Suffice to say, by the end of the night, I had some quality initial product for my brother. With his memories and my Nature Sorcery, conjuring marijuana seeds was not a problem. The issue was growing the damn things. Apparently, weed seeds are tempermental little bastards, always trying to be ‘male’ instead of the preferred ‘female’ unless you get the temperature of the environment just right and make sure that they don’t cross-pollinate incorrectly. And the flavors? HOW THE FUCK am I supposed to magic up the right flavors?
My lack of familiarity wasn’t doing me any favors but the attempts were wearing on my brother.
It’s not that I have anything against the Devil’s lettuce, the good Lord’s little smoke, but for me, alcohol was my drug of choice back in college. I was always rarin’ to go, wantin’ to play drunk indoor soccer or some body-boxing with other drunk friends. For me, sitting down and veggin’ out was not my favorite activity. My lazy brother on the other hand, was a connoisseur of the slower things in life. He’d make a perfect BBQ artist, patiently waiting for the smoker to tenderize the meat, lovingly tend to the coals to keep them just right.
Not me. I wanted results and I wanted them now. I liked to grill my steaks, sear those bad boys until they just barely crossed the line from raw to seared and that was perfect for me. You could almost hear the bloody slab of meat ‘moo’!
Concentrating on exactly what he wanted was frustrating as he kept going on about the different kinds and the different kinds of highs. Eventually, I gave up going off of his descriptions and refused to work on it until he provided me with the memories of the different kinds of weed he had smoked. Thirty minutes later, I had several different piles of seeds for him, all laid out in different categories. It actually felt good to do something fun for a bit that didn’t have the purpose of general violent mayhem for once.
“Please tell me you can grow’em like the last ones?” Andy’s eyes were bugging out of his skull as he carefully sifted through the piles. “I’m thinking brownies, cheesecake bars-”
“Now just hold on,” I cautioned, slapping his hand with a wooden spoon. “Damn, I sound old. Think bigger bro. What if you like this stuff? What if other people like this stuff?”
“Uh uh?” Clearly, he didn’t know where I was going with this.
“Dude, we’re adding experimentation of your favorite pastime to your list of things to do before you go off to Arcane. Guess who else might like to smoke a bit? Who might pay some mighty big bucks in a currency we don’t yet know about down the road?”
Andy’s hands froze for a second, then he gently put down the seeds into their respective piles. “You want me to be an interstellar weed dealer?”
“No, no my friend,” I said in the most comforting of tones as I put my arm on his shoulder. “I want you to be an upscale dispensary, providing only the finest and most delicate of all the euphorics. We could call it ‘Jones’ Jays’.”
“I cannot believe it!” Johnny basically busted down the door and stomped over. “You had the good stuff this whole time and didn’t let me have just a bit? Who the fuck showed you new age Taco Bell? A little reciprocity would be nice! See, I can learn big words too!”
Sighing as the last bit of hope for Johnny went down the drain, I turned back to Andy. “I actually have some people I want you to meet. Probably willing to be on board more than anyone else in the world, seeing as how there aren’t many left.”
Raising one eyebrow, my brother replied, “What about my people?”
“Shit!” Remembering that I hadn’t gone back to New Miami to fulfill my promise of fixing Andy’s squadmates, I quickly conjured a couple small stone boxes and put the seeds in. “Andy, you’re right, fuck me. Ok, you know how this works, plant half of each box in a nice area. Label the area and I’ll work on this when we get back. Johnny, you’re on sparring duty in the morning. Tell Reeanth that she’s on arcane combat in the afternoon and gardening with meditation is reserved for the evening.”
Grabbing all of my gear, I gave Spot and Fuzzy a quick belly rub and took off for Yggdrasil.
[What’s the rush?] Kraken asked. [Whoa! Slow down!]
[Stupid, friggin, good for nothin-]
Shaking his head at me from inside Gungnir, Kraken rolled his eye. [Fine, don’t answer me, I’ll just have a little peek. Oh, stop worrying about that. It’s all good. Go back to the lab, got a surprise for ya.] Following the directions of my familiar, I headed into the main area of the Lab where I left Andy’s upgraded gear and the chest of Forbidden items. [See?! Easy day my friend!]
Off to the side on a table I hadn’t noticed before was a sleek wooden rod about three feet long. The bottom of it had two arms ringed with silver and the top was a four-legged stand, the legs were each about three inches long.
