Is it fear? Or is it paranoia?
Maybe at this point ‘it’ could be called something a bit more sensible . . . solid preparation . . . good planning . . . a well thought out contingency.
Nah.
Recent events have shown that I am a small fish swimming along in a large river that’s constantly pouring into the ocean while deep sea monsters intrude, their hungry mouths and wiggly tentacles sneaking upstream just to snatch juicy unsuspecting morsels.
Me.
I’m talking about me. I can take out smaller threats that would easily destroy any unsuspecting human but freaking deities were coming out of the great expanse to nuke my damn house.
With my recent, and possibly moronic, actions weighing heavily on my mind, I ventured outside of my hole and went to my backyard, gauging my immediate surroundings. I know which way the closest bend of the river is at, but I had a plan to do this the safe way. I put a rock down and pushed a magical thumbprint into it, investing just enough condensed mana so that it would serve as a signal for me. Then I went back down to the underground room and closed it up, before I turned and faced the signal.
If you stand in my house and head straight for the backyard and then just keep going that direction for about three-quarters of a mile, you’ll hit the river. So that’s what I did. With my little pocket generator handy, I started heading in the direction of the river, banishing dirt as I went and lining the new growing tunnel with a very thick coat of stone just over two-feet thick. Every ten-feet or so I took the precaution of adding a T-bar of solid iron coated with granite to brace the tunnel for stability.
To easily accommodate me but hamper larger enemies, my tunnels were fashioned to be about seven-feet tall and five-feet wide. I inserted small crystals runed with light enchantments on the cross part of the T-bar reinforcements. Gungnir followed my lead as I worked, simultaneously using my Earth Sorcery and reinforcing my work by shaping runes of stability and strength into the stone walls of the tunnel as I walked along. It was as if two sorcerers were working together.
Slowly and carefully working my way forward, the walk took an hour to finally get within fifty-feet of the river. An overabundant sense of caution kept making me triple-check my work. I really didn’t want the tunnel to cave in with all the time I’d put into it so far. My magical senses came in handy, letting me easily feel if part of the tunnel was wobbly or about to cave in, the stress points clearly standing out to my Earth Sorcery. I had plenty of time and power to reinforce any part of it that looked a hint outside of my new personal safety regulations. I wanted this new residence to be my main one and definitely a safe one complete with a defensible tunnel entrance and a collapsible failsafe water entrance.
At the point where I was standing fifty feet-from the river, I started the downward slope of the tunnel angle down a bit as I wanted my secret hideaway to be directly under the river, my Water Sorcery keeping me mindful of exactly how far away the current was as I approached. I kept building my tunnel down at an angle for another two-hundred yards until I was directly under the center of the Rappahannock river at this particular bend.
The earth became wetter and wetter as I progressed to where I want. Mud, soaked clay, and river stones swirled around my feet as my magic bent the surroundings to my will. I was in my element here. Completely enclosed by water and stone and dirt. Shaping the earth and mud sloshing around me into a large chamber of stone, I expanded and reinforced the room over and over until I felt comfortable not putting my absolute utter focus into it.
Laughing as I looked around in the complete darkness, I stuck Gungnir butt-first into the ground and smiled as the tri-blade speartip emitted a bright red light without me even beckoning it to. A large, bare stone cavern of solid gray stone loomed in all directions and my magic senses mirrored back to me exactly what I expected.
Initial success!
Not at all finished with what I wanted to do, my grandiose plan, I then got back to repetitive drivel of work and made another large generator just like one up in the hole in Yggdrasil for me. The next chunk of work was going to require stupid amounts of power.
After an hour of careful planning and inscribing and double checking redundancies, I forged a link from myself and Gungnir to the new generator and then turned the dial up to max flow. Most of the power went straight to Gungnir but I directed the flow as I continued the work on expanding and reinforcing the stone/dirt room I was standing in, transmuting the crumbling earth to stone and banishing the inner layer of the shell over and over to expand the room until I could fit a warehouse down here.
When I finished making enough room to comfortably fit a few eighteen wheelers side by side, I continued to use my Earth Sorcery to imprint runes of strength, stability and concealment on the walls and ceiling so that the new cave would not implode under the weight and force of the river.
“Cool.” I said, looking around my cavern. A dozen columns of conjured iron ran from floor to ceiling to serve as reinforcement. I could feel the slight rumbles from the Rappahanock as it rushed over the thick ceiling of my cavern. I turned to Gungnir. “Kinda lonely, innit’? What do you think I should do?”
My staff kept its steady glow, refusing to engage with stupid questions.
“Sure, sure. I gotcha. It’s not paranoia if it’s justified.”
I cracked my knuckles and got back to the grind. My latest idea needed something more to make it unique but also it had to be functional. All of my power requirements have been fulfilled by my fancy generators but humans have been harvesting the steady power of flowing water for millenia. Magic would now let me do that in the most efficient way.
Grasping the ceiling of the cavern with my Earth Sorcery, I slowly fed mana into it starting at the roof of the new cavern and growing a pillar of stone up from there until it barely jutted out into the bottom of the river itself. Pumping out a bit more power after checking the water depth with my senses, I grew it another few feet until it pushed through the mud of the river bottom.
On this pillar, I shaped runes of kinetic conversