Back on Earth

Looking back at how it had all turned out so far, my long journey from the drunken day of the first Ripple’s catastrophic arrival up till now had been so disjointed, so strange and twisted that it felt like it had been longer to me than it actually was. Honestly, I had simply forgotten about those little shards of Chaos. Just hearing about them shocked me so damn much that I had taken Merlin up on his offer, with a firm caveat.

Yes, I argued with a literal manifestation of a mystical legend. Sue me.

[Where did you come from?!] Kraken sputtered, flying out of Gungnir. My weapon clattered against the stone floor next to Svalinn, SAW, and the rest of my clothes. [Why are you naked?! What is going on? How did I get here???]

I rubbed my head, staring up at the glowing sigils that functioned as lights in the cavernous lab. The Lab. My Lab. The one underneath the Rappahannock river back in good ol’ Virginia. Not to mention I was naked. Joy.

Fucking aliens with magic. Fuck’em all.

“Boy, do we have a lot to talk about.” I muttered, sitting up and starting to put my gear back on. As I tried to put my pants on, a blast of information revealed itself from where it was hiding deep between hindbrain and spinal column. The small packet unfurled, streaks of hyper-dense mana smoothly riding along my neural pathways and streaking directly into my Consciousness Sorcery. I nearly keeled over in surprise. I didn’t even notice the scorch marks on the stone expanding from where I sat, clearly from my less than stellar re-insertment back home through the Asshole Upon High, Merlin.

[The basics! My non-existent backside!] Kraken complained, flipping through the surface level of my most recent memories while vibrating with irritation inside of Gungnir’s spatial storage space. He didn’t notice me not paying attention to him. [What else was it? Where in Scion’s good graces were you? And what did you promise him? YOU’RE MISSING A MONTH? YOU GAINED A MONTH? WHEN ARE WE? It had to have been something good for this?” I felt more than heard the sound of pages from a large book fluttering open. “ A freaking blood-stained tome titled, ‘The Bottom Basics of Irreverent Wizardry’. I mean, what kind of a douchebag even names their work that? I’M SO CONFUSED! WHY DOES A MENTAL REPLICA OF A BOOK HAVE BLOODSTAINS???]

I groaned, slowly blinking my eyeballs as I staved off the inevitable headache. [Gimme a goddamn second! Ahhhhg!] Rubbing at my forehead, I blinked a few more times before taking a deep breath. [First, let’s work backwards here for a second. I don’t care who freaking wrote the damn book stuck in my mind as long as it’s correct! Shove all that knowledge together with what we got from the archives in New Miami and get back to me when you’ve got a coherent lesson plan. Second and MORE importantly, Merlin shoved a message in my fucking brain. Ouch, here, you read it. Thirdly, when you’re done with that, I’m freaking gaming the system here, so check this out too.]

I shot Kraken the rolled up mental message from Merlin and my plan in a tightly wound packet of mental energy down our link as I hustled away from the hallway that led to the Hole, my main dwelling, heading deeper into the Lab. I didn’t even take the time to clean up the scorch marks of my reentry. Merlin was so happy that I agreed, roughly, with his plea that he sent me back to Earth with my shit and my soul intact. I rustled around my soul for a few minutes making sure that all of my sorceries were unlocked. Weirdest flex ever, buuuut ancient asshole-ic beings will be dicks on their own schedule. Lyra, Meliad, and Everest didn’t even notice my presence as I was teleported into my own dwelling.

And for a much longer period of time than I expected, Kraken didn’t notice the new edition to the Lab’s decorations, the ominous steel cage wreathed in poetically hideous imagery gently swinging from the cavern ceiling. Not only did it have a comatose undead wizard that clearly wasn’t human in there, but the cage glowed an eerie purple with inward spikes facing inward. I decided not to say anything and just let my familiar freak out on his own after he finished going through my overstuffed memory packet. He didn’t even notice me picking up a solid stone cube the size of a shoebox that didn’t shine to my magical senses. But I knew what was in there, the Chaos stones Merlin talked about.

But speaking of Merlin, I knew that that dude is fucking scary. He’s horrifying in the way that an ant finds a falling tree scary. If he actually wanted to take me out there would absolutely be nothing I could do about it, no ‘ifs’, ‘ands’, or ‘buts’. Like watching the atom bomb drop in Japan. You can watch the curtain fall but you know it’ll be your last one. Turns out though, I lost about over three weeks worth of time on my little extra-reality jaunt which probably puts me somewhere in the middle of February.

Weird, right? I skimmed over the message when I sent it over to Kraken but that part stuck out to me. As my own brain began to lessen its bongo session behind my eyes, the light reprieve granted me the grace to give the message its due. The rotating slivers of memory-light pulled me into my Mindscape where a hologram of Merlin began to speak. Just like I expected, his hands held a cigar and tankard of some kind of alien beer.

“Ehherrmmm. I’ve reviewed your language again to verify that I’m speaking appropriately because I don’t have too much time. Therefore pay attention, or as you would say it, ‘Listen here fuckface’!” The hologram of Merlin turned a bit red before forging onwards while simultaneously insulting me AND telling me what to do and how to do it. What a douche.