“What am I looking at?” I asked aloud as I picked it up. “Definitely not a weapon even though it has good balance.”
[It’s mindreaper hacking device I created just for your kin’s squadmates. Shove the four legged part into the city wall, which is the power supply, and then get those prongs around their necks. And bing badda boom! One good jolt of concentrated mana will overpower the programming and drain the bad juju into the wall, completely getting rid of the problem, and then the backwash combined with the newly emptied space will give way to the new programming I stuck in there.]
I twirled it around in one hand like a baton, reading the enchantments set into its core. “That bright packet in the center there, the one with three distinct parts, what’s that?” I asked, peering at it intently. The weaves of mana were far too dense and the runes too small for a casual glance to reveal its secrets.
[Thought you might want Andy’s friends to have a chance at being overpowered themselves in the future, so there’s a bunch of rune and tattoo information in there, basic spellforms with the advanced versions set to unlock when they master the easy stuff, a couple schematics for wards, shields, wands, and a basic outline of some of the geography for their internal maps.]
After making Kraken add in a small info packet about the facts of my actions and future ones, I walked over to Yggdrasil and took a quick trip. The best part about this reprogrammer device, honestly, was the simple fact that I didn’t need to convince anyone of shit. Once I ported over to New Miami the way I did last time, I hunted around the city underground like a sneaky worm, feeling for the auras of my brother’s squadmates. When I had a lock on their position, a quick whammy of overpowered mental magic knocked them the fuck out and then I took them to the wall. Due to the Centauri constitution that allowed them to take more than the usual amount of punishment, I didn’t have to worry about being gentle.
The process ended up being pretty simple. Step one, slam the metal legs of the reprogrammer to the wall, which ended up sticking with no problem. Step two, use my Flesh Sorcery enhanced body to hoist the Centauri bodies up to the prongs for a minute while Kraken’s creation worked its magic. Step three, deposit the cleansed and reprogrammed soldiers back where I found them. By the time I was done with the initial fifteen squad members, I dropped in on Santa-esque Rolf who was at the top of the wall and tossed the device to him.
“I’m tired of this already, your turn!” The humongous man caught it without even looking, only turning to look at me when I yawned. I knew he’d look. The man’s nature was bearlike, apex predator in his natural environment, and predators always notice signs of weakness or exhaustion. So, said yawn got his attention more than the responsibility I just dropped in his lap.
“Explain.” His tone was less friendly than I expected but maybe he saw what I had been doing for the past two hours.
“Fixed a few of my brother’s friends. Had to get rid of the magic bombs up in there. It’s real easy, just stick the four legged side in the wall and then their neck between the prongs and boom! Good to go. Your city, your problem.”
Before he even had a chance to protest, I hopped off the wall, extending SAW’s wings and gliding down to the earth where I dirt-traveled to the New Miami Yggdrasil, using it to portal home. By the end of the second week, all four of us had gotten into a pretty good groove, which was just long enough for me to feel comfortable messing it up. New Miami wasn’t the only settlement on the East Coast, there was a little town not too far away that I had provisioned with more than enough supplies and it was high time my little group got to meet their neighbors.
******
Jamal’s Perspective
The only thing better than having a dragon’s heart beating in your chest is having someone else or elses whose sex drives can match that kind of energy. Turns out, there are more than enough dryads in the nearby woods to help a brotha’ out when he’s down. Elaine and Kathika’s group of hoity-toity bitches had it in their heads that one man and one woman was the way to go but they can’t even do simple math. It doesn’t work that way when the men outnumber the women on our nice little settlement. Some of us had taken to sampling what Mother Earth had so graciously provided and they certainly were grateful. The fact that they don’t mind groups is another serious plus in their favor, the only downside being the few humans who had solid sticks up their asses.
Is it any wonder that I’d rather spend my time out in the forest hunting and banging hot nature chicks than argue with people who couldn’t get with the times? No more law man, no cop, no judge, no job, no time clock, no nothin’. As my man Ben said before he left, ‘Prepare for the worst and hope for the best’. The worst is that all the women vanish and the best is I convince a couple dryads to have their watery nymph friends join in the fun.
Now Blair and Cassandra, those two could wear a man down, and boy did I make them work for it. When they added their magic to the mix, things got a bit weird but damn I rode that high for days.
