While my inner nerd wanted to do a bunch of sight-seeing and exploration, the practical side of me decided to take a nap. Finding a dark room and simply sitting down in a chair wasn’t really doing it for me so I had to use my consciousness and Flesh sorceries at the same time to force me to settle down and conk out for about two hours. Being able to hit the hay at the push of a button would have been considered a super power back before the apocalypse, but my ability was so much better. With my powers, I could condense hours of rejuvenating sleep into a smaller time frame, essentially allowing me to live longer and experience more than anyone else due to being able to cut down on non-productive time. With Kraken functioning as a backup alarm clock, I sat in one of the nanotech comfy chairs and lay down, the entire contraption forming a very snug bed. It felt like I had just closed my eyes when Kraken woke me up.
[Wake the FUCK UP! Yes, it’s been two hours! Yes, this is way too mentally loud for you! And NO! Everything is NOT ok!]
Seeing as all of my questions were answered at the speed of thought by my screaming spirit familiar, I sprang out of the chair-bed with Gungnir in wicked three-sided curved bladed spear form and SAW fully activated with the auto-conjured water arms extending from my back. My magical senses unfurled, taking in the entire room even as no enemies or threats appeared.
“The fuck?” I half whispered, half growled, kicking open the door of my nap room and not believing what my eyes told me. The door to the building was open but plugged up from the outside by a very hairy and yet spiky behind. If I wasn’t mistaken, that was Fuzzy’s butt that I was seeing.
Next to it, Reeanth stood firm holding her mana-maul in both hands, her grip tightening and loosening as if she were constantly adjusting her grip, her eyes darting back and forth. Meanwhile, Johnny stood in the middle of the room carrying what appeared to be an oversized rolled up fur rug underneath one arm as he grinned his classic shit-eating smile.
“Merry Christmas ya filthy animal!” Johnny shouted, gleefully letting go of his makeshift rug of holding, a loud oof sound coming out of it followed by a lot of angry unintelligible yelling. The package did its own version of the worm as Johnny put his boot firmly on it to hold it in place. Looking at Reeanth, Johnny asked, “Can I show him? He didn’t even have to lift a finger! Nobody saw nothin’, I swear!”
The bottom fell out of my stomach even as it filled with a feeling of foreboding unease mixed with excitement. “Did you bring me who I think you brought me?”
“Yup! Don’t take me for a complete dummy. Big Bear told me that you’d knocked out the guards to the city not too long ago which meant this had to get done pronto.” Giving the rug a swift but not too hard kick, he continued. “And since you were having some beauty sleep, I had Miss Stick-Up-Her-Ass be the lookout as I did the easy part so you could do the hard part. Your brother’s a scrapper too, instead of yelling for help he almost pulled a Mike Tyson and took my ear off.”
Muffled words that sounded very similar to ‘fuck you’, ‘lemme out’ and ‘asshole’ coincided with our human and now that Johnny turned his body, I could see a set of larger than average metallic boots sticking out the other side.
“Well, snargle fargle to you too butthead.” Crouching down, I gave my wrapped up brother a solid smack even though I knew he’d barely feel it through the layers of carpet and slabbed Centauri muscle. “Did you take him down all by yourself?” It wasn’t the dumb question that Johnny took it to be. I mean, I knew that my brother has been doing Centauri training and warfare for at least a couple years due to the time distortion even though we’ve only been at this for three-quarters of a year. Besides, I cheat.
“Well,” Johnny said sheepishly. “I might have had a little help. You can meet her when we hightail it outta here.”
“Better tell him now who she is,” Kraken said, popping out of Gungnir. “I can smell it on you and trust me, he won’t like it.”
“Smell what? Ain’t no nose on you!”
“Tell me what?” My face furrowing into a pre-frown as my spirit familiar’s voice hinted that he wasn’t joking.
“It’s not a big deal. Her minions helped me out.”
I didn’t move.
“You know, uh, well, she called them . . . uh . . . revenants.”