“This method has to be better than a letter. Your Star Trek and Star Wars videos indicated such, especially considering how obsessed your entire culture was with ‘advanced technology’ even though it requires simple magic to replicate in function. Regardless, it isn’t as important as what I’m about to reveal.”

I found my mental self leaning in, intentionally recording every bit of this so I wouldn’t miss one iota of information.

“Soon, for all intents and purposes, you will be in two places at once . . . simultaneously existing in the future and the present but in different dimensional time streams. However, the time stream doesn’t normally allow for this to exist but by splitting the stream of time around the space instead of the other way around, this cosmic extra-dimensional incongruity is eased by your location restrictions but supported due to Earth’s continued Integration process with the cessation of the veil. That state of flux is allowing you to do this only because I took you out of the time stream for four of your weeks.”

I raised my finger to spit a question even though I knew Merlin wasn’t really here.

“And yes, there is a reason I pulled you out of the timestream, I wanted to talk to you with zero interruptions. And our meeting served another purpose as well. The removal of your presence created a void, an imbalance, which allowed me leeway to correct it later on. I then tipped the scales again in the other direction by placing you where the streams split so as to force your life into two places. Two times. Two quasi-quantum related dimensions on an inevitable course for joining at a fixed point down the current. As the balance comes due, placing you back while the time stream repairs itself allows for two currents to stay TWO currents while they mix as one further down the stream. Beware of the cost of failure, karma-GRRRRKKKK!”

The memory message cut off just as the last bit came through, a simple diagram of split time. Well, maybe not so simple, even looking at the damn thing made my eyes cross and my brain short out.

Snarling at knowledge just out of my grasp, I replayed the message over and over, verifying everything I could with my magic, pulling out the tiny bits of context and overlaying that with what I learned about Merlin himself.

With another sound reminiscent of a scratching record, the memory message began playing again.

“Sorry, too much info you weren’t allowed to have. Anywho, anyways, I’ll try to make this part shorter. Learn wizardry. Use the undead wizard, use the gifted tome, use that knowledge to forge your own Grimoire and how to dismantle or alter portals. When the time is right, use my mirror to travel to the site of your future/future self’s past battle. You have limited time to close the main Gateway within the castle. You are BARRED from using wytchfire explosive devices to close portals. I’m sure your familiar will have better ideas. I did this for your own good. And . . . so that you will escape the notice of far Greater Powers than you know. Farewell descendant.”

I leaned back. “WHAT A DICK!” Conjuring a chunk of slate just so I could smash against the ground, I did it over and over, hurling the fragile thin sheets of stone until clouds of dust hung in the air. “He accused me? Of almost kicking off an alien World War III? How was I supposed to know wytchfire is their atom bomb?”

Kraken raised one tentacle. “No no!” I snapped, waving my hand and dispelling the mess I had created. “Let me get this straight! Essentially, my asshole of an ancestor stole me for a month, removing me out of the freaking time stream which gave him cosmic leeway to play with a month’s worth of time. In so doing, I could be in ‘two places at once’, as in live here in Virginia for a month and get crap done before he would whirlwind me BACK in time and space, but not as far back as a month, to help out my team in Greenland to stifle the advance of the undead?!”

Kraken put his tentacle down. I glared at him expectantly. My spirit-familiar nodded grudgingly. I happily got back to my rant, making sure that Kraken was following along.

“So, queue the obvious impossibility. I don’t have a goddamn Delorean with a flux capacitor so Mr. Fuck-With-My-Life decides to upend everything. Now, I’ll still be missing a week of my life because he won’t send me as far back as the exact point where he pulled me out of the time stream initially so that means I can’t fix shit. I can only plan on things that I may or may not know will happen.”

A light cough interrupted my full head of steam. “Actually, you’re missing more than that. Or, you will be.”

I whirled around. Kraken burbled some more. “You were pulled out for a month, it’s now February. You got pulled out in January. We fought for a month, over and over but Gateway for the Hungry Ones allowed their reinforcements to replenish their forces.”

My glare intensified.

“And now you have to be here for another month to learn and THEN get sent back a few weeks where that’s the point in time where you’ll be in two places at once. So you’re basically losing five weeks but will be armed with knowledge on how to shut down the portal properly. Which means you’ll be reliving part of February and March.”

Sweat beaded down my face and my palms were slick.

“And you’ll be stuck in Greenland for a month AFTER you take a month to conquer them, so in the most technical of terms, you’re living extra but restricted in movement so that would mean you’re going to be missing another month out of your life.”

My eye twitched.

Kraken happily carried on. “But you’ve already seen the basic tactics of the Hungry Ones which are the classic ‘swarm and overwhelm with raw numbers’-”

“SO ALL OF MY PLANS DON’T MEAN SHIT???”

“Well . . . they simply need to be . . . adjusted.”

Taking it all in didn’t go as planned. My Consciousness Sorcery balked at the idea that there would be another me. How could there be? How could a soul exist on more than one time stream separated by Wild Majik? How does that work? And if I accept that it’s a possibility, what can I do about it? Because I don’t know shit about manipulating timelines.

