River, even though he was probably gone, that that area would be perfect for my base of operations. Now, it wasn’t the hottest or sunniest place on Earth as the Sahara Desert and Death Valley fight for that honor, but where I was heading was still a freaking desert, but a desert with a respectable amount of water there making it an ideal place for a sorcerer of my abilities to set up shop.
Reaching the edge of the redwood forest, I let myself relax just a bit. No attacks stopped us from ‘retreating in a dignified manner’. Thanks to my personal matter-to-mana generator and traveling along the available ley lines as much as possible, I was more than full on energy even as everything was dialed to the max. If anything, I was over-keyed on stress from watching our backs the entire way out.
[We’re safe now, we can fly the rest of the way there,] Kraken said, his mental voice soft even as he also scanned the surrounding area. [Besides, your dog is part freaking dragon, let him run loose a bit. I’m pretty sure no sentient creature calls the desert home.]
I shrugged but sent a mental picture of a giant sandworm as a reply.
[Shai-hulud isn’t real!] Kraken replied, exasperation tingeing his voice. [Besides, the mana levels of this planet aren’t really there yet for some of the bigger monsters, yet. Keep in mind that even though desert planets have worms that big, this isn’t the Sahara which would be the right climate. This desert is mainly dirt and rock, not endless wastes of sand. The most you’ll have to worry about are the animals mutated by magic.]
“Fine,” I grunted aloud, turning to Spot after I scanned the area again with my magic. “All right boy, just meet us there. You can follow our bond, and besides, I have a treat for you when you get there.”
Grinning with a barely evil yet humorous smile, I pulled a stone square cube out of Gungnir and popped it open, waving it under Spot’s nose. The sloshing of the diluted Nephilim solution drew his eyes as he tried to snatch it out of my hand. Sealing it shut and storing it away, I laughed as I hopped back onto my hoverboard and zoomed off. “Don’t take too long!”
Getting up to a good speed took me about fifteen seconds with two pulses of power allowing me to take off as soon as my wings extended, Kraken storing my hoverboard as we took to the sky. The energy gathering runes on the nano-wings instantly began drinking in the heat and relentless sunlight as the near-desert climate of this part of California. With fascination that almost made me fall out of the sky, I was awed as I felt how the climate powered the solar panel and heat-to-mana conversion runes. I was particularly proud of those last runes as they allowed me to stay somewhat cool even in this oppressive heat. They wicked away the overbearing rays of the sun.
[Focus!] I reminded myself, taking better control of my flight in the tricky desert winds. My destination was roughly six hundred miles away as the crow flies which gave me and Kraken some time to commune as that would take us a little over five hours of continuous flight. The climate here was so full of energy thanks to the heat and sunlight that stopping to recharge wouldn’t even be an issue.
[You’re lucky you escaped with your life! Shit, Spot’s lucky that his own goddamn freaky magic managed to burn most of those freaking bolts away. Anything a bit less durable than he would have been skewered! You don’t mess with Aelves in the forest!] Kraken’s admonishment did not go unheeded but he continued with his rant anyway. [You may have Nature Sorcery but so do most of them and they’re way better at it than you!]
The craggy emptiness of America’s desert lay before me, windswept wastes of plain brown and tan dirt mixed with random eroded rock formations. Hardy plant life clung to what bits of shade they could find, their flickering life force calling to my Nature Sorcery, calling for rain, anything in this harsh climate. I flew in wide circles every once in a while as I scanned the area looking for signs of life or anything unusual. Turning my attention back to my familiar, I kept our conversation going mentally so I didn’t have to shout over the wind.
[I thought all sorcerers were gone?]
[The human ones are. They pretty much killed each other and the dragons finished off the rest but the different magical races definitely have their own. Aelves like wind and nature, some water ones are mixed in there. But you know that’s not common right, sorcery? Magic, yes, wizardry and shamanism, oh yeah, but sorcery? No. It’s too hard for humans to get as y’all like to live bundled up in cities or ghettos. You need chaos itself to get sorcery and you don’t find that where everything is ordered.]
My barebones education continued as our destination approached. The shimmering desert air did not fool my magical senses even as the heat waves distorted the view, mirages tricking the human eye even as the river on the horizon spoke to my Water Sorcery, calling me. Around here, the Colorado River was nowhere as big as the other rivers that crisscross the North American continent but it was definitely large enough for my purposes.
I circled the area a few times before landing in a good clear spot about five hundred yards away from the river. I pulled out four solar panels and set them up in the cardinal directions, each at least a hundred yards away from its polar opposite. Then, I walked to the very center of it all and stabbed Gungnir’s speartip deep into the earth.
“Workin on a buildin’!” I sang with an exaggerated southern accent, mentally telling Kraken to get started with our predetermined plan. Pulses of mana poured from me down Gungnir’s haft to the buried crystal blade as I channeled all of my magic and will, allowing Kraken to wield my power in a bigger way than he normally could.