“Zombies?!” Memories of me being scared shitless when this whole boondoggle started flooded my mind. My mind raced back to the first Ripple or two messing with reality as some messed up kid raised the dead, planning some very not good things with his newfound power. This was back when I was still dealing with my own modern sense of morality, the idea that killing wasn’t usually the best way forward. Although I did seal off the graveyards within a few miles of my home, I never followed up on that little shit who hurled literal death magic at me. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up even as my focus for the past couple months, preparing to wipe out the Hungry Ones, bristled at the fact that I let someone go who was mildly related to the very thing that I was devoted to getting rid of.
But we have to be clear. I still haven’t seen a ‘Hungry One’ yet. I don’t know if they’re the run of the mill zombies that people think of from the old show ‘Walking Dead’ or if they’re the messed up, super-powered, over the top zombies with all kinds of freaky powers. The crazy goth chick Nicole, her zombies were freaking dinosaurs that she’d reanimated from the Natural Science museum from Phoenix, and the memories that I’d gotten from her companions were too tainted with terror for me to get much information about what necromancers could do. I’m operating in the dark with half-baked assumptions and it may just get me killed.
Relaxing my grip on Gungnir caused the blazing light in the crystal spear-tip to dim as my emotions also came down from their instinctive reaction. Turning to Reeanth, I asked my question in a tone that brooked no funny business. “I already don’t trust whoever she is. Have you met her? And how is messing with dead bodies allowed by anyone in the city? I thought Centauri were all about rules, and there’s definitely gotta be some rules against that madness.”
Reeanth eased up on her mana-maul. “The arts of necromancy are reviled and scorned throughout the cosmos, but not everywhere,” she clarified. “Necromancers can be just as benevolent or wicked as any other magic user. And to answer your question, yes, I’ve met Judy and she’s a fine warrior. Her take on necromancy is a bit odd. Most raise their revenants and use them as cannon fodder while they function as either long range artillery or support. Judy is actually an accomplished warrior who fights in perfect tandem with her minions.”
“And that’s odd because?”
Kraken scoffed. “Because it’s devastatingly effective. Who would suspect that the controller of the horde would be hidden within the horde?” Turning to Reeanth, Kraken asked, “I assume that she goes for quality over quantity?”
Johnny jumped in. “Totally! She has five of them and each one is decked out in layers of bone armor and older Centauri tech. I’ve fought them one at a time and as a group and they kick my ass every time.”
A loud banging on the door interrupted our conversation. Due to my sudden awakening from my nap by Kraken, I was already kitted out and ready for anything. This whole ‘not every situation requiring combat’ mindset was starting to get in the way. Johnny opened the door as six large humanoid figures stalked through, each covered in impossibly thick bone with wicked spikes coming out at the elbows, knees, shoulders, and backs. All but one had glowing red eyes but each carried a kite shield with a sharp point at the bottom in one hand and a big battleax in the other.
“I cannot BELIEVE you talked me into this!” The one without the glowing eyes took off its intimidating helmet, revealing a beautiful buxom blonde. Walking up to Johnny, she attached her ax to her back and poked him in the chest. “You owe me BIG!” Turning to me and then eyeing the struggling form in the rolled up carpet, she stuck her hand out and sweetly said, “Hi, I’m Judy. And you must be the one that’s got everyone up in arms.”
Shaking her hand firmly, I pulled back instantly and let out a little hiss as her magic almost burned me. My own enchanted gloves were barely strong enough to hold back the cloying blackness that reached for me from inside her hand. My fears were right. This kind of magic is anathema to me, my weakness.
“Sorry,” Judy said quickly, her voice showing genuine regret. “They didn’t tell me much about you except how awesome you are.”
Shaking my hand back and forth to get rid of the tingling feeling, I stood up straight and looked her in the eye. “It’s ok. A friend of Johnny’s is a friend of mine.”
A tension I hadn’t noticed left the room as both Reeanth and Johnny let out huge sighs of relief. Both were eyeing me as if I were a bomb about to explode. “What?” I growled. “I got bigger fish to fry than my own insecurities right now.” Grabbing my badly packaged brother, I started dragging him towards the room I had taken a nap in. “Heavy ass chunk. Mom always said you needed to lose some weight.”
“My lord! What do you need us to do?” Reeanth’s question had more sides to consider than what was on the surface. I had many things I needed to do, but very few of which I could actually delegate. The biggest priority wasn’t actually fixing my brother; disabling the gate at the center of the city was the biggest priority, and in such a way that it could be reactivated easily would be the most prudent course of action. Then, fixing my brother would be the next item on my list and then the rest of his soldiers on down the line. Keeping the mind-controlled Centauri from finding out about us and our plans involved us not doing anything to actually attract their attention.