“Jamal! Get your black ass back here! Chow time!” Mark called from atop the settlement’s stone walls. The massive stone walls were now at least four stories high; we had to build up another two stories after the crazed monkey incident, and then up one more after the freaking leopard attacked, using the nearby trees to just bypass our walls.
Disentangling myself from the pile of ladies in the center of a large oak, I stretched and quietly made my way out. The two story drop was nothin’ for my legs ever since Ben helped me fix my clumsy attempt to reform my heart into a dragon’s. Every day I felt just a bit stronger, a bit tougher. Lately, I’d even noticed that my skin had gotten a lot tougher and my nails got longer when I went out hunting. The night vision alone was worth it and I can’t complain about the package enhancement down below. Grabbing my sack of odd stones that I’d gathered from ranging out, I took off for home.
“Don’t do that!” Mark yelped as I simply hopped the forty yards from the nearest tree branch to the top of the wall. “I almost shot your dick off, and I know you use that thing way too much. Did you even shower?”
“Jealous?” I asked, grinning as my friend couldn’t deny it. “I take it Stacy didn’t like the ‘group’ suggestion?”
“Fuck off,” he growled, turning away to the stairs. “Dinner’s in ten and you’re behind on catching meat! And next time, take Scott with you. He’s been making eyes at a dryad for a while now but is too backed up to say anything.”
Ah yes, meat. It’s almost too easy for me to hunt, in fact it’s a chore because anything and everything is scared shitless of me. One whiff and they fall to the ground, basically begging for me to get it over with. Not sure I want Scott to see me in that state. Some of the kids had somehow gotten their hands on mutated rabbits, twisted chicken-like birds, and some ornery warthogs which supplemented the protein intake of the settlement but it was still fend for yourself in certain ways.
The simple fact was that too many people were feeding the flesh golem whatever animals they caught so they could have ‘enhancements’. For a while there, a large chunk of the women looked almost cartoonish with how big their assets had gotten until strained backs and body aches set them straight. A few ladies went full on beast-mode a month back and it took them a while to find a nice middle ground. The most fun out of that group was Cassie and her friends which used to be a volleyball team. Each one of them was now a mixed form of magical beast and they consistently came back to the village with big game.
Of course, the men couldn’t be outdone. One of the men had hunted down a bear and now a solid chunk of around thirty of them were now bigger, hairer, and thicker than any normal man, even putting the Centauri physique to shame. You couldn’t walk down the middle of the settlement without seeing some giant version of a man with exaggerated masculine features and a woman strutting unnatural beauty.
Cassandra’s posse of magic users were at odds with Lovera’s. The first being the group that wanted to expand what they called “New Richmond” into a legitimate city, a bastion of altered humanity, and the latter desiring a more primal in touch with magic approach. Cassandra’s group were all in on the magic front, quickly making lights and stone streets with proper run-off on their side of town. Lovera and her crew went the other way, growing trees to be homes and altering the grass to be soft and short, functioning as a sturdy but natural walkway.
And I loved it, the walk down the road splitting the two ideologies. The stroll between the modernized forest and magical medieval times was eye-catching to say the least as I walked from the wall to my home. Wearing nothing but a makeshift pair of shorts, I had no issues walking around larger than life, scales going up and down my arms and back, a real life black dragon man.
God damn, life is good.
*******
Andy’s Perspective
Life fuckin sucks. My big, I mean older, brother has got me training so hard that farts are literally getting kicked out of me. Just because he can heal me 24/7 so I can fight again does not mean that I SHOULD be fighting 24/7. What makes it worse is that at the end of the day, he fights me with just one magic that I pick and I can’t even touch him. I got so happy when he made the weed seeds so I could maybe relax and have some fun but noooo. One hit of his flesh magic shit later and I’m sober as fuck and it’s time to train.
Again.
“Johnny is here to teach you how to fight without magic. What will you do when you’re all tapped out? What happens when you’re exhausted and the only thing between you and death is your body?”
Damn, even when my brother’s voice is calm as he oh-so-nicely explains why he’s doing what he’s doing, there’s still an edge to it. As if Ben has ever had to work without magic. Fighting Johnny is like tangoing with a living hammer. His body is harder than steel and if he gets one grip on you you’re finished. Uhg, what’s up with Ben, pushing me this hard? Probably something he’s not telling me.
