0 A.R. (2020 A.D.)
News of another faction that would desperately want to capture, enslave, or kill me just didn’t really hit me the way that Reeanth expected. There were no tears, no outbursts of indignation, cries for help or even fits of terror. It just felt cold, a thick wet blanket of cold settling around my shoulders.
Realization, that’s what it was. Realization that my life will probably never ever know a moment of peace. I can either grow so powerful that no one will ever be able to harm or manipulate me or I can do the quiet hermit routine. I like both. Although, I'm pretty sure I’d be the worst prisoner to have. My mix of abilities would be a nightmare to try to keep down. I could think of a couple ways to negate magic, but my flesh magic would eventually make that moot. They’d have to literally have to . . . . nah, I’m not even gonna think about it. I’ll plot my own demise when I have the time just in case I meet another sorcerer as wildly lucky as me.
Two questions began to battle for supremacy in my mind as I snickered at the scene in front of me. Midday had come and gone and Johnny was still curled up in front of the sleeping bear from where Reeanth and I dumped his unconscious form. The big question of ‘when the fuck are we going to leave’ was roaring at the forefront of my mind, while the little question of ‘if Reeanth can see my magic and put the pieces together, what can I do to hide my secrets from the world?’ was pricking at the back of my mind. After reluctantly deciding that waking up a giant bear and his human wasn’t a good idea, I decided to run a quick test.
I conjured up a small marble of diamond and took my time correcting the flaws. One thing that I’d noticed about my abilities is that Earth Sorcery does not give a shit if it conjures up a flawed rock, and it usually doesn’t matter. The agency of altering and forcing order falls to me. Using magic to delve into the crystalline structure of the gem, I smoothed out the misaligned flaws until it was beautiful in the mathematical sense. Putting the finishing touches on the mana storage and strengthening runes on the inside, I began to pump some mana into it until it was about halfway full.
“Reeanth!” I called, staring at my hand as I closed it around the diamond.
“Yes my lord?” She answered, turning towards me from where she sat up against the wall.
“I’m running a little experiment here and I need your help.”
“Anything I can do is at your disposal.” She answered confidently.
“Good. I need you to use your vision sorcery to look at my hand and tell me what you see.”
A flash of light turned into a soft beam that lasted three seconds. “I see a brightly burning sun in your palm. I assume that’s the accumulator you created?”
“Yup. Ok, so the first assumption is correct. Flesh does not block the mana wavelength.”
Holding my closed fist against my chest, I turned away so that my body and my armor was between me and her.
“Ok, try again.”
“I can barely make it out, my lord. The mana in your armor and yourself sort of drown it out. The small accumulator is insignificant compared to the rest of your suit.”
“Fuck.”
Turning back to her, I sat down and opened my hand. With the other, I touched the smooth surface and poured a bit of Earth Sorcery into it while muttering to myself.
“Flesh doesn’t work, mana signatures can overpower it, what blocks the flow of mana? Platinum works but that also negates the purpose of the gem as it completely disrupts the mana transfer process, hmmmm.”
“What are you trying to do my lord?” Reeanth asked. Her maul was next to her on the ground, one hand on top of it. I had a feeling that she’d literally never let it go even if someone cut her arm off. I chuckled at how something so simple that I’d made was considered so valuable.
“Well, I’m trying to figure out a way to either diminish the mana signature of the item, or completely block anyone from being able to tell that a gem I have can hold massive amounts of energy. What could I do to make that happen without completely killing the actual storing and transferring of mana?”
It’s as if mana gave off light, and the little gem I had made was the equivalent to a bright candle. Everyone could see that it was burning if it were dark, but my suit of armor as well as all of my gear and my stored mana combined acted like a bonfire making the candle seem insignificant in comparison. Who cares about a candle when it’s on the other side of a bonfire? What I needed was concealment, something or some way to make the ‘flames’ invisible. I can’t have every type of overpowered enchantment or creature that is sensitive to magic looking at me like a goddamn steak.
Then it hit me. I might not be able to completely erase my magical signature, but I could dampen it. Thinking back on everything that had happened to me, I had made a platinum shield that mostly blocked a blast of unknown energy from a goddess, and that same metal was in parts of Reeanth’s armor. Following my frantic train of thought, I pumped as much mana into the gem as I could channel from the earth underneath me.
“Quick Reeanth, take off your breastplate and stick this under it! Then look at it and tell me what you see!”
Reeanth jumped at my command, tossing her armor to the dirt in front of her and stretched out her hand. Time seemed to flicker for the split second this action occurred as my brain boosted by Consciousness Sorcery recorded the whole thing. The armor she was wearing acted as if it were alive, clinging to her like a living rubbery blob that didn’t want to let go. It kept its shape but the edges looked as if they tore where they parted instead of simply unlatching or untying like normal armor.