So then it turns out that there’s another me, future me existing at the same time as me but in a week, who will have all the knowledge and skills I can gain in a month but he will be doing his thing in Greenland technically at the same time that me (the current me) is learning said stuff.

The caveat of this dangerous and very unlikely scenario would be that I would have to accomplish a few things, the obvious stuff Merlin said to do but also I really, really wanted to parse out the crumbs of the middle part of the destroyed message.

Muttering aloud to myself and grumbling loud enough to annoy Kraken the next minute, I began dictating lists. “Okay, within the next month, I have to learn enough wizardry to figure out how to cripple a portal network. I also have to set the stage for me to either conquer Earth as a whole or provide a large enough place for people to live peacefully.” Kraken nodded so I kept going. “The part that goes along with that, is that when Merlin sends me back in time and space to Greenland three weeks ago instead of four weeks, I’ll have to stay in Greenland for an extra month to avoid a paradox. I can’t meet myself, see myself, or be near myself . . . the version of myself accomplishing stuff in North America.”

My ramblings faded out as my thoughts ran away from me again.

“NO! Focus! Okay, because that ‘me’, North American past version of myself, will be getting stuff done which, and since I’m butchering Merlin’s lack of terminology here, will be, chaotically speaking, be a magical anomaly which will correct itself as Timeline A ends for that version of me. Only then, when that version of me vanishes due to Merlin rejoining the split time streams, will I be able to go back to North America. And in order to get back to America, I promised Merlin that I’d effectively cripple the undead invasion effort within three weeks.”

I couldn’t really decipher one part, something about the karmic cost of not defeating the Hungry Ones would really screw up the natural timeline flow. None of that made sense, because with two time streams, Merlin’s context crumbs that I could decipher from the scrambled parts of the message made clear that the total number of possibilities weren’t doubled, they were exponentially greater. Not three plus three, but three times three.

With Kraken still geeking out about the grimoire, the wizardry handbook, and the fact that he got to be part of the time split due to being my spirit familiar, I steadily fought my overwhelming desire for a drink. And I fought hard. The smooth bite of Gentleman Jack whiskey would really calm my state of being right now. Desiring to be a better person but not really having the emotionally mature tools to do so, I walked outside to clear my head.

Virginia winters were a bit weird before magic made its debut but to me it still looked like fall round here. Maybe the seasonal shift is happening? Eh, who cares. The usual blend of oak, birch, and spruce trees had their mix of leaves turning different colors and the pine trees still basically looked the same. The chill I had been expecting wasn’t really there yet but it could just be my upgraded body not noticing it very well. All I really cared about was snow though, and if snow was coming, because the little kid inside of me would insist on taking a damn snow day to which I would wholeheartedly agree, but I digress.

[I think this is in between the realm of what you would call ‘ambitious’ and ‘the kind of insane that Merlin would be proud of’.] Kraken started, finally getting around to talking to me instead of at me.

[I know, right? Kind of proud of myself for thinking of it. But really, wouldn’t it be a game changer?]

[Well, yes, creating a shrine using the shattered Chaos stones as anchors for a portal so that anybody could get sorceries as long as they meditate long enough near it is very much a ‘game changer’. This is the kind of move that would cause Galactic empires to start moving their very rusty wheels to get a hold of, let alone power hungry wizards jonesing at the idea of more power. However, don’t you have more important things to do right now?]

I strolled, ignoring the insinuation that I was on a time crutch. Instead, I clutched the stone cube even harder. [So, mums the word.]

[So many damn idioms in your head! Yes, keep it silent, secret, swear an order of loyal sorcerers and sorceresses to yourself and take over the multiverse,] Kraken mused. [But it would work, probably, maybe? And can you learn enough wizardry to make it work? I mean, who would give the guaranteed chance to gain sorcery on their own and use those ingredients to make what amounts to a portal to the outer dimensional skin of the Sea of Chaos? Few can grasp that kind of delaying self gratification, let alone power hungry humans! Although, y’all aren’t as bad as the gnomes or the Aelves.]

Enjoying a few more minutes outside while Kraken chattered on, completely indecisive on whether he wanted to dive into the Grimoire or peruse the Basics of Wizardry book, I gathered up my courage, my fortitude, my balls, and headed back inside.

My carnivorous trees snapped at me as I barged into the lab holding my enchanted stone box with five teeny Chaos stone pieces.

[AND ARE WE GOING TO JUST WALK PAST THE TIME TRAVEL ISSUE?! THERE ARE SO MANY PLANS TO MAKE. SO MUCH LEARNING TO DO!]

And I did. I walked right past that fucking, crazy, insane, beyond bonkerous concept that had zero business being in my life. All I had to do was put my Mind Sorcery to work and everything should be okay. Crazy thoughts about my project swirled around in my head, visions of being a benevolent sorcerer king, bestowing powers and knowledge for the best of the best even as I fought to settle the land and bring it under my rule. Wow, my megalomania can really rear its evil little head if I’m not careful, haha . . . fuck. Anyways, shoving that little monster back in its cage, the concept still etched out its own little place in my ego.