“Reeanth, stay near the door in case anyone comes knocking and divert them if possible. Johnny, sit on my brother and make sure he stays put,” I ordered. “Judy, if you please since I know you don’t answer to me, if you wouldn’t mind being our quick reaction force backup? If anyone busts in, take them down quickly, quietly, and without bloodshed. We’re gonna need to do this with minimal noise and violence if we want a shot at success.”
To her credit, she simply nodded and placed her overly armored goons in strategic places around the room so that they wouldn’t be instantly noticed by incoming traffic. Reaching down, I placed a quick mental whammy on my brother, knocking him out to make it easier on everyone till I got back.
“You got a back door I can use?” I asked. Reeanth pointed at a small hallway in the back. Following the well lit corridor, I touched the blue button on the side of the door, the portal opening up just like a freaking Star Trek door. “Cool!” I muttered as I shut the door and dove into the earth. The direction I wanted to go was even easier to find below ground than above it as the gate gave off an incredible magical signature due to its very nature and the fact that my fucking tree was hooked up to it.
Within two minutes, I was holding Gungnir in staff-form parallel to the main root of this branch of Yggdrasil, the energies of my main magical tool forming a buffer as I delved into the entwining of my tree and what could be described as a parasitical gate. [Whoever did this is a master of not just portal magic, but also runic and nature as well. It’s like the PHD version of you did this.]
[Not helping!] I shot back as Kraken scanned the set with wonder. [I’m trying to work here, not geek out over someone else’s masterpiece.] Following the thread of power up the root and into the trunk of the World Tree, the base of the gate’s platform was melded at the molecular level with the part of the trunk just above the surface of the earth. From what I could tell, that was the conduit for powering the portal as well as forming the symbolic stability necessary to rip holes in space. The upper part of Yggdrasil wrapped up along the structural rib bones making up the sides and then joined at the top formed the necessary shape so living things could physically travel through.
[What you’re looking for is at the tip of the rib bones,] Kraken said, his mental voice sounding very far away. [How do I dumb this down enough? Let’s see. Each one has an identical rune that functions as entangled particles. Activate one and the other mirrors it, completing the ritual circle and opening up the gateway. The runes going down from there then do the heavy lifting and the ones at the bottom on that stone plate are what make up the coordinates.]
[Well, I could either disable the activation runes themselves, which would be a pain in the butt from down here, or I could simply persuade the tree to stop sending power to the gate.]
[Nature Sorcery for the win.] Grumbling at me seeing the simple but most effective solution when he didn’t, Kraken sank back into Gungnir as I gently pushed my power into the tree. Twenty minutes of communing later, this offshoot of Yggdrasil was convinced that ‘a drought’ was upon us and it began cutting off the flow of power to its upper half, directing the flow of mana from the leyline below it into its roots to better weather the rough times ahead.
[At least my way you didn’t have to lie to a tree.]
[I do hate to say it, but my little white lie will only make this branch even stronger. Besides, I have a theory,] I mused as I headed back to fix my brother. [I bet that the overall level of planetary mana is determined by how many Yggdrasil roots there are on the planet, and by how strong the trees themselves are. Think about it, while it pulls power from the leylines underneath it, you can’t tell me that you haven’t noticed how the tree somehow pulls more power from inside of itself than from its surroundings?]
[Duh. It is the World Tree, which means it’s connected to the rest of ITSELF!]
[Forget I said anything.]
Sneaking in through the back door, one of Judy’s zombies almost made me crap myself as it popped out of a side door. It was only through Kraken screaming, “WAIT!” that I didn’t accidentally blast it to kingdom come with Gungnir. The beefed up monstrosity stayed to guard the door as I jogged to my nap room. Ignoring the fact that my personal creep factor was ratcheting up every couple minutes, I got back to my younger yet much larger brother and carefully unrolled him with a bit of help from Johnny.