I tossed the gem to her outstretched hand and she stuck it under the breastplate. As her hand touched it, I noted a ‘tendril’ reach out for her, but not quick enough to make contact with her hand.
“Come on, look at it! Can you see the glow? If not, pull out the gem and tell me what you see!”
Her eyes lit up, illuminating the details of her armor.
“I don’t, I don’t see it my lord! But wait, I can see its emanation coming out the sides of the armor, but it’s much lighter.” Reaching in, she pulled out the storage gem and quickly turned her head as if slapped, covering her eyes.
“And it’s definitely bright and still working,” she said, cutting off the flow of sorcery to her eyes while rubbing at them.
“Perfect! Yes!” I celebrated, snatching the gem from her and running to my temporary house. I love it when my theories are confirmed. Platinum works perfectly as a shield, but its other use is concealment from magical senses. The hard part was just beginning though. This damn precious metal is not only rare, making it harder to conjure, but after conjuring said metal, magic starts to slide right off of it. What I had seen though after examining Reeanth’s armor with my earth and Mana Sorcery is that her armor wasn’t pure platinum. According to her, it had a significant amount of iridium worked into it. Roughly a forty percent iridium portion to sixty percent platinum, and that’s not counting the portions of repaired armor that were made up of titanium and steel.
I took this to mean that if I conjure the platinum and iridium together, it would make the platinum somehow pliable enough to manipulate with magic but still be able to do what I want it to. And I don’t need much, the entire plan revolved around me covering up the lion's share of my armor with the thinnest possible later of the stuff, essentially covering up the ‘bonfire’ of mana that I could hold.
My latest project ended up taking the rest of the day, with me having to take off each piece of armor and oh so freaking carefully conjure the perfect mix of iridium and platinum in the most minute amounts and applying it while taking great care to not cover up the runes. I figured that if I have runes showing on my armor, that people would interpret it as running off of the mana my body is constantly generating, similar to how the Centauri battle suits function. The runes on her armor can store a tiny bit of mana, but they mainly activate when the wearer pumps power into it.
I had just finished covering up over ninety percent of my armor when I looked at Svalinn on my arms and Gungnir. Plating my main weapons with this mixture was not something I wanted to do. The hunch I had was telling me that it would be anathema to their nature, their purpose, as a key component for them was not just channeling large amounts of power, but ‘eating’ or diverting what energy enemies throw at me. Passing them off as ‘ancient’ artifacts might work, but that would still make me a target. Forgoing that line of thought, I figured I’d return to it later. Maybe Reeanth would have a better idea.
I met her at the now crackling bonfire in the middle of camp after having a surprisingly productive day. Losing a day’s worth of travel time didn’t piss me off like it would have if I’d sat down and relaxed all day.
“Hey, look at me real quick with your eye magic and tell me what you see!” I asked, unable to cover up the excitement I felt. Haha, maybe with magic, I’ll never grow up. I felt like a giddy kid on his birthday getting the loudest fire truck and happily annoying his family with it for the whole rest of the day.
Reeanth squinted as she leaned forward, her eyes glowing a bright silver. “Your staff and your gauntlets glow brightly my lord, but the rest of you appears to be rather dull except for the runes. They flicker as they’re used, what did you do?”
I couldn’t keep the huge smile off my face. “I did it! The proper ratio of platinum and iridium worked! Turns out, there’s more than one kind of iridium, and some of those were radioactive, but I found one that wasn’t! Now, if only I can find a way to tamp down on Svalinn’s and Gungnir’s magical signature I’d be golden!”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Which is which, my lord?”
“Gungnir,” I said, waving around the spear. Then touching my gauntlets, I clarified, “and Svalinn. The spear of Odin and the shield that protects the Earth from the Sun. I thought the names were fitting. This bad boy is probably the most dangerous weapon I’ve ever seen, and these gauntlets were forged from the bones of a dragon, part of the World Tree, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It’s even got some of that dragon’s soul in here too to help with eating magical power.”
“Well, items with souls in it are not uncommon, as different souls hold different amounts of power. You may not need to conceal those. Did you bind them?” She asked.
I thought about this one for a minute. “I’m not really sure to be honest. Gungnir, I’m pretty sure I bound that one, I don’t know for sure though. We’ve been through the ringer together. See, this is where a magical education would have been helpful.”
Her laughing at my ignorance was getting pretty tiring. “There’s an easy test for that, my lord. Let me see them, one at a time. And when I try to use them, just think about either of them returning to you or not working for me.”
Tossing her Gungnir, she immediately leaped into action, attacking an imaginary foe, jabbing and stabbing while pumping mana into the spear. I didn’t like it. The feeling was instinctive, but it felt meaner than that.