With my work table near the oversized freezer to the left of the cavern that made up the Lab, I hefted the box on top of it, not even worrying about the carnivorous plants growling behind me. “Five shards, the perfect amount for a ritual, right?” I mused aloud. “A pentagram to form a ritual? This is all theoretical for me, completely based on fiction from pre-Ripple Earth.”

[Yes, close enough. BUT DON’T YOU HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO? IS THIS SERIOUSLY YOUR PRIORITY????]

I glared at Kraken from where he floated in the middle of the cavern. He sighed and then kept the conversation going, giving in to my stubbornness. [The materials you have on hand should suffice, although I highly recommend you find something to balance out the nature of the fire dragon, who’s bones you plan on using.] Kraken’s clarification was helpful if a bit snarky. [I do not recommend using minotaur bones as they’ll mainly disperse the influx of mana required to start the portaling process. Water dragon bone and musculature would work best as a counterbalance, but you could skip using animal tissue altogether. Not that this would solve YOUR SPLIT SELF TIME SHENANIGAN ISSUE!]

“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’? Ya know, something crazy?” I grinned, a bit of evil coming out in a chuckle. “I could totally do this in a way that would fuck with the Karens . . . the main piece would be a crystal ball ringed by the Chaos shards. Just a bit trippy for the biddies. Give it that gypsy vibe.”

[Or you could do the smart thing and establish control over the closest settlement first and use them as the gateway to taking over New Miami. Once you control the coast, it’s Manifest Destiny all over again. OR YOU CAN LEARN WIZARDRY AND MAKE A DAMN GRIMOIRE!]

The squid spirit is full of good points if not good vibes, which is why I keep him around. Stashing the shards away in the freezer after covering them in a thin layer of conjured platinum, I settled in for the night so I could start the day off right. After putting my unconscious in full-on organization mode so most of my plans would be made by the time I woke up, I went down the tunnel and up the stairs to the Hole, purposefully not using Flesh Sorcery to give myself a natural night’s rest.

Morning greeted me after a solid ten hours of shut-eye caused my stomach to protest my negligence, meal cubes not being the current object of desire. “Rebellious organ.” I complained, hopping out of my bed and stripping off all my gear as I went to the wall and started making a bathtub fit for a king. Granite sides, marble steps and handlebars with gold filigree conjured and etched into the side, the setup looked perfect.

[I’VE BEEN UP ALL NIGHT WORKING!] Kraken screamed, tearing around the corner. I summoned Gungnir from its usual docking station and bopped Kraken in the head with it, forcefully storing him away for just moments of morning peace.

“No, no.” I said in an overly calm voice. “I need to bathe first, and then deal with your ass.”

Ignoring the mental pings, I got some self-care under my belt. A quick channel of Water Sorcery had the tub filled up and I jumped in to get clean, not even caring about the water temperature. Conjured sand, as fine as could be, was all I needed for a good scrub. After a luxurious ten minutes of peace and quiet, I slowly and carefully cleaned each piece of my equipment and put it on. The weaponry didn't need sharpening at all but still warranted an inspection.

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Svalinn, my dragon-soul gauntlets, had merged with the Granite Gauntlets, giving the set unique abilities. Svalinn’s normal function was magical armor, able to generate a pure shield of magical energy, but also able to absorb or eat mana and energy in such a way as to be a draining shield. Offensively, Svalinn had teeth, or blades that extended from the outer sides of my forearms which would serve in a pinch. With the Granite Gauntlets merged with Svalinn, simply gripping things could cover them in a shell of conjured stone, and holding anything long enough would actually petrify it.

Poseidon’s Trident still sat in the skin of my arm, a bluish tattoo that held a magical focus for Water Sorcery that I frankly didn’t really need. Mainly, it would serve as a backup weapon or something to bestow on a valued ally, but I wasn’t really sure if it would function well if it were away from me for too long as its magical signature was partially subsumed by SAW, my Centauri nano-tech armor.

SAW in and of itself was a bit over the top, as anything would be if it were made from nano-tech. The simple nature of the devices that made up the structure of SAW allowed them to create runic structures or magical tattoos to perfectly shore up my own deficiencies. Usually, the runic patterns were focused on defense, absorbing enemy projections of mana and draining kinetic energy from high powered bullets or physical weapons wielded by brutes stronger than elephants. General blunt trauma is a good way to deal with squishy humans and this was attempt number two to fix that weakness but my upgraded body has a lot more in the way of physical durability.

“Kraken,” I said aloud, keeping our connection mostly one-way. “While I’m thinking about it, overhaul SAW’s rune structure to focus more on radar-like capabilities and stealth. Do keep a minimum kinetic and mana draining diagram that can be on a low level circuit but we need to shift the focus as I’m not as weak as a standard human anymore.”

I felt his affirmation rather than hear it. It had a side of grudging irritation.