“Reeanth’s job is to teach you how to fight as a whole, blending magic and fighting techniques together in a seamless dance of death. When is a fireball the best response? Can what you’re trying to kill die just as easily with a stab or punch? Thinking while fighting is the hardest thing any warrior can do.” This bitch is an exercise in sheer viciousness. I’ve lost count how many times my bones have been broken and if I think that a bit too loudly the stupid A.I. will chime in to remind me. Over two hundred times was the last count I can recall.
My older brother stood in front of me as sweat dripped down my body. Even though I’ve fought and lost so many times today, I still had energy to spare. The runes of rejuvenation and matter-breakdown efficiency were more than enough to keep me going. Pooping was a rare occurrence now. All of that waste matter was broken down by the runes and turned into actual mana, kicking up my healing factor almost up to the level of a werewolf or vampire. Anything worse than a simple break, one minute of Ben squatting near and squinting at my broken body later and I’d be good as new.
“And I am here to teach about learning when to run.”
Dick. Me actually getting near him was impossible. If we agreed that he could only use Earth Sorcery, I either got buried in the ground or had to fight through pools of mud that grabbed me with living arms. If he used water, then he just cut my limbs off or used high-intensity blasts of water to grind away my organs. The last time he just covered the clearing in ice and skated away while my feet kept literally freezing to the ground.
The one time I asked for him to fight me with his Mind Sorcery and I just woke up ten minutes later as he was eating some fruit from what he called his ‘Smoothie Jungle’. Over-powered son of a bitch. It was frustrating to experience this level of helplessness, especially when my body kept telling me that I could easily squash this short, skinny, under two-hundred pound pipsqueak. Sure, he’s around six foot two, but I’m a seven and half foot tall, three hundred and fifty pound Centauri warrior with battle runes and over five years worth of combat experience fighting insane bugs from the Hive!
“No. I’m not fighting you anymore, this is fucking torture bro.” I had had enough. All I wanted to do was relax for the last two weeks before getting shipped off to some magical alien school, even though the weed part of that adventure might not be too bad. Chicks dig weed, and I dig chicks.
A slow clap interrupted my split-second of internal musing. “Took ya long enough,” Ben said with that classic smirk on his face. My brother is a smart man, not always wise but definitely book-smart. “Know when to back off. You’re not always going to meet someone you can take down. This is where you use every other trick in the book, poison, diplomacy, deception, anything to level the playing field.”
“Oh come on! I’ve been giving Johnny and Reeanth decent fights for the past three days!” My whining didn’t go over well.
“Because both of them are in your weight class! What you should have done when fighting me is CHEAT! Bring your armor and weapons! Attack before the match begins, catch me by surprise! Get Reeanth and Johnny to help you out, or maybe Fuzzy!” Wow, he’s really gettin’ worked up. “What was the goal this entire time?”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“To beat you in a fight?”
“No dumbass. We never set a goal. It wasn’t to first blood, to first bone break, to get knocked outside of the clearing, it was just a fight. What was to stop you from fighting with a sniper rifle a mile away, or setting up magic bombs in the clearing beforehand?”
Huffing in frustration even as I rolled up a joint and lit it, I planted my butt against a small willow tree. “I get it. Think outside the box, and honor is for losers.”
“Honor is for the dead.” Ben’s face was stone. The last time he was this cold is when I was getting bullied in grade school and still it chilled me to the core. “I already have scores to settle with the Centauri for mom and dad. And Heaven and Hell won’t stop me if that school does something to you.”
Yup, still a fucking drama queen.
*******
Ben’s Perspective
Waking up to a new day brought with it all the promise of a fresh start even though time was running out. I had a semblance of a family again for two weeks which hit me right at my core, and even worse, though I hadn't explained very much to anyone, today was Andy’s birthday, I think? Hard to tell with his own time dilation issues conflicting the un-Veiled Earth and me not having a solid calendar but fuck it!
Pulling my much larger but still younger brother down to the Lab, I shoved some fresh coffee into his hands as I turned on a couple well-placed sunstones illuminating the high-tech spread of gear I’d made for him. Seeing that his responses were too laggy as Andy also was not a morning person, I slapped a bit of wake-up Flesh Sorcery into him to perk him up.
Happy Birthday!” Shivering the dregs of sleep out of his body, Andy looked over the laid out armor.
“But I already have armor?”
“This is for when your big bro ain’t around and you’re gettin’ your ass kicked,” I said, crossing my arms. “Look, the plate armor is light but can shrug off the equivalent of tank rounds, drain and absorb directed or ambient magic, and it covers every part of you like a turtle shell. Your Centauri nanotech is great but it can be your last hidden layer.”
