Most of me wished that I hadn’t choked down the two Centauri ration cubes before jumping into battle but even I couldn’t deny the absolute rush my upgraded body provided. Effort felt good. Real good. With a metabolism working overtime and a mini Flesh Golem making lactic acid a laughable concept, I had energy to spare.
Gungnir’s latest form, a wicked double-bladed ax big enough to make a strongman think twice, fit nicely in my hands as I reaped the undead in droves. Rarely did I have to resort to my ‘Mana-Shield’ spell to tank blasts of filthy black magic but the ‘Salvo’ spell was just plain fun. It took very little effort to ‘tweak’ the spell, condensing the forward points of the bullets into needle-like projectiles capable of effortless cutting through slabs of bone-armor.
For the masses of weak, unarmored corpses howling for my blood, the ‘Salvo’ spell with a quick disc-like alteration on the output sigil scythed through their seemingly unending numbers harder than a coked up marine working his way through the local hookers.
And even then, we were being pushed back.
Flashes of dim light barely pulsed in a line letting me get a general idea of where Versonae was doing her work. She targeted without fail any undead that looked to be a possible magic user. Their unending shrieks didn’t set them apart more than the floating balls of greasy black fire floating in their faceholes or the bright green fire tinging their weapons. The edge of her hatchet blades were coated in platinum and runed to dispel any active magic and the lethal Lunek put them to good use.
Reeanth and Sunny formed the core of our defensive line, unfailingly shouldering the burden of bolstering any part of the phalanx that threatened to cave in to the pressure. Acantha stayed behind the lines, standing on a shielded platform that both protected her while still giving her the height required to put her large-scale magic to use. Tightly packaged bundles of living fire intermittently fired from her position and either completely annihilated anything in their radius where they landed, or the fire exploded to life and took on a raging semblance of burning hatred.
While I wanted to watch in awe as Acantha’s flaming summons wreaked a new kind of havoc, I had to take care of my own ass. Before I knew it, my personal rampage had carried me further east to where the far right of the golem line was beginning to crumble. Where the river flowed into the ocean formed the easternmost boundary and the undead were seemingly unwilling to just flank us by crossing the water. So instead, too many concentrated groups were targeting this vulnerability trying to create a weakness and then flank the infantry line. If the golems fell here, it was only a matter of time and effort before the rest of the golem line became disrupted.
My incoherent snarls were lost in the clash of battle. Two massive hulks pressed me and my supporting golems hard. They weren’t above throwing handfuls of zombies at us like bowling balls or baseballs. The harder ones to deal with were the ones thrown like a pop-fly where they came down screaming bloody murder which was extremely hard to ignore considering the sheer number I had to deal with right in front of me. I was being attacked from above and right in my face at the same time.
Ignoring how wasteful I felt it might be, I dug deep into my stores of power and crafted a massive ‘Mana-Shield’ above me. Thinking quickly, I bent the surface of the shield so that large, barbed spikes stuck straight up. Tying off the anchor point to a few feet above me, I gave rotational sigils a yank and then a powerful infusion of mana so I could force the shield to rotate in place effectively creating a wide blender plate for the zombies to land on.
Even that wasn’t startling enough to get their attention. Cursing aloud was a waste of energy but that never really stopped me before. “FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!” I screamed, clearing the way in front of me with several massive swings of Gungnir and a ten second blasting of an empowered ‘Salvo’ spell channeled through Gungnir’s wicked speartip. Even though my weapon looked a bit off, my new strength could handle whipping it around with ease. With the immediate way cleared, I launched myself at the nearest zombie hulk.
The massive slimy bulk had six non-uniform arms of varying sizes and three zombie projectiles squirming in its grasp. The fat fuck didn’t see me coming. Gungnir’s long glowing blade landed in the crook of its neck severing rotting viscera and necromantically hardened bones. None of that was an obstacle and Gungnir carried straight through to the other side.
As I fought, I kept pushing down the unfamiliar instinct to leap above the horde. My reptilian-enhanced body kept desiring to gain the aerial advantage but it didn’t realize that I don’t have wings. Once you’re up in the air without some propulsion ability, you’re just a moving target with a predictable flight pattern. The other side of me kept cursing the fact that SAW was largely out of commission due to my sorceries being locked up. I could’ve used the wings and hoverboard capabilities right about now.