Kraken deposited the small shard of light based Chaos in my hand which lay on the ground next to me. Using my Flesh Sorcery, I opened up a small cut in my cupped palm and dipped my finger in, swirling it around before I began drawing on his forehead. “Pentagram within a circle to help me focus energy,” I muttered, hoping and praying that my fumbling in the dark would not be pointless. I picked up the Chaos shard in my right hand and held my left hand over it, generously squeezing out blood to give it a nice crimson coat. Placing that down on my brother’s forehead inside the small ritual circle, I healed my hand and banished the excess blood.
Using Earth Sorcery, I covered my brother from the neck down in a thick layer of conjured stone, making sure to put an extra bit banded around his chest and arms so that at no point during this procedure he’d be able to screw around.
[Let’s tilt this a bit more in our favor,] Kraken said from inside Gungnir. [Place the tip of Gungnir over his head and slowly move it down until I tell you to stop.] Pointing the spear downwards with the bladed tip just over the carefully perched crystal, Kraken molded the blade so that it morphed like putty and covered up the miniature ritual as I slowly moved it closer to Andy’s skin. [There, now you can channel through your staff which will serve as a buffer against the parasite in his head]
“Thanks.” I whispered as I closed my eyes, gripping my staff with both hands as I leaned my head against the cold skin of the wooden handle.
[Ok, so this ain’t gonna be easy but I do suggest that you let me do the delicate work. If you supply the sorcery and power while letting Gungnir serve as the focus, I’m confident that I can free his mind,] Kraken explained. [Although the biggest part you have to play is that I cannot use the light sorcery at all, it requires a mortal’s will to be activated and that’s all you. Focus on a cleansing light, the symbol of purification, and do NOT stop focusing on that until I tell you. Without that, none of this will work.]
Trusting my familiar, I let my mind fall into itself as my breathing evened out. He wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t completely right either. I’m not the only one in this fight, Andy can lend his strength too. Fighting this from both angles would let our chances of success skyrocket, the hard part would be reaching it. Taking a few deep breaths, I split my focus, letting one part of my mind focus on what Kraken needed to make this work and the other completely devoted towards flavoring this entire working with the memories and good times I’ve shared with my brother. This couldn’t be an attack on his brain because then he might fight it, ruining our chances of bringing him back to himself. If he could get the message, the overwhelming feeling that his blood was fighting for him, then removing the gnarled roots of the banned Centauri experiment wouldn’t stand a chance.
The little shit, well, big shit now, was tough. When he was younger, I remember us playing out in the snow. Our yard didn’t have a fence back then but the boundary of our yard was marked with trees we’d chopped down with dad and and sectioned off but hadn’t yet split and put away. The snow the night before was every child’s dream, glistening white power that blocked every evil schoolbus allowing us to do what kids do best. The problem with days like today is that there’s always something that can make it go wrong, which is where Andy came in.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I had run inside to use the bathroom real quick, but it’s never really quick when you have to remove eight layers of clothing to do your business and then put it all back on. By the time I had gotten back outside, my little brother had fallen off the logs that were slicked over with ice and broken his arm. But because he didn’t want to ruin the snow day, the rascal had gotten back up on the logs and was still playing even as his right arm was clearly broken at a thirty degree angle. The rest of the day was spent at the hospital with him crying, not because of the pain, but because he thought that he’d ruined the entire snow day. Even back then he was tough, and now, now I just needed that toughness one more time.
Mental visualization is key for working magic, as it is your perceptions that shape your reality allowing your will to actually warp the malleable fabric of reality itself. Picturing in your head what you want isn’t good enough though as the form without substance effects no change. My ability to manipulate water does me no good unless I can visualize and feel the water doing what I want. Without the will to shape what you see, all of the power in the world will do you no good. But all of that is easy to grasp when you’re working with something physical as it’s easy to imagine water. Everyone knows what that is and what it can do, for the most part. What I’m trying to do now, now that opens up a whole can of worms.
Mental magic works on the plane of thought and will, where what you picture IS reality. It’s a fundamentally different form of wielding power. My soul-tree is literally and figuratively a soul-tree because it is what I picture, what I believe it to be. The physical manifestations of my combined powers inside of my head are required though because I’m human, and humans believe what we see. Which makes what I’m doing the hardest thing that I could be doing as my shaping of reality inside of my brother’s brain is clashing with the reality that he’s made inside of his brain.