My internal review of my gear continued as I looked over the Dagger of Rending, or ‘Setan Kober’ as SAW called it. The name sounded ‘Indian’ in nature. The weapon was as beautiful as it was deadly, the diamond blade with a wrapped handle of cold iron, braided with gold, silver, and Yggdrasil wood. Its resting place was on my left calf, a sort of backup last-ditch weapon that could probably drain a dragon’s lifeforce dry if given enough time. In my mind, I viewed it as a pseudo vampire fang, perfectly suited for massive enemies if I was on my last leg.

What blew my mind though was Yggdrasil’s Wrath, a weapon grown from the World Tree itself but one that my soul-tree had grabbed for its own purposes. Looking inward, I could see a tattoo of the mace outlined on the chest of the faux-personage. I remember something about a ‘Doomsday Protocol’ but SAW didn’t exactly give me a clear description.

My wing-hoverboard combo is pretty sweet, the former using solar and heat intake runes as well as anti-gravity to fly and the latter using the same to hover. The wings doubled as extra surface area to recharge batteries on the go as the hoverboard can use leylines to charge and ride at the same time, a pretty ingenious setup for myself, economical and environmentally friendly.

The last thing I had to check were my extra mana batteries, of which I had just under a literal ton of them. Most of them were stored in Gungnir’s spatial storage area but my hoverboard had six dedicated extra large batteries attached to them and SAW had a few lining my back and my chest that doubled as armor plates. Those have a nice coating of tungsten to prevent any kind of fracturing.

“I’m pretty much good to go.” I muttered to myself.

[Yes you are, so stop putting off talking to people,] Kraken admonished, opening our mental link and sounding like a parent while folding his tentacles over themselves. [It’s easy, walk in there, take over, and then get busy making yourself a nice house in the woods near the town. They offered it to you last time but you didn’t take it.]

“They didn’t offer it,” I snapped. “I didn’t want it, I didn’t want to deal with administrative bullshit. Fix this, go kill that, my needs and my wants, I can already see an avalanche of shit to do on a freaking list for me if I do that. Fuck! AND! You’ve clearly been reminding me of my priorities.”

Kraken pulled me into the mindscape. “Listen,” he bubbled, his voice audible in the mindscape. Kraken’s squid-like body floated as he gestured, a homey living room firming out of the fog. I took a seat on the big couch and conjured up a nice cup of coffee for myself, kicking my feet up. Pointing at the floating holographic tv in the center, he started bringing up people’s faces and putting them in groups. “Being a leader in a magical community is less about doing all the shit work yourself and more about delegation. This will save you time in the long run. Besides, it’s a good place to dump Merlin if he wants to ‘hang with the locals’. Or find himself some company.” Kraken winked at me.

“Right, got that.” I agreed while ignoring the intended underlying reason for what I should be doing. Forcing Merlin’s agenda from my mind, I pointed at the groups and added labels. “Jamal hunts and fucks, keeping the dryads and the other forest-folk happy and near the town, and they all double as sentries and scouts. Cassandra and Lovera seem to work well together and probably head up their research department. Mark and Scott are the head of the main fighting force available as well as resource attainment. Remy, Fernando, Tommy’s hick group, and the rest fill in as the ‘general townspeople’, and Stacy, if I remember correctly, is in charge of childcare and something else.”

“Logistics,” Kraken filled in. “But that role may have been split off by now. Both of those are too time consuming for one mortal.”

“Sure, but they have plenty of people for that. So how’s it going to work with me waltzing in and declaring, ‘oh hey guys, I’m back and in charge’?” I mocked. “Seriously, sounds pretty stupid to me.”

Kraken’s glare only made me chuckle. “What?” I laughed. “You look like a grumpy squid, it’s funny.” The glare continued. “Fine, just a little walk in the park, declare my supremacy via orders from on High and then have a little homestead. Got it.”

“The flippancy of your attitude is what will make this difficult. On the other hand, if you approach this with the seriousness that this matter deserves, then the pieces will fall into place. Strength is respected now. I’ve seen your memories of how all humans more or less fell into the category of weak and powerless. Weaponry and numbers determined strength, but now true power can shine through. Magic allows you to cut through the facade. Who gave them several sources of power, the generator and the hydro-kinetic converter and the sunstone pyre? Who gave them ammunition facilities and elemental wands? Who summoned and bound elementals and gifted them an industrial flesh golem that can cure all their ills and heal their wounds?”

Again, the squid has a point, several in fact. Irritating that I have a Scion of Knowledge serving as my conscience, my butthurt conscience. Whoops, saw the glare from thinking that thought.

“Ok, ok, got it. Make peace or kick ass.” I grumbled all the way out of my own mindscape, running out of my house into the smoothie jungle. “Oh Meliaaaad!”

“Master! You’ve returned!” The gorgeous hamadryad stalked out of the woods, her stature large enough to rest her head on a two story building. Every detail of her flesh was on full display, a veritable supermodel giantess with clothing made from leaves that rather drew more attention to her curves than hid them. “When did you get here? Oh I wish I had known! We’ve been preparing for your return-”

“Hot damn you’ve gotten tall!” I exclaimed, wishing I was two stories tall now. Shunting that fleeting desire aside, I looked her up and down. “What the hell has Everest been feeding you?” My joking caused her to blush.