So instead, I doggily kept slicing forward but a bit more conservatively. I couldn’t afford to leave myself wide open by swinging with two hands now that I’d gained some distance from the golems. With a thought, Gungnir shrunk down to be a menacing axe able to be easily wielded with one hand and I pulled a better ‘Mana-Shield’ variation from my Grimoire. This one contained some of the runes that formed ‘Mana-Bolt’, but instead of firing bolts, it would absorb kinetic energy of incoming hits and store it. And then when I needed it to, the ‘Mana-Shield’ would convert that into an outward kinetic force blast so I could prevent the classic ‘dog-pile’ situation.
Two giant fire elementals, one in the shape of a T-rex but with massive arms, and the other a three headed stag, plowed through the thickest concentration of rotting corpses that didn’t know how to die. Different kinds of arcane fire burned in their cores, enhancements from Acantha to serve as enticements for future service. Pulsing waves emanated from the core almost like a slow heartbeat and the flaming beasts slowly but visually grew the longer their cores continued to expel energy. I took their entrance and subsequent ravaging of the battlefield as my queue to pivot towards the center of the line but there was nothing left to fight.
Failing to shake off the thick film of gore covering most of me, I tried to keep my shiver of disgust to a minimum since there just wasn’t a point. “Hey!” I yelled, jogging towards Sunny and my crew. “What gives? We done already?”
Acantha stayed well away from the rest of us. Lucky for her, she stuck to ranged combat and avoided all the nastiness that came with getting up close and personal with the living dead. Keeping her nose upwind of us, she released her summoned Fire Elementals so we could hear over their ever-present roar.
“They attack in waves.” She explained, backing up as she caught a whiff and almost gagged. “By the First Witch, you all smell awful!”
Reeanth let the head of her mana-maul slam into the sand, crunching the bits of fired glass underneath. “You should be well used to the smell of rotting corpses and burnt flesh.”
Without missing a beat, Versonae half-whispered, “It disturbs me that you actually believe that.”
My mini Flesh Golem minimized the adrenaline shakes and I shrank Gungnir down to a knife so I could sheathe it properly. No gore stuck to my weapon which I took as a welcome side effect of it being a magical implement. I didn’t question it.
“We may have a few hours to rest. Or they may come in as little as thirty minutes.” Reeanth glared into the darkness, engaging her minimal Light Sorcery to pierce the gloom. “For now, we have little to fear.”
“I’ll get back to charging the pylon.” I said, eagerly shaking the excess nastiness off of me. “But I’m hopping in the ocean for a good rinse.”
Reeanth hooked me by the arm as I turned to leave. I watched as slimy gore fell off of her leg in a nasty chunk splattering across a broken rock.
“Or you can take a rinse first.”
Her glare told me I was on the wrong path so I motioned for her to keep talking. “First! We supervise Sunny and monitor the army gathering up the damaged and broken golems. They’ll bring them to Sunny for him to repair. Once that’s done, we give all of our mana to the pylon so Sunny and the golems can recharge. After that, then we get our rest.”
“So cleanliness isn’t next to godliness? Or good sleep?”
Laughing oddly to herself, Acantha stepped a bit closer to the both of us with an evil grin. Small orbs of white fire glistened in the palm of her hand yet they barely emitted any heat.
“Here, a gift.”
The flaming orbs erupted in a massive, heatless fireball wrapping around Reeanth, Versonae and myself. For a moment, I thought I had been betrayed but the fire didn’t hurt. In fact, I could even breathe a bit better. Trails of warm energy pierced my muscles, soothing barely healed aches and washing away impurities both in my skin and on top of it.
I gave my resident witch student a puzzled look and then looked down at myself in astonishment. All of the evidence from the filth-covered battlefield had been erased from my presence. Even the sand and shattered glass at my feet were sparkling clean.
“We are going to have to sit down and talk about what kinds of magic you have at your disposal.” I said, giving Acantha a hard look. “That wasn’t normal fire.” I sniffed the air. “It even got rid of most of the smell too.”
“That would have been appreciated earlier!”