I, personally, view the mind-reaper inside of my brother’s brain in a negative light because duh, it’s not a good thing. The silver cube of nanite magitech that was in the deceased Colonel Casparai’s head was the base of what I was seeing in my brother’s head, but due to its inimical nature, my own perceptions allowed me to see its true form.
The glistening metallic unthinking creature was a horrific mixture of an angry octopus crushing a crab mixed with a many-legged spiny centipede clicking along. The spine of its processors lay on top of Andy’s brain stem while its neurotransmitter legs hooked in all along the sides of the spine and up into various nodes of his gray and white matter. My brother, on the other hand, viewed it as a benign cybernetic enhancement to his brain allowing him to properly facilitate the use of his abilities. But of course he did since the damn thing was adjusting his thoughts at the speed of thought.
[So this is either going to be really slow or really fast huh?] Kraken murmured as we both scanned the writhing infestation.
[Yup.] I agreed. [Without the Chaos stone, we’d be looking at months of decoding and dissecting his brain to pry out each and every tendril of that hideous monstrosity. With it, we just might be able to cleanse it, purge the bad programming and allow us to rework it so it’s actually under Andy’s control.]
[Yes, that’s what I said. Not in so many words but yes.] Kraken grumbled, my own nerves making me go over what we’ve already discussed just to get me used to the idea.
Gritting my teeth, I knuckled down and pushed my will down through Gungnir, focusing my thoughts and power into the reformed crystal that was covering the blood marked ritual. All I had to do was focus my will and power and let Kraken do the hard stuff. [Breathe in, breathe out.] My focus lasered in on elements of cleansing, healing, restoration, purity; basically, anything that could bleachbit the shit out of the implanted mind-fuckery.
Total power storage calculated to be insufficient . . . Checking alternative reserves . . . Also insufficient . . .Sufficient reserves of sub-molecular particulates detected below . . . Portable Leyline Siphon Protocol activated . . . Extending feeding staves now . . . Overall stability of the connection confirmed . . . feeding
Manipulating the conductive willow wands that I had put in my boots a while ago, SAW formed a metallic covering over them and speared them into the earth, making the flowing power of the city available to me as I opened up my own stores of power so that they were available to Kraken as needed. A sharp yank on my gathered power was all I needed to feel as I instinctively drew on the established connection. With SAW providing the initial connection in place of Gungnir as it had another job at the moment, the flow of power traveled up through the willow wands to the feeding channels up the sides and backs of my legs, up the runic channels under my armor and swirling down my arm into Gungnir.
It felt weird. Magic as I’ve been using it comes from the soul and is then directed out from the body into the world or the other method comes directly from the area around me that my aura or soul has a grip on. Like a wizard generating a fireball, the fireball spell is built outside of his hand and the power, the mana comes from his body to feed the spell hovering several inches or so above his body. But that area above his hand is still within his control due to the mana being wielded.
What I was doing was a bit different though as I usually channel my power through my focus items or enchantments, giving me a depth of power or control that few have at my level of experience. SAW was doing all the channeling, all the directing of the power just outside of me, freeing me from the mental workout of channeling it through my body itself. My mind started to wander as so many applications of this exercise popped into my head. A quick mental smack from Kraken set me back to rights.
[Focus. I’m almost done, and that suit of yours is awesome. That thing just cut the amount of stored Chaos required to fix your brother in half because of the power link . . . . aaand done!]
Opening my eyes, I gingerly pulled Gungnir off of Andy’s head, the lines of blood perfectly burned into his forehead. With a wave of my hand, I healed the flesh as I blinked away the sudden presence of tears threatening to spill down my face. The heavy feeling in my chest was worse than the burning in my eyes. I barely felt anything fighting the new denizens of the world but knowing that my own brother was one misstep away from being a freaking vegetable tugged on my heart, and it HURT.
Not trusting my voice at the moment, I mentally communicated with Kraken. [Tell me he’s good, please, for the love of all that is good, tell me my brother is ok?!]
Waves of confident happiness and comfort flowed down the link. [It’s a bit too soon to tell, but he should be fine,] Kraken said. [I put him under a localized stasis spell which kept him and the mind-reaper unaware, and then pulled it back slowly from the outside in, using the mana filtered by light-based Chaos to burn out the source code. The stone focused the mana in a particular frequency, sort of like how a lens will focus sunlight. All that’s left to do is to figure out what next?]