“My lord sorcerer,” she whispered, looking down from where her luxurious hair brushed against treetops. “I have missed you, but it is never a good idea to comment on a woman’s weight. This power is so grand that I cannot diminish myself for at least a decade.” With a saucy wink, she casually crushed a small boulder to powder with her hands. “But as you can see, size does matter.”

I took the poke in stride. “Well, you’re almost thirty feet of sexy right now. Kinda like the view.” Even though I was sort of joking, it wasn’t helpful that her seductive nature demi-goddess aura was leaking out, tugging on the knots of my own locked up sex drive like a pit bull yanking on a rope. And what makes the banging, hahaha, more insistent is that I’ve started coming to terms with the fact that my woman is basically not my woman anymore. If anything, Elizabeth is God’s woman, or the Tree of the Universe’s, kinda like your girlfriend deciding to be a nun for a few years to ‘find herself’ but promising to marry you after her journey.

Really makes you feel kinda shitty even though that's only loosely a parallel. And Meliad, wow, Meliad is easy. Not the cheap way, the sloppy chick at the bar who’s had too many shots of Burnetts and is trying to make out with everyone, but the kind where she genuinely wanted me because I’ve claimed this land and she’s planted in it. Maybe ‘easy’ isn’t the right word, it’s more along the lines of ‘relaxed’. She could quite honestly be my very own forest wife if I wanted. Pushing that desire down to its rightful place under my heel, I made sure that I kept a genuine smile on my face.

“That doesn’t make it right,” I muttered to myself. Clearing my throat, I looked back up to her after readjusting my hormones again. “Where’d you and your sisters plant the normal fruits, like bananas, apples, and pears?”

Kneeling in front of me and giving me the world’s largest eyeful of giantess cleavage, Meliad shyly grinned and opened her palm in front of me. “Every part of this forest is connected to me now, my lord sorcerer. Simply ask for any fruit, any dryad, or anything within the reaches of the canopy and it shall be yours.” Small piles of apples, bananas, pears, grapes and even berries were grouped in her hand, each giving off their delectable scent with nary a bruise in sight. I noticed kiwis and mangos behind those but in smaller quantities.

“I could kiss you, but I’ll wait till you’re human sized again.” Not giving her a chance to respond, I swiped the fruit into Gungnir’s storage space and hopped onto my hoverboard. I took a huge bite out of the shiny bartlett pear. “Thanks, gorgeous!” I yelled, hauling ass west towards New Richmond. Cowardly, I know, but still, personal progress. I’ll take it.

Knowing that I had roughly thirty days to learn what I needed to learn gave me the mental leeway to make this journey. I have advantages that nobody else has and I planned on using and abusing them until victory was assured. I have a brilliant spirit-familiar who is a young Scion of Order and I have Mental Sorcery that will allow me to learn faster than any human possibly could. To top it all off, my unconscious mind can absorb even more information as well as organize what I learned so that every bit could be used effectively.

Gently gliding my way down the Rappahannock River westward against the current felt like a trip down memory lane, but in the way a child remembers his old home being much bigger than it actually was. The beautiful mini-rapids that once entertained thousands during the mild Virginia summers had now become class five rapids rough enough to take down even experienced kayakers. Gone were the days of gentle paddleboarding and tubing, drinking a cooler full of beers without worrying about elephant sized predators lurking beneath the surface. I mean, I didn’t really worry about them, especially when I’m going about forty miles an hour, my Water Sorcery giving me the ability to shred like Bethany Hamilton. I was doing fine too, the wind in my face, orange juice droplets streaming off my face as I devoured another snack, right until my senses warned me that I had incoming.

Small boulders made partially solidified acid slammed into the river, just barely missing as I cranked up the power flow to my hoverboard and pulled hard to the left. Bits and pieces of dead fish floated to the surface in the bubbling froth as I kicked my board onto the river bank and dove down into the river. A piercing shriek blasted the water over and over, tearing my eardrums to shreds even as I tamped down on the pain, forcing myself to focus above the surface of the water.

Shoving myself to the side even as my Flesh Sorcery started working overtime from the damage of intense sound waves rocking my body, gray talons that looked eerily similar to a bird of prey slammed into the area I just vacated. Letting instinct guide me, I wrapped myself in a shield of dense mana and surging water, pushing my body closer to my attacker until I could grab its leg. Before it could start to bite, Gungnir lanced out jagged blades of ice, slicing the Achilles tendons on both legs. I focused on coating the bleeding legs with an ever thickening layer of ice to weigh it down.

Giant jaws filled with yellow teeth slammed down on me, almost hard enough to penetrate my shield fully, and flung me up and out in front of the monster. [Wyvern! Wyvern! Don’t drop your shield!] Kraken freaked. [Anger, acid, and raw strength, wyverns hunt in packs but are generally strong enough to make dragons think twice about attacking them.]

[Grenades don’t care about their feelings.] I grunted mentally, summoning a few and launching them at the wyvern that glared at me with slitted red-green eyes. Each roar was punctuated by an acid loogie. Grinning as adrenaline pumped through, I countered with upswells of water straight from the river we both fought in.