Versonae pulled back a bit from Reeanth. “Each kind of fire is limited!” She snapped, waving away the retreating flames. “I can only use so much of any kind before the types of fire overwhelm it. It’s why if I use a bunch of one then I have to use a bunch of the others to keep the proportions from overflowing. Fire doesn’t just burn, it consumes, it seeks to grow without limits.”
While night had completely fallen and the wrecked landscape in front of us was darker than a witch’s butthole, my giant pylon glowed like the sun behind us. The massive crystal behind us towered over the defensive fortifications and even my sunstone golems contributed to brightening the area. It served mainly to confuse my human brain about what time of day it actually was because the golems emitted real sunlight. That’s what sunstones do, they store and radiate sunlight.
But they also convert ambient energy into sunlight, which is how we’re able to charge up said pylon and golem armies. My brain ran ahead of my good sense, thinking about adding big spotlights and extra laser cannon emplacements to the top of the wall. Me not having my usual blend of sorceries was really stealing the thunder from my future self.
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This place could be so cool if I could just get my damn powers back. For the eighteenth time that day, I cursed Merlin’s name. Mini-daydreams of creating a giant ass Notre Dame gothic fortress but flipped, something sinister but celestial. Spires crafted from glowing sunstone and staircases of the whitest marble my out of commission Earth Sorcery could fashion. The crown jewel would be the epic gargoyle golems made of quartz, sunstone, white marble, and diamond, just so I could strike the perfect balance between angelic beings and scary demons guarding my latest fortress.
Shaking off pointless daydreams, I sat on top of the wall with my legs hanging off the side so I could do two things at once: supervise Sunny and his golems repair the broken golems and also be in a slight meditative state so I could refill my reserves of mana. My Grimoire floated in front of me with glowing notes on the relevant sections. Kraken’s forethought would be saving my bacon, as he used my own Grimoire more efficiently than I did. Between glancing at the pages and Sunny fixing his army, I found it hard to concentrate on the flowy script written in dark red ink.
“Why is there so much mumbo jumbo spiritual crap in there?” Fighting off an involuntary shiver, I grabbed the Grimoire and brought it closer so I could read aloud. Kraken floated down to hover just above my shoulder. “Ahem! Feel the weight of the world around you, breathe in the majesty, let the interconnectedness between the universal consciousness rejoin the cycle. Let your understanding be subsumed by the Greater until your rightful place is realized. Just another grain of sand on the beach, another speck in the unending sky, borne upon the winds of Fate coursing through one and all.”
Fluorescent diagrams of differing alien physiologies with blueprints made up of arrows and strange symbols made my head hurt.
“It makes perfect sense!”
I ignored Kraken’s obvious lie as I flipped through a few more pages, muttering soft curses until I got to something a bit more recognizable.
Clearing my throat, I began reading aloud again. “Azerleen’s treatise on the soul, section 4.3: stimulating mana regeneration through cyclical compression and contained expansion.”
Kraken rudely flipped to the next page. “Skip the first part, your personal visualization is worlds ahead of most practicing wizards. The soul-tree will get in the way. Start here instead.”
“Section 4.5: post secondary-self mana regeneration. For those who have delved into the realms of Understanding-”
“Sorcery.” Kraken clarified.
“Realms of Understanding (another way of saying ‘Sorcery’), parallel visualizations can be used to redefine an existing process. Regardless of the visualization-”
“Your soul-tree.”
I huffed at the interruption and glared at my familiar. “At least let me get through the paragraph first here and then I’ll ask the questions.”
“Fine, fine.”
“Regardless of the visualization, the self, the soul, the core of your being can always be pictured as a simple sphere. A drop of water floating in space, perfectly at rest and unbound by gravity. From here, carefully, gently, slowly, cast your will on all sides of the sphere and give equal compression and then relax your pressure. Practice this exercise, this ‘heartbeat’ if you will. Each compression and relaxation is one pulse. Once a ‘pulse’ can be done very easily, almost second nature, then for the next iteration of pulses, increase the force of compression but still maintain perfect control.”