[Explain.]
[Well, aside from making him irresistibly an asshole and a stooge for the Centauri, the parasite did do a lot of essential magical functions,] he explained. [Proper mana channeling and control was governed by the mind-reaper, muscle, bone, and nerve enhancements were controlled by the mind-reaper, the list goes on. We can either let him learn on his own, which he'll be a bit defenseless until his mind catches up to his body and powers, or, we can put a basic GUI in his brain. Hell, we could even copy a base version of SAW and stick it in there. It would let your brother have the basic functions that he could customize as well as having an A.I. assistant in his brain to handle extra spells or background location monitoring.]
[My brother would have the nanite version of Mind Sorcery then, right?]
Kraken’s light chuckle gave me the answer I was hoping for. With his eyelids curving in his version of a smile, he replied, [Yeah, technically, your brother, given some time to figure it out, could be an epic wizard down the road. That processor would help him use the parts of his brain that humans don’t utilize very well, help him break down spell components and make new ones on the fly. Remember, wizards aren’t sorcerers, but they’re still not pushovers. In fact, given enough time, planning, and preparation, wizards can punch well above their weight class.]
Just because I had to know, I pulled Kraken into my mindspace just for a bit of extra time. “How does that work again? I know sorcerers are more powerful than wizards, that’s why they tend to hunt down or bargain for sorcery.’
“Yes, you’re not wrong about the latter part,” Kraken said, rolling his eye as he answered my question in lecturer mode. “But wizards are different. Sorcerers use their will and sorcery, which is its cheat affinity for an element, to work raw magic. Wizards have to build their spells. A fire sorcerer just flings fireballs like it’s nothing as his magic does all the work for him. A fire wizard, on the other hand, builds his spells bit by bit, then memorizes that combo, and then he uses it. A wizard’s power also grows more over time, which is why all of them tend to be obsessed with any kind of life extension magic. They turn to sorcery down the road to increase their affinity or power over a particular element or when their own research and spell-building hits a plateau.”
“Sounds like a scaling ability, the smarter you are and the longer you can hide away equals the amount of power you’ll eventually get.”
“True. Wizards do have their weaknesses though. Generally, their bodies are weak and combat experience is hard and dangerous to get. It’s why most sorcerers die young; they let the rush of power go to their head. Wizards value caution above all, with practice, preparation, and proficiency being the three legs propping it up.”
Mulling it over, I drew the parallels in my head. “What if a multi-faceted sorcerer like myself teamed up with a combat wizard, a cultivator, and a unit-centric necromancer? It’s a beautiful kind of symmetry for a team, right? I can heal, throw up walls, and make epic gear while still being able to dish out all kinds of damage. Andy is a Centauri combat wizard with an A.I. implant that will eventually help him out to epic stages of power, and Reeanth could be a goddamn tank or fighter duo with Johnny! And if we add Spot and Fuzzy to the mix, then we’d have ‘the big guns’ too!”
“Get your head outta the clouds!” Kraken admonished. “You have other worries that really should have your attention.”
“Fuck!” Returning to myself, I noted with Mental Sorcery that only ten actual seconds had elapsed. “Sweet!”
Mentally communicating again with Kraken for a second, I ordered him to make a basic A.I. template for Andy with a killswitch so Andy would be able to boot it out of his head at any point in time.
[Already done.] Kraken chuffed. [It’s been done since about a day you came up with the plan to fix your brother. Your subconscious is teeming with all kinds of nonsense but there are definitely some diamonds in the rough floatin’ around. Just tap his head with Gungnir and I’ll stick it in.]
Obliging my familiar, I felt a small packet of luminescent power gently seep from the crystal blade into the now cleansed mind-reaper. The leg/tendrils that connected to his brain from its main body retracted into themselves until only the main body of it was left, sitting dimly on his brain stem.
[Don’t worry, it won’t activate until he puts some mana into it and it comes with a user guide, thanks to yours truly!] Kraken chuckled to himself and then stopped. “Oh, and if we can tap into some not very well secured databases in the main building, we can also pick up spell and grimoire schematics while we’re at it. And uh, side note; I forgot one small detail. He probably won’t wake up for at least a day.]