“And the wands?”
“Fine, skip to the end part,” I said gruffly as Andy was ruining the presentation. “Those are for you at the college. Everything I’ve read and researched says that normal wizards need wands and staves to be effective. So, I gave you two wands, but if you end up needing a staff, feed one of the wands blood and mana everyday through the base and it will grow to be a staff.”
Not seeing a reaction, I continued on. “Here’s your upgraded rifle that can take out a pack of wyverns or horde of minotaurs on its own by firing all kinds of munitions. The classic tower shield was upgraded along the lines of what I learned from the dwarves I killed, extra platinum to divert magic, batteries for extra power and energy absorption . . .” Still no change in facial expression.
“AND OVER HERE! Dude? What the fuck is your problem?” Seriously. All kinds of epic goodies from a badass sorcerer that happens to be his brother and nothin’? With another scan of Flesh Sorcery, I checked to make sure he wasn’t having a stroke or something.
“Ben . . . where’s Elizabeth?” Andy asked, finally looking at me. “Did y’all break up or did she also get taken away? I looked through our databases and couldn’t find her anywhere the same as when I was looking for you.”
That hit harder than any blow. I had gotten so wrapped up in movement and action and planning and fighting that I hadn’t even told my own brother what happened to my woman. For a split second I froze, then put my hands on the table as I took a deep breath. Swallowing my thick queasy ball of pain and guilt, I looked at Andy. “She’s uh, well, not dead but she’s also not really alive either.”
“I don’t understand.”
Quickly grabbing my memories, I packaged up the sight of her being forcibly morphed by Chaos into a tree, the memory of planting Yggdrasil and the root of it connecting to her tree form as an influx of mana wrapped her in a cocoon, the talk I had with a deity telling me that she was going to be okay and probably outlive me. The weave of emotions running through me as I fought goblins and night things to keep them away from my vulnerable woman, the raging heat of anger tempering my determination to be there when she woke up in a few millennia, all of it I put into that memory packet, quickly conjuring a small bit of perfectly aligned quartz and sticking the memories into it. Thinking again, I stripped out all of the emotion from the memories as I watched the crystal begin to dissolve.
“I can’t talk about it right now,” I said, slowly rubbing the small gem between my palms. “It’s all in here but do it later.” Pulling my mind from the unfathomable darkness that lurked at the edge of my psyche, the little place that whispered all the horrible, nasty things I would do to stay alive and make sure that I survived, I turned back around to the table before me. “What was I saying? Oh yes, the birthday presents . . . over here if you look inside the helmet, I stuck an enhancement circlet for you and your resident A.I. which is full of goodies and these over here,” I said, gesturing to the flat disc of quartz with a carved symbol of Yggdrasil on it.
“That plate is more than enough to get you started on making and designing your own runic tattoos as it holds lessons on designs as well as a basic, and I mean basic, dictionary for runes, which leads me to this, your very own mini flesh-golem!” Pointing at the sack above the armor, I grabbed it and dumped the contents into my hand. “His name is Fleshy, which is stupid but I suck at naming things. This guy will probably save your life down the road. Feed him meat of any kind to make him bigger and stick him on a wound and he’ll fix it. Broken bones, missing eyes or fingers, wicked scars, none of that will pose an issue. He can also change the melanin of your skin to make perfectly natural tattoos or give you an epic tan if you want.”
A set of arms wrapped me up in a hug lifting me off the ground. Quickly setting me back down, Andy looked away as he wiped a tear from his eye. “I get it. I’ve lost plenty of people, good people. Never gets easier.”
Pulling a flask I stole from Scott out of my pocket, I took a swig and handed it to him. “Here. Dwarven stuff, hits like a kiss of fire.”
“It’s too early to be drinking,” Andy said, pushing it back towards me.
“This ain’t the Bible belt anymore! It’s for self-fortification, and I don’t have much time to get drunk so this is just to put myself back on the right path, the focused one.” The look on his face still had a bit of judgment so I wearily put away the flask, after taking another hit of course. “Anyways! Happy birthday you wet blanket. You have three days to get used to it before we start sparing. Gotta know how it feels so you can fight in it. We go full Spartan in a week.”