[Hurry! Kill it now before its friends join in!]

Fifteen crystal rounds lashed out, each cratering the massive skull of the beast. Blasting forward on top of the water, I washed its face in water and froze it, holding its maw shut. Gungnir morphed into a mace, humming with power as I hammered its skull. Each swing made its flesh ripple, the enchanted crystal accentuating each sickening thud with power until I mushed the wyvern’s brain. Not waiting for its death throes to subside, I pulled the body down to the river bottom with a whirlpool and froze it to a outcropping of rock. Three simultaneous shrieks rang out but quickly were cut off.

“Who fights the talon of the flock, hmmm?” The raspy voice’s mysteriousness cut off all of the sound in the surrounding area. The playful burble of the river was no more, the wind didn’t whisper and even the usual chatter of the birds was absent.

“Suck a dick you creepy motherfucker!” I yelled, pivoting on the river’s surface, gripping Gungnir and pulling more mana to the forefront of my mind. “Or come on out so I can give you to the river.” I flexed my will, shaping a fearsome image of a massive water snake. “Her appetite is never satisfied. If you’re smarter than the last ugly fucker I tangled with, you’d run real fast and real far.” Silence reigned heavy for a moment like a storm cloud holding its breath.

“Insults from food? Tasty morsels scrabbling uselessly in the dirt, cursing the inevitable with with last breaths? Egg breakers gasping for air?”

The voice came from every direction and even my Mental Sorcery couldn’t detect where it was coming from. “Humans taste like ass!” I snarled. “You’d know that if you weren’t a worthless piece of alien shit.” Figured that pissing it off would probably be the best option. Angry enemies are lazy enemies, they make stupid mistakes.

An airy chuckle shook the leaves on the trees, but only on the north side of the riverbank. Focusing my senses that way, I still kept slowly pivoting in the water as if I didn’t know anything. Gungnir slowly shifted from mace form to spear form, the crystal orb transforming into the classic swirling three bladed speartip.

[I bet the coinage of your choice that it’s harpies.] Kraken sent.

[I don’t bet against Scions of Knowledge,] I shot back. [The house always gets its due.]

[Hahaha,] he chuckled, shooting me a little packet of info.

[Yeah, the voice is more fucked up than I remember but I’m pretty sure we’ve run into these bastards before. Guess this is why I shoulda taken the time to clean out the nest.] The sky began to blacken as the silence lifted. Blades of wind lashed out, pinging off my shields as others sliced through trees on the river banks.

“That's all you got, limp-dicked pansy?!” I kept looking around. “You baby-backed bitch! Festering featherless skank that couldn’t fight a chicken! Eggless wonder! I bet your butthole is so rotten that you split in half everytime you sneeze!” Still no response. “You’re a flockless son of a pigeon!"

That did it. Three more stone gray wyverns each the size of a biplane fell out of the sky spewing acid as a tornado materialized right on top of me. The whipping blades of wind carried the infuriated screams of the harpy. I could have been more than one. I'm not foolish enough to believe that only one was in charge of this weather working. Even though I didn't let me inner musings distract me, the three wyverns were able to land their acid spit in a coordinated assault due to the tornado temporarily locking me in position, the rapidly moving air essentially acting as a blender, swirling the acid into a gigantic drill that stripped away at my shield. Giving in to my instincts, I fell back under the surface of the river, fighting quantity with quantity as the rushing roar of the Rappahannock washed away the vile green liquid that smoked even though it hadn't even managed to touch the edges of my armor. Two massive paws and a spiny tail fished around the river for me as I darted about.

[Crystal bullets don't work so well under water!] Kraken cursed.

[Easy day.] I snarl-bubbled, activating Poseidon's Trident. My blue fishing spear materialized in a flash of deep blue light, answering my call. Extending my will through the amplifier, the waters of the river grasped back at the wyverns with a ferocity to match their own. Seven pillars of water wielding bladed fingers of ice tore into their wings as if they were tissue paper, reaping swathes of flesh as the wyverns struggled and flapped uselessly against a foe that couldn't bleed.

In their frenzy, they didn't notice that my focus was on the smaller bladed arms of water that slashed at various weak spots, wing tendons and veins close to the surface. I darted around with my deadly trident, threading the thrashing needle to open their lifeblood to the ever-hungry river. Three minutes of frenzied thrashing only made them bleed out faster, their struggles only growing weaker as bits of them floated on down the Rappahannock.

Waving my trident, the river tossed the carcasses up on the river bank even as I waited near the rocky bottom of the Rappahannock, allowing the current to dilute and wash away the acidic blood. Rising to the top, I stood on conjured ice floes that grew under my influence. "I'm pretty sure I can do this longer than you can produce wyverns!" I yelled, shaking Gungnir and Poseidon's Trident. "I'm still as fresh as a waterfall jumping salmon!"

Creepy silence one again came and went, unnaturally stilling even the ambient sounds. For a handful of moments, the pressure of unfulfilled rage froze even the carefree burble of the river, before letting it snap back into place.