That was too much information going too many directions for me to make a perfect plan. We don’t have a day. We have about four more hours and the clock is a’tickin’. Quickly dragging Andy closer to the other side of the room where the bed was, I had to enhance my strength a bit just to lug his big ass up on the high rise bed. With a flick of will, I called Gungnir back to my hand in knife form where I stuck it in my belt as I confidently started to walk out of the room.
“Is he gonna be ok?” Johnny’s question almost made me shit myself as I had forgotten he was there. A couple months ago, he wouldn’t have been able to shut up and now he can half vanish into shadow. Turning to see his face, his eyes still wide open with wonder at the magic working, I kinda wished I got to see what it looked like from the outside.
“Yeah man, he’s good.” I answered, a small tired smile showing that I was content with what I’d done. “He’ll wake up in about a day or so and then we can work on some of his squadmates.”
[Quick interruption here boss, but there’s only enough juice left in that stone to fix about three more people. Or, you could just give him the rest of it.] At this point, Kraken’s mental voice was almost directed towards himself. [It’s not enough for a full blown power upgrade but he is a wizard, so maybe it would be enough for a sorcery seed.]
[A what?] I shot back.
[Well, a seed of sorcery, just like I said. Think of your brother as a mana rich pot of soil, and the stone, or sorcery seed, as an actual seed for a tree. You have a full-grown soul-tree, but your brother could start at the beginning and grow his. Plant the seed and let his powers manifest over time. It may take years for it to become apparent but as a wizard, he’ll probably find out later that maybe his healing or laser or purification spells are supercharged, growing over time so that he could be a sorcerer of pure light. Not a bad way to go.]
Whipping around, I ran the two steps back to Andy and used Gungnir in knife-form to cut through the layers of his armor like butter. After telling Johnny not to worry, I stood over Andy for a bit more work. Agonizing over where to start as perfect placement mattered just as much as guidance, Kraken made it simple for me.
Like a coach giving advice quickly and quietly to the star player at halftime, Kraken said, [Putting the seed of power in his brain would make his future abilities more sight based like Reeanth’s, but if you put it in his chest near his sternum or heart, it might give him all kinds of enhancements like never ending energy as if he had a mini-sun inside of him for power. Or if you decide to stick it in his bones, then his marrow might be affected so that disease would never ever be an issue and healing might be his best ability.]
Too many options for me to decide off the cuff.
Continuing with his advice, my familiar’s voice picked up speed. [I say stick it behind his sternum, right in that little pocket between his heart and all those other organs. Don’t stick the stone itself in! Just the damn power! Sheesh, what kind of a Flesh Sorcerer are you?!]
Gritting my teeth, I carefully maneuvered the implanted mass of power, a seed of Chaotic light, right in the tiny gap between the organs. Since the Centauri are much bigger than normal humans, there was actually more space to work with than if I was trying to do it to myself or a normal human. The absolute best part of this operation was my ability to coax his flesh into accepting the insertion as part of itself. With Flesh Sorcery guiding my will, my brother’s organs gently moved a bit to give it a bit more space as Kraken softly spoke.
[Ok, good, very good. Now, here’s the really tricky part. You can either put it directly into his soul, or, you can keep the power corporeal and attach it to his body by making it its own organ and connecting it physically to the other organs. If you did the latter, it would be the galaxy’s most beneficial benign tumor, and if you did the former, your brother’s soul would be almost as bright as an angel’s.]
Going with my gut and half-baked intuition from many, and I mean way too many, novels that I’ve read, I kept gently massaging the seed with a steady flow of pure mana until it faded from one plane of existence and took root in another. Fully engaging my consciousness/mind/soul sorcery, I faintly saw my brother’s luminescent self with a tiny dot of brightly shining power right in the middle. Instinctively, his soul pushed back at the intrusion like a wave and I let it as my magic pushed back with his own soul. It was fascinating to watch as his unconscious self retreated like a wave going back to the ocean, dragging the implanted seed further into itself to vanish into its own depths.
[Boy, you got an oddly skilled hand at this kind of thing. I’d highly recommend that you never tell anyone that you have your particular combo of powers, ever.]