Andy put on the armor and gathered up the rifle, shield, and all the rest of the stuff and headed down the tunnel to the Hole to show Johnny and Reeanth as I stayed by the table. For a full minute I let myself feel all of the things I had been putting off to the side, allowing my Consciousness Sorcery to take the lead and wash my soul in the emotions that I had simply worked through by being too busy to actually address. The anger I felt at being alone and the unreasonable irritating thought that I didn’t have to be as I knew Elizabeth would be ok if I maybe continued on with my life as she was a hundred percent dedicated to be a tree right now. The jealousy of her being completely at peace pricked at my heart while my frustration at being so goddamn busy all the time stabbed from the other side. Sadness of my family being forcibly taken flooded through me and left leading the way for a tidal wave of uncertainty to crash through.
Am I right? Is the course of action that I’m currently invested in, the myriad plans and decisions to shoulder the burden of basically de-worming my planet of Undead the correct one? Should it even be my burden or should I let the Centauri discover and do it themselves with a bit of help from the witches? I can’t be the only person invested in the existential threat hitting planet Earth from the North and South poles? Can I?
Reminding myself of my accomplishments so far, I then went over the things that I needed to do which I’ve reviewed many times and am making great progress on. Shit, I even made a freaking fortress out of sunstone, gave it its own army and then demolished an underwater army with it in the past month! That’s not even counting the fact that I’ve saved my brother from a witch-borne mind parasite that could kill him, upgraded him with an A.I. and seriously boosted all of his armor and weapons.
I repeated my mantra. [Breathe in, breathe out.]
I’ve come so far and now is not the time to start doubting myself. Letting myself sink back into a focused frame of mind, I used Flesh Sorcery to reset my hormone levels back to normal and wipe away the traces of exhaustion that emotional trauma left on my body.
Emerging from the Hole into the clearing, I saw Johnny and Andy cutting loose and this time Andy was giving Johnny a run for his money. The new armor was easily shrugging off Johnny’s cannon-like attacks. Every smack of the silver snake staff looked like it slipped off of the plate armor as if it had a thick layer of oil on it, causing Johnny to swing harder and faster but yielding the exact same result. I could see Reeanth across the clearing, keeping a close eye on the fighting and taking notes as usual even though she was smiling at the cultivator cursing up a storm in his frustration.
Hopping back twenty feet, Johnny struck a pose, one leg forward and the other behind him bent slightly, giving the impression of spring ready to loose. Johnny held his staff parallel to the earth at ear level, the silvery wood held lightly in the middle by his left hand and tightly at the end furthest from Andy. For a moment, every noise vanished before a soft hiss ventured forth, the warning of a hidden snake about to strike. Johnny closed his eyes and whispered something I couldn’t hear.
I didn’t even see what happened next. All I saw was the aftermath and a quickly fading afterimage. My eyes kept showing me an ethereal snake with Johnny inside of it striking at Andy, the blunt edge of its snout that was Johnny’s staff slamming into Andy’s chest plate and retreating, but the clearing showed no evidence of movement. There were no footprints or disturbances in the grass to show the twenty feet of grass that had to be cleared to make physical contact. I know Johnny could leap that distance but he wouldn’t fly back and land in the exact same position he started in without me seeing it.
Clearing my head, I focused my senses on Andy and his armor. The batteries meant to absorb the kinetic energy made from impacts were completely full, shining like suns to my magical senses. From what I could tell, there were no injuries or bruises which showed that my armor was well made and perfectly designed but my brother looked to be in shock. A slow clap rang out.
“Well done Johnny,” Reeanth said, leaving the tree she was leaning up against. “You learned from the last session. If the enemy is strong of body . . .”
“Then attack the mind,” Johnny finished. Leaving his pose, Johnny walked over to Andy and poked him in the forehead, releasing Andy from his stupor.
“Wanna fill me in?” I asked, looking back and forth between Johnny and Reeanth.
“Cultivators are somewhat limited in how they express their abilities my lord until they reach the peak of their abilities. And the peak of their abilities is directly related to understanding the world around them.” Reeanth explained. “Martial arts are an extension of internal strength combined with knowledge and understanding to affect the outside world. A simple punch for you and I, while we could alter it or make it deadlier by covering the fist with fire or stone, cultivators can imbue heavier concepts to their abilities that we don’t have access to. This was a good example. Johnny’s staff is a bonded oak adder whose poison is a well known paralytic. That last strike was mental in nature resulting in an attack that left your brother defenseless.”