Kraken grumbled at my slow reading, flipping the page again and pointing at yet again another complex diagram. The sheer number of interconnected lines looked like a system of arteries and veins laid over top of a human body but the organs themselves were out of whack. Other than the brain and the heart, the guts were messed up, the liver with a series of five lumpy orbs, and the lungs did not have a protective sac.
“Is that something different?” I asked, flipping the pages back and forth. “It has to be right? Going from a sphere pulse visualization exercise to whatever the fuck that is can’t be related?!”
“The soul is only as complex as you make it out to be.” Kraken answered slowly, as if I were a ten year old child. “Your’s is a soul-tree, an already hideously complex contortion of visualization mixed with tremendously powerful sorceries supported by artifacts and a dragon-sized mana storage capability. Nothing about you is easy so why not aim for the heavens?”
I almost tore the page out of the book just so I could shove the diagram closer to Kraken’s large eye. “These ARE NOT the same thing! If you were taking notes then you missed a decade’s worth of transitions!”
With one tentacle, Kraken slowly closed the Grimoire and sighed. “You can use one of my ‘Monocle’ spell variations with the ‘intensity’ dial later but that diagram can be broken down in terms of complexity and level of skill. Start with the first exercises. Picture your soul as an orb of light, an orb of purest mana, and work on controlled pulses. Once you’ve done that, you ramp up the intensity until the compression part starts to hurt just a HINT. That’s key, don’t go past that point. You have to work on getting to that line and making that second nature. Once you do, your passive rate of mana generation makes a noticeable jump in capability.”
As the darkness creeped in further than it should, I set my Grimoire down. “Guess I’ll have to work on that later.”
Acantha’s shout rang out. “Bone Dreadnaughts!”
Reeanth jumped on top of the wall next to me with a frightening grin, her mana-maul exuding an unnatural weight all its own and her eyes flared with Light Sorcery.
“My favorite.”
“What? Why?” Hauling myself to my feet so I could see, Sunny and the golems were in their orderly lines steadfastly watching the gloom. Spears, axes, and warhammers were held at the ready and my team took their places.
Before vanishing, Versonae whispered, “You’ll see.”
Kraken kept watch again for me as I kept working on the real goal of charging the pylon crystal to full. For reasons that soon became obvious, this wave of undead was easier for my golem army to completely take apart compared to the last one.
It was less of a flood of slimy horrors and more of an orderly charge of hulking barbarians. The massive amalgamations of twisted creatures tore through the darkness at an easy pace, loping across the sands as if they were the top predators. Whip-like limbs waved sickly weapons sutured to the tips. It was as if literal spines had been torn out of a creature and then the rest of that creature's bones were fashioned into a weapon and then attached to the bone-whip. These Bone Dreadnaughts were not limited to the standard number of limbs either.
The first charge looked like hellish centaurs followed by bone-clad trolls. My army of magical stone was not phased at all. This sight didn’t fill my golems with fear. The unwavering nature of Earth did not care about the horrors that the undead could wreak upon them. My pride warred with my good sense as my reptilian instincts roared to join the fight but it was already well in hand.
Sunny’s war-hammer lashed out, sundering the demons of the night with each blow. Even the other golems fought in concert, guarding each other with shields to tank unexpected blows while the ones behind them hurled large stones or stabbed out with incredibly long spears. The shattered Bone Dreadnaughts fell and I could make out the true horror within. Each creature was actually a ball of blackened flesh with tentacles that wielded the innumerable bones like a suit of armor. In order to kill them, the core had to be destroyed.
But my team already knew this. With each wave of Dreadnaughts getting ground to dust, the orderly lines of the sunstone golems would step forward to take care of any surviving Bone Dreadnaughts and then step back. It was a cold, hard meat grinder with a mind for pure efficiency. I started to speak to point out the surviving enemy in the back trying to slink back into the darkness to cobble together another body to rejoin the fray. But I didn’t need to say a word.
Acantha held back her flames, waiting for just the right moments to strike. I watched her scan the battlefield for those Bone Dreadnaughts without a body trying desperately to escape Sunny’s long reach. Condensed bolts of flames lashed out like flares from a gun. Hideous shrieks split the air but soon each one died out.