“No!” I barked, holding out my hand. The spear ripped out of her grasp while she was in midair, fouling her beautiful display of limber combat gymnastics. “Gaaaah, I’m sorry, but, I, I couldn’t take it.”
She let out a small chuckle. “That’s perfectly reasonable my lord, your spear is definitely bound to you. I was pumping mana into it to channel an energy blade and it just kept eating it but not doing anything with it.”
Carefully removing Svalinn, something that I rarely ever did, I tossed the heavy gauntlets to her one at a time. She put them on and her armor came alive, slivers of the silver metal attaching to the edges of Svalinn and covering it. As soon as she had both on and they were fully attached, the gauntlets pulled her to the ground, slamming with deadly force.
“My lord! I can’t move!”
“What, they’re not that heavy!”
Her forearms were flat in the dirt as she awkwardly squatted. Taking a deep breath, she leaned back and attempted to heave as if lifting a giant boulder. “They’re definitely yours if they’re doing this to me!” She gasped, her back and legs straining against the invisible mountain holding them down.
“Sweet!” I said, relief filling me. I walked over to the scene that went from scary to hilarious real quick. Touching the gauntlets, Reeanth’s suit covering them peeled back like I was acid and the gauntlets popped free. “That’s right boys, come to papa,” I cooed to my gear. With great relish, I slammed them home on my forearms, feeling the mixture of smooth bone and wood contoured to my shape.
With a flex of will, the gauntlets morphed into their tower shield form which I slammed together in front of me. Holding a thought in my head, they then split and turned into teardrop shapes with a wicked blade arcing forward from the outer edges. I went through every form of shield I could think of, a standard buckler, the medieval knight’s, the embossed viking’s, and then Captain America’s just for kicks. Turning them back into normal armored gauntlets, I looked at Reeanth. “So, they’re definitely bound to me. What’s that mean exactly?”
“Others cannot use them unless you wish it, you’ll always have an internal compass pointing to them if they go missing, they respond to your thoughts, and if you do it correctly, they may even grow in power as time goes on. Trust me, these might eventually qualify to be legendary artifacts that your descendants will rely on.”
I liked the sound of that even if I didn’t want to contemplate my impending doom, regardless of it possibly being a few millennia in the future.. Eh, who cares, I at least have a couple thousand years to figure that out. I did have one last idea that I could probably do before tomorrow while I wait on Tweedle Dee and Dum to wake the fuck up. I made Reeanth sit still as I took all the items I had given her back and spent the rest of the day modifying them with the platinum/iridium mix. I couldn’t have her gear giving me away either, and when that was done, I did the same to Johnny’s armor, rolling his limp body over when necessary. The damn kid didn’t even change his snoring as I upgraded his stuff. Out like a light.
“You better wake up tomorrow or I’m gonna have to leave your ass,” I growled, finishing up the concealment on his armor. “This bear better be fuckin fast too cause we’re flyin’ and you’re probably riding this overgrown rug.”
The chainsaw snorting just kept on going.
Picking myself up off the ground, I got comfortable by the fire and ate some soup that I’d brought. I remember Johnny mentioning that his staff kept a bunch of food and supplies in his spatial storage, but I couldn’t get to it. And Reeanth was off hunting but I didn’t want to wait. Spot was already asleep next to the entrance of the walled off camp, doing his due diligence as guard dog. The birds were perched on the top of the walls fast asleep as well. Taking the cue from everyone else, I hit the hay.
*******
It really sucks when the hay hits back, and by hay I mean piercing daylight. Waking up still sucks. Yes, I know that I can, and do, use Flesh Sorcery to make it super easy, but there’s just something about being a morning grump that makes me feel human with everything that’s going on. I can deal with it, I truly can, but sometimes I just want to grump. And grump I did, kicking sticks in the early morning light as I stalked around camp and then around the wall of camp.
“Dick. Stupid fucking kid, with his stupid fucking bear, and no goddamn coffee cause I’m a stupid fucking idiot. Yup, forgot eggs, bacon, steak, cause the only thing I have is old ass soup. Fuck you Campbells, the last remnants of a dead and nearly forgotten civiliza . .”
“Good morning my lord! Isn’t it wondrous? The peace! The quiet!”
[Don’t kill the help. Don’t maim the help. Don’t bury the help under a mountain. Don’t feed the help to a bear.]
Being nice is so much harder when being joyously mean or evil just has so many better options. Yup, probably time to use some magical help here. Taking a deep breath, I used my Flesh Sorcery to refresh my brain and body, taking the last dregs of grogginess and morning evil, I mean grumpiness, with it.
Breathe in, breathe out.
“Good morning Reeanth. Have those two moved at all?” Without pointing, she caught both my meaning and the urgency that I couldn’t remove from my voice.
“No my lord. I fear they may actually be hibernating. Is there something you can do to speed this along?”