“Awesome right?” Johnny crowed excitedly. “Andy wasn’t ready for that one!”
Shaking his head, Andy opened his eyes, coming back to himself. “Gonna need a minute man. That helmet enhancer thing you put in bro, it wasn’t set up yet and amplified his attack. Fuck, this headache is brutal.”
“Whoops,” I said, walking over and healing his headache. “Yeah, you and your A.I. were supposed to get everything set up. I wouldn’t presume to know how you want your mental defenses built so I left that alone, but the armor is ready for the physical kind of combat.”
Grumbling at Andy’s minor oversight, I half-heartedly muttered under my breath walking to Yggdrasil and taking the arboreal Way to Sunstone Castle. Standing in the center of my massive fortress, I found the control pedestal and gently slid Gungnir into place. Kraken popped out of my trusty weapon and looked around.
“The hell are we doing back here?” he asked. “The army is prepped and ready to go and the batteries below are . . . lemme check, yup, they’re over ninety percent full. The castle walls themselves are at a solid fifty percent and the tree looks better than expected in this nasty climate.”
“We’re upgrading!” I answered, grinning ear to ear.
“Upgrading what?!?”
“Oh come on, with all the stuff we’ve learned? I can reformat the enchantments on the walls so that they mimic the walls in New Miami, giving them a metaphysical current to circulate within themselves. That would give the castle an eighty percent increase in absorption capabilities while staying functional. Also, we could put a kinetic converter in the bottom of the river and link a feed from the river to the castle as a backup power source, and I’m thinking of adding enchanted granite to the flat parts of the sunstone golems like their-”
“Nope. Nope” Kraken interrupted, wildly waving his tentacles. “No! That’s all work for me, not for you. Redoing the enchantments to the castle walls is beyond insane! They were inscribed INSIDE of the stones as the conjuration was ongoing. The only way to ‘fix’ it is to take the whole thing down.”
“Fuck. Seriously?”
“Yes. Seriously,” he snapped. “Which I will say again, is INSANE. A better use of your time would be going over the intel you got from the Centauri. There’s some cool stuff in there that might be useful later like, the Irish.”
“What about’em?”
“Well for instance, a bit more of humanity got left behind than we were originally told. The Irish got completely left behind, a large chunk of the Nordic countries did as well and are now mead swilling Vikings again but this time with magic. A few mountainous areas were completely skipped over and some island nations. You may not want to, but you might need to put New Miami and New Richmond in touch with everyone else or at least let them know that they’re still around so the whole ‘recolonization’ thing that humans can do can start.”
I didn’t really like that. I’m kind of hitting my cap of human interaction for right now with three of them living in my space. Speaking of, I need to make sure that the high levels of mana aren’t adversely affecting them. I joked about that at New Richmond a while back and used it as an excuse to keep people away but it’s been bugging me and I have to see if it’s true. I know it affects animals in many ways, Kong, Spot, and Norn being classic examples but I can’t be letting my own people mutate uncontrollably.
Not letting my thoughts meander on even more, Kraken interrupted again. “AND, I know your pets have been keeping the forest around your area clean but I do highly recommend doing a few more purging sprees. The goblins you tested your stuff out on, where there’s one there’s a thousand. They breed like rats and are almost universally hated, well, them and orcs, ogres, feral centaurs and the screaming ferlanx too.”
“Do I want to know?” I asked with one raised eyebrow. Kraken shoved an image of a six-legged ferret the size of a horse with the meanness of a rabid squirrel into my head. Kraken made sure to highlight the overlarge teeth and bulging poison sacks behind the jawline as well as the hooked talons on the back of its feet. “So, no, I didn’t want to know.”
My little family and I spent the next two weeks and change fine-tuning Andy and his new gear in brutal training sessions, but I think the greatest help that I was able to give him was the assistance in creating Andy’s own mindscape. The mindscape is that meditative space where you and yourself and anything spiritually connected can go to plan. Mine has the advantage, due to my sorceries, of having the ability to manifest my soul-tree there as well but everyone has to start somewhere. With the assistance of his A.I., my brother’s went from a pale gray void at the beginning to a very bare log cabin with chalkboard on one wall and two chairs. We were still working on the visual manifestation of his A.I. when Kraken reminded me that our deadline was in six hours.
“Are witches hot?” Johnny asked, gleefully bouncing on his toes.