Gulping down a stray thought of fear even as I mentally agreed with Kraken’s warning, I rounded on Johnny as reality reasserted itself. “Hey man, did they let you in the headquarters of this city or anything relatively important?”
Johnny shrugged. “Not really. Reeanth has been called inside the command post a few times by your brother but he hasn’t really allowed either of us to be near him much. Kinda resents you and nothing we say has made a difference.”
“Figures. Nobody fights like brothers. Think of us like Cain and Abel right now even though we’ve had each other’s back all our lives, well, at least before shit hit the fan.” We walked out of the room and the door swirled shut behind us. “Just like Star Trek,” I muttered, shaking my head. “God, that’s cool.”
As we reached the main room, the sci-fi version of a living room, Judy sat in one of the super comfy chairs, lounging as if we hadn’t just hijacked a soldier in his own city while the kidnapper himself was charged with murder. Great, just great. Forcing myself to relax as I couldn’t hear sounds of an alarm or any indication that the city had caught on to our madness, I plopped in a chair directly across from her.
“So what’s your story?” I asked, pulling out a meal cube from Gungnir and popping it in my mouth. I drank some conjured water as she seemed to chew over her response, her light blue eyes flashed black just for a second before reverting to their original state. “Got any plans for when the fun starts in a couple hours?”
Smirking at my aloof manner of questioning, she lightly picked up a glass of wine and sipped at it. “What you meant to ask is how a woman like me became a Queen of the Dead?”
“Somethin’ like that.”
Epilogue:
*******
2,375 A.R. (After the Ripple) - (4,395 A.D.) - Distant Future
Ilium carefully pulled the shards of the memory crystal from my grasp. Fragments of wispy memory floated between my mindscape and the tattered remnants of the once cohesive whole. As he opened his mouth to speak, my glare cut him off.
“No, I will not see a therapist. I’m old enough to say that I can act like a grumpy old man if I want to. Even if I look like the bright side of a never burnt pan.”
Illium carefully raised one eyebrow, continuing to remove the shards from my hand. “I wasn’t going to say a word, sir. I was simply going to offer a drink. I know that I need one.”
I matched his expression as my magic effortlessly repaired the cuts in my skin. My body was more Flesh Golem than human body at this point. It was just more convenient, adding a fully integrated Flesh Golem with preset commands as another layer of ‘body’ around the smaller, more frail human body. It was like I was piloting a mech, but a mechanoid of flesh animated by my magic. To compensate, my stature was that of a Centauri human, standing at over eight feet tall and perfectly over-muscled to the point that I looked more like a gladiator than a sorcerer of incredible means.
Illium pinched the skin of my arm. “Although alcohol won’t affect you like this. Shall I fetch the next memory crystal?”
Before I could nod, my majordomo mutt of a butler silently vanished into the hallway as I grumbled. Standing up, I grumbled and complained as I ran my hands over the smooth grain of the wooden table and then the wall. “Forcing myself to re-live my past. That’s therapy. Reviewing my mistakes, criticizing the past in a constructive manner to avoid future mistakes, that’s therapy. Building mental fortitude by facing emotional horrors. That’s therapy.”
Figuring that Illium was right, I stepped out of my Flesh Golem skinsuit. It collapsed in on itself as I stood in front of the window, the suit rolling up until it was the size of a beach ball and placed itself in the corner. Icy hot fire radiated through my back just as the sun began to set.
“Revenge is a dish best savored in Sol’s dying light.” Illium whispered, wrenching the dagger further in and then dragging it down and to the right. My spine easily parted under the enchanted power of his blade, my flesh dying faster than my magic could repair it.
Blood dribbled down my chin as I watched my soul-tree in my mindscape writhe and wither before my eyes. As I fell forward, my hand latched onto the second memory crystal. Bits of memory began to tug at me, pulling, teasing me into visualizing the next part of my journey. Out of the corner of my eye, yet another Illium walked out of the shadows with an evil grin.
“Fuck.”
THANK YOU FOR READING BOOK ONE OF THE STRANDED SORCERER.
I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed bringing this personal project to you. I just want to take a moment to encourage you to review the book. Every review helps bring it to another reader.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I’m a normal dude with a normal family who just had a crazy dream which resulted in the story you just (hopefully) enjoyed. I have a normal job with the beginnings of a little homestead and I’m doing this project for fun.