“Maybe,” I said, taking out a can of soup and popping the top. Taking a few sips didn’t really help me focus as the damn soup needed salt, but it did give me a second to go over my options. “Yeah, I’ll check’em out but I’m not waiting another day.”
Taking a second to conjure salt, I poured a bit into the soup. Yup, much better. Downing the last of it, I hopped up and made my way over while drinking some conjured water.
Reeanth’s face underwent a series of transitions starting with wonder and ending with disdainful curiosity. “How? Why? Ahem. I’m still not sure how all that works my lord, how do you conjure with such ease?”
“The simple answer is lots of sorcery and tons of mana. From what I can tell, most of my conjuration isn’t really creating anything, it’s more like summoning it. The most common elements and materials are super easy, like water and earth, and even diamond is almost as easy because it’s technically carbon which is one of the most common elements on Earth. The harder stuff is platinum or iridium. It’s also logical to assume that even though water is common on Earth, it would be much harder to summon it in the Sahara desert.” I huffed as I thought it over. “That explanation makes the most sense. The other one that is possible but less likely is that conjuration somehow works with another dimension, like a parallel one, or maybe a nearby one in which there’s tons of raw Chaos.”
In turn, I conjured and banished a ball of water, then stone, then dirt, and then a tiny nugget of gold, and then bone and blood. “I’m not gonna lie. It feels weird. The ones I don’t get are the flesh based ones, it’s almost like it goes through a weird process, like summoning water and iron and other trace elements and then transforming it into what I envision based off of what’s near. Like, that bone was identical to my own, same DNA and everything, but the blood was yours. I think the more esoteric stuff gets funneled through Chaos really.”
“That can’t be my lord!”
I wasn’t shocked at her rejection, but those explanations were all I could come up with. I mean, it’s better than saying that it works because ‘magic’.
Reeanth “That would mean that the demons were right, that Chaos is the liquid border to every realm and dimension in the multiverse. But the Host decreed that all is upheld by the Order of the Tree and secured by the Sacred Roots.”
I wasn’t going to parse my way through that, but it didn’t sound like those two things couldn’t coexist. Yggdrasil could do that, maybe that’s what they’re all referring to. Don’t trees take the broken down elements, aka Chaos, and turn it into something orderly? But I digress. Reaching our two sleepyheads, I scanned Johnny first. What used to be a tenuous link between him and the bear was much more solid, but the odd part was that some sort of forced unconsciousness was coming from the bear straight into Johnny’s hindbrain. Yup, I’m too sexy for my own magic.
Following the link back to Big Bear, the trouble was centered on the backup sleepy enchantment I had placed on its instincts. It looked like the hibernation aspect, which I tied in for security, was twanged a little too hard putting the bear in literal winter-time hibernation mode. Carefully picking the threads apart, I returned the normal rhythms of rest to the bear and let that wash over Johnny through their link.
“Did you fix it my lord? It blends together too much in the head area, I can’t tell what’s going on.”
I turned to see that Reeanth was way too close, her glowing eyes staring intently at the dissolving patch of magic. I was taken aback at the simply alien scale of her body. Centauri humans are at least a standard deviation or two larger than humans which had the unfortunate effect of making me feel like a child standing next to an adult. Dusting myself off and re-girding my manhood, I mentally called out for Spot and the big bird, who I affectionately named Tuki after the parrot I had when I was little.
Scratching my head, I examined the slumbering brain patterns of Johnny and his pet. “Yeah, but it’s still going to take a day or two to wear off naturally. The brain isn’t something to mess with casually. I’m going to go on ahead down to Florida with Spot and Tuki, and you’re gonna stay here with these two. Catch up when they’re awake, and use the birds to find us. They share a kind of hive or flock mind.”
I didn’t wait as Reeanth called out. “What? Who’s, what’s a Tuki?”
A blast of air answered that as Tuki landed on the building behind me, his giant wings buffeted us as he landed.
“That’s a Tuki.” I smirked. “Might wanna name yours too. I’ll scout the area when I get there and set up a forward operating base. I should be seeing y’all in three days. Don’t be late.”
Whistling for Spot, I climbed up on Tuki as he jumped and took off with a mighty flap. Tuki flew over the wall and glided low near the water where Spot in his smaller form was sprinting alongside us with a fish in his mouth.
“Damn it Spot! NO!” My cries went unheeded as the wet dog carrying a slobbery fish jumped and landed right on me, moisture of dubious scent quality spraying everywhere. “Awww come on, you stanky ass fishmonger.”
Ignoring me in the fashion that only loved ones can do, he proceeded to devour his catch while I used Water Sorcery to clean up and then dry off. Banishing the water from Spot’s coat and Tuki’s feather and then turning my magical self-cleaning towards myself to get rid of the mess, I couldn’t wait to get outta here.