“Doesn’t matter,” I growled for the umpteenth time. “You’re not going. It’s me dropping Andy off and coming back. You and Reeanth are going to meet me at New Richmond by sunset. Bring Spot along and they’ll believe you.” Double checking that my little brother had all of his stuff plus some extras, I nabbed one last satchel of surprises before meeting him at the tree.
“Whazzat?” Andy asked as I exited the Hole.
“Goodies. More seeds than you need for the plan, but if it doesn’t work then it doesn’t work. If it does, we could be rich or trade that stuff for things we don’t even know we need yet. Second,” I said as I pulled out one more pouch. “These are mini-flashbang grenades and trip-vines. Put a bit of mana into them and in three seconds they’ll do what they sound like. Pour three seconds worth of mana into them and then wait three seconds and the results will be far more lethal, trust me.”
Gingerly taking the bag, Andy stuck it in a leg pocket. “It’s like college all over again. I got the jitters and am hopin’ to heaven they got some hot alien chicks.”
Rolling my eyes as Johnny cheered him on, I shoved Andy into the tree and took us to New Miami. Per our agreement, Sybella said she would meet us outside of the city walls at the appointed time. Andy and I arrived underground through the Yggdrasil root and traveled via my Earth Sorcery. Looking around, I estimated we were at least an hour early. I grew chairs out of the undergrowth and made a nice fire pit with dry branches as Andy lit it with his finger.
“So weird that you’re so damn powerful but you can’t even use fire,” he said, carelessly playing with a floating spark over his palm. “I can’t even touch you in a fight but without a lighter what good are ya?”
Playfully putting out the spark with a quick blast of conjured water, I smirked at him. “What need does the ocean have for the flame? Or a mountain for the sun?”
“Okaaay Confucius.”
I laughed. “No, no, you do have a point. I think Kraken explained it best. Sorcerers tend to be more powerful in the beginning. We get the instincts, the lion’s share of the understanding and the power of our elements, but outside of that we aren’t flexible. You, you’re a wizard. Eventually, you will outscale me. It may take you a long time but it will happen. You’ll be able to do things I won’t, like conjure a windstorm or a flaming tornado, or summon otherworldly creatures from all kinds of crazy dimensions to help you out. I’m stuck with what I have.”
“Well put.” The lighter tones of the feminine voice behind us made us both jump up and grab our weapons. “But I didn’t know you were a sorcerer, Ben, or should I say, my lord?”
Andy looked at me. “What? My lord? The fuck is this?”
Sybella turned to look at him. “You’ve served for six years in the Centauri fleet and still don’t know? My, what a disservice you’ve done him.” That last part was aimed at me. “Your great Empire’s original rulers were Sorcerers that were eventually eclipsed by the Wizards and Mages they helped raise up. Sorcerers are still considered royalty in your part of the multiverse, and very useful slaves in other parts.”
“This is not what we discussed,” I snarled, tightening my grip on Gungnir.
“Peace sorcerer. I have dealt with you in good faith and in the best of wishes. Your blood-kin shall go to the institute as promised after a half-years worth of gentle instruction at the hands of my coven. Manners, culture, the political landscape as well as the overarching view of the powers that be shall be included as well as magical tutoring. Your brother shall return with the gift of wytchfire but will not be allowed to teach anyone else its secrets.”
Behind her in the fading light, I could make out a floating oval of deep purple framed with black lightning silently whipping around the edges but never leaving. “Without your generous gift, I never would have been able to hold a portal open for that long. It does help that you’ve softened the barriers with another insertion of the Great Vein. A lecture for another time perhaps. Andrew Jones, come.” Without another word, Sybella turned and walked through the portal. Even though she was gone, her words clearly came through from the other side like a whispering wind. “Quickly now, if you don’t come now then I’ll have broken my word.”
Giving my much taller brother a hug, I shoved him forward. Holding his tower shield effortlessly in one hand with his rifle in the other propped up on his shoulder, Andy set his jaw and stalked through the portal. He did in fact cut an imposing figure in his black armor and wicked looking gear. Stopping just outside, he waved at me real quick and then turned, diving through.
[He’s going to raise some hell if he goes to that school looking like that. Sorcerers don’t really make equipment for anyone anymore. People are going to start asking some questions.]
Grinning like a wolf as a shapely figure stepped through the closing portal, I replied to Kraken, “Can’t wait.”