"Odd, yes, I’ll give you that. Creepy . . . even more so, but you're less scary than a haunted doll in a murder house. Any idiot with a lick of sense wouldn't be afraid of you," I taunted. Miming out the stupidity of most classic American horror films, I danced around the ice floe like a little girl. "Everybody fear the fucked up child's toy with a knife! Oh wait, this is America where every household has a gun and there's a church on every street corner. Hmmm, I wonder if I should shoot the doll that wants to murder me and then drag it to a church for an exorcism."

"Nonsense will not protect you from me, mortal morsel of meat."

"Your alliteration sucks!” I snarled, standing up straight. “Look, if you're not going to come on out to me, then I will find you!" I promised. "Liam Neeson ain't got nothing on a determined, pissed off sorcerer with a habit of going above and beyond in the explosives department. I will find you, I will kill you, and then I will use your floating island as my own personal toilet. And if that's not enough of a threat for you to leave me the fuck alone, I will use my magic to turn your half-alive bird-brain carcass into a flesh golem that can't move but looks like a female moose rump, and then stick your ass in Canada for all the boy moose to enjoy.”

My threat was met with silence. “One solid tweak of moose hormones and I guarantee that you will be railed day in and day by every available moose johnson within eight hundred miles. It will be so damn graphic that a new disease will be named after you, ‘Dicks-lexic’! Now pick up your fucking trash if you get it asshole."

The world's fastest tornado descended and scooped up the three dead wyverns, yanking them up into the sky and off to the north. "North huh?" I muttered, making a note for Kraken to follow up on. "Guess I'll be heading north soon."

My own grumpiness hung over me like a burgeoning storm, which didn’t go over well when I arrived at New Richmond. I was the unnatural bad mood coming to rain on everyone else’s parade. The little song birds were chirping without a care and the sunlight was making everything glisten as if brand new. Small hordes of children chased their familiars while elementals played and built all around them. Even the adults had expressions of general relaxed contentedness that spoke of a time of ease and growing.

Most of the trees were heavy with fruit already and the greenhouses in the distance were literally glowing green even as small, personal gardens were showing their bounty. The houses molded from elemental conjured stone sported decorations even as the houses grown from oak displayed new flowing carvings that I just knew came from the wood shaping wands I’d left.

But at least someone shared my grouchiness.

Scott, Mark and Jamal stalked out of a dwelling, arguing with each other over something, Jamal towered over his friends, his barely clothed body easily led the group as his long legs were a clear insult to those of a shorter persuasion. Mark didn’t care, shoving his finger in Scott’s face and chewing him out over something. I couldn’t make it out. Scott kept right on Jamal’s heels, his jaw set like he was on a mission to rip someone’s face off.

Maybe now wasn’t a good time to casually take over a town. Even if it would be the softest coup in human history. As soon as I saw Lyra step out of the nearest tree to the arguing trio, I froze.

[Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit!] I cursed, keeping my foul language inside my head. Quickly tamping down on my magical aura, I pulled it in as close to myself as possibly and ducked behind a tree. I hadn’t even thought about what I was going to say to them. Oh, I’m sorry people, but Merlin, yes that Merlin, the real one, decided to screw around with my life and force a paradoxical yet fantastical plan on me that requires you to basically call me king. That sounds like a story a cracked out homeless guy would tell you. Even though it frankly wasn’t my fault, at some point, even the truth is going to sound like a fucking excuse.

BAMF! A long legged, red headed corpse flashed into existence right in front of me. Her milky white eyes had yellow pupils and her hair writhed like snakes around her waist as she stood in front of me with her arms crossed, her frown reminiscent of a disappointed aunt. Wait, I knew this bitch, I took her head off in Merlin’s realm and she was supposed to be hanging up in a cage in one of my living rooms? The only thing that stopped me in that moment from blowing her head off again was the fact that she quietly sat down in front of me and put her chin in her hands.

“Exactly who are you hiding from, honored descendant of Merlin?” Her tone was somewhere between a muffled laugh and an eye roll but her voice sounded like warm honey. Gross. “And did you forget your Ancestor’s promise?”

“Quiet!” I hissed, peeking around the tree, seeing that the three men were still walking roughly in my direction, their argument getting louder and more contentious.

“He said, ‘If you can kill that lich, you can keep her. She’ll teach you more wizardry than that damn school you sent your brother off to’.” She smirked. “And I do so recall the violence with which you tore my cranium from my neck, an absolutely delicious level of primal violence.”

“I said, quiet!” But of course, it was my voice that caught the unwanted attention of my friends. At least, the closest thing I had to friends.

At the same time, several conflicting things happened. Jamal launched himself between me and the revenant, screaming, ‘zombie!’ Scott’s entire body lit up, flaring out as if he were the center of a miniature sun. His hands pointed towards me, flaring brightly before firing two incandescent fireballs in my direction. Each fireball raged at being contained by the will of another, yearning to burn it all down. Mark didn’t hesitate, pulling out one of the rifles I had made for the team and hit the deck. It all happened so quickly that I couldn’t even react. Not in a thousand years did I think I would be attacked the next time I visited.

“Shit.”