Waves of power bucked through the earth, rippling out and transmuting the dirt twenty yards out into a crystal circle with connecting crystal lines that extended further out to the solar panels. The channeled power unfurled the newer solar panels with their more efficient design. They opened up like flowers and turned towards the sun, reminiscent of sunflowers. The edges of the ‘leaves’ had surface extending runes acting as a powerful magnet for heat and sunlight. Within five minutes, the temperature was almost unbearable as the wash of power blasted back to Gungnir where Kraken caught the wave of solar power and turned it towards our project.
“Workin on buildin! A Holy Ghost buildin! For my Lawd! For my Lawd!”
The churchy hick song of West Virginia left my mouth even as I heard Kraken gear up to tell me ‘not quit my day job’. Pushing another bit of power down Gungnir, we controlled the energy into transmuting an inner circle of dirt around us into a perfect formation of solid diamond with thin lines of copper connecting to the outer crystal circle. The inner circle of the circle we were standing inside of was a new kind of battery, one that I planned on being able to help solidify the foundation required for a root of Yggdrasil.
As Kraken guided the energy into the predetermined model that we wanted, I reviewed again how it would look. With the solar panels situated at the cardinal directions combined with the surface enhancing runes and sun-tracking abilities, not forgetting the heat-to-mana conversion as well, the amount of power that this area could generate would be simply awesome.
It would be set up for multiple stages of function, the inner ritual circle supporting the barebones needs of the fortress but each additional circle would then enhance the functionality. The large outer circle would be the secondary intake of power that could extend out to an even larger circle if I ever decided that more energy was needed. The expanding design would allow for more and more surface area to be covered if I ever felt that we didn’t pull in enough power on a day-to-day basis.
Now, the dirt circle I was kneeling in was actually meant for one of my Yggdrasil seeds, but it would actually be the last part of the entire operation. Pulling out four more solar panels, I placed them at the cardinal directions near me and then rotated them all clockwise forty-five degrees to hit the halfway points between North, South, East, and West. Another pulse of power guided by Kraken moved the solar panels away from the center of the circle till they were about forty yards away. The setup for the inner solar panel ring at a distance of forty yards away gave me a total inner diameter of eighty yards, a bit smaller than the outer ring which had a diameter of one hundred yards, or a radius of fifty yards away from the center.
I avoided the general pentagram formation as most nerds assumed that was related towards a summoning function, and I personally believe only fools truck with demons. I went with the four point diamond formation denoted by the solar panels sealed within a circle of crystal as that shape for a ritual would make it impervious to any kind of invasion. The inner circle was the same design but rotated forty-five degrees. Kraken was still in the process of using my Earth Sorcery to flesh out the design but that design was to be the framework for the foundation of the fortress which was going to be built on top of it.
But before the outer walls of the fort were to go up, the plan required its true purpose, a massively overbuilt series of crystal batteries conjured underneath the base. Just thinking about it made me smile.
My plan for the siege capacitor was birthed way back when I still had a house underneath the roots of Yggdrasil and it helped preserve some of my belongings from when it was attacked by a goddess. This one, this one was designed with a bit more than that in mind. The very nature of the desert area surrounding the fort combined with the efficiency and extended area of the solar panels allows for an incredible amount of daily power intake, and to allow for maximum power storage, a humongous crystal battery seemed to be the correct answer. The last battery was a solid block of crystal that was roughly the size of an old basement boiler, a little shorter than an average man.
This battery that I had planned was more along a combination of modern tech and magic runwork. Overall, the battery design was going to be set up with crystal ‘cells’ covered in thin platinum except for the input and output connections. The connections would be a thick gold cable connecting to another battery of the same design. Each of these batteries were going to be supersized, roughly the size of a common household fridge, and placed end to end with another layer of linked batteries stacked on top of each other. The initial plan was to have a top layer of batteries buried twenty feet deep and the layer of batteries themselves were to be four batteries long and six wide, resulting in each layer having twenty-four batteries. And if God forbid, I could add layer after layer of buried batteries thanks to the cheat that was my Earth and Mana Sorcery. The power to do all of this would not come from me directly, but from the overabundant light and heat provided from the desert environment.
[It’s a great plan for you because you don’t have to do shit,] Kraken complained from inside the partially buried spear. [Oh yeah, give the poor stuck spirit the blueprints while the oh-so-powerful sorcerer gets to play and explore the area, woohoo.]
[Shut up!] I snapped back, trying my best to hide my hint of sadistic joy. There really wasn’t any guilt in having my spirit familiar fill the role of a magical 3-D printer. Our power channeling ritual really wasn’t that complex but it was time consuming, and since Kraken was more than capable of overseeing the management of everything, this gave me the freedom to scout the area and maybe work on any kinds of experimentation inspiration that may strike. Due to the scale of the project, our initial estimate to have everything up and running was about a week, maybe two. I couldn’t go far though as unforeseen issues may pop up.
[Chill for a bit man,] I sent to Kraken, leaning back and taking my hands off of Gungnir. [You don’t need to worry, you’ll be safe in there and I’ll be safe with this baby!] Pulling out my personally altered magitech rifle, I hefted it and rotated the barrel. [Between my batteries, the hoverboard and wings along with this gorgeous gun, I’m good to go!]