Versonae held back her fury knowing that her choice of weapon wouldn’t serve her in this battlefield. Instead, she focused her efforts on distracting the enemy in places where the golem infantry lines looked to be a bit shaky. But that rarely happened. This type of undead was the absolute worst kind to send as my army was the perfect counter. The bone armor of the Dreadnaughts didn’t stand a chance against the casual but immense strength of the golems and the golem weapons were optimized to handle large opponents.
The flames of my Fire Sorceress could take down a Bone Dreadnaught but the armor would take a while to burn through. Her magic was best suited for masses of unarmored enemies or those of a weaker constitution. And I agreed with the strategy as I observed it, even though my team didn’t see fit to tell me that there were freaking patterns in place. That’s not to say that the normal Horrors weren’t coming through, it just wasn’t the flood that the first wave was, which is where Acantha shined.
“They really don’t need me, do they?”
“You get used to it.” Kraken replied. “They could’ve held on for about another week before you showed up. The team you’ve assembled is no pushover.”
My fingers itched for Gungnir and my trusty weapon appeared in my hand. “If my fucking rifle hadn’t gotten blown up then even sitting up here I would’ve been able to contribute to this godawful madness.”
“Let’s not forget the many pieces you’ve helped with already.” In front of me appeared little images of light. “Reeanth’s mana-maul and her upgraded armor as well as the complete tattoo diagram enchantment magicked into her skin. Her Light Sorcery is also triple the strength it would’ve been without your meddling.”
“Okay, yeah . . . good point.”
“You made Sunny’s body and forged that contract, and I built the program so that combat wouldn’t be an issue for him or the magically linked golems.”
“All right, all right, I see your point.”
Kraken kept right on going. “Versonae avoided death because of your quick thinking about the healing and her weapons and armor came from you. Acantha’s brain isn’t broken because of your inability to not help and her armor and wands are also your doing. Struggling with insecurity doesn’t really have a point if there’s loads of evidence to the contrary.”
I smacked him with my Grimoire. “Shaddup! I don’t need you playing conscience over here. I’m just saying that I’m used to being in the thick of things. Hard to relax and focus on learning shit when one stray shot of sideways luck and the Hungry Ones overrun us.”
And still, Kraken kept right on conjuring little images of light and ticking them off. “Made the pylon, all the generators, one desert castle, learned the basics of wizardry, swerved an Aelven princess, the list goes on and on.”
“FINE!” I snapped, re-opening the Grimoire to the page on the basics of mana-regeneration. “I’ll start learning this too.”
The worst part about it but technically should have been a relief is that Kraken was right, again. My team didn’t need me for this particular wave. The only explosions that distracted me were from Versonae sneakily lobbing mana-grenades to untangle knots of Bone Dreadnaughts or to give the golems some room to work instead of being overwhelmed by the incoming flood.
Merlin’s translucent wall keeping my Sorceries out of reach almost seemed to be an actual help when it came to getting this new technique down. It didn’t have a name so I used my blood to generate more ink and slapped a name in there.
“Heart of the Pulsar? Isn’t that a bit ostentatious?”
I bit the inside of my cheek before flipping the one page back and forth. “The first level is the ‘Pulse’, the second part is creating lines of magic throughout the body but that’s stupid because I have a soul-tree already doing that. So add a spin like an actual pulsar out in space so the contraction and expansion are in tune with a spin so I can just spin the bastard faster to make more mana?”
Kraken full on slapped me. “YOU THINK YOU HAVE ENOUGH EXPERIENCE TO JUST REWORK A MANA-REGENERATION TECHNIQUE THAT MESSES WITH THE FOUNDATION OF YOUR SOUL???”
I gaped at him for a minute before my thoughts cleared. “But my Mana Sorcery is sort of confirming that I’m on the right path for this?”
Kraken let another slap loose. “LEARN THE FUCKING BASICS BEFORE TRYING TO PLAY GOD! YOU INSANE MANIAC!”
I didn’t even bother to say anything as he stormed off in a huff muttering dark things under his breath. Kraken flew past the wall and down into the back line of the golems, entering one and commandeering it. The possessed golem flew over the rest of its comrades and began laying waste to the field, speeding up the cleanup.
Reeanth joined me at the top of the wall and arched an eyebrow.
I glared at her, burying my nose in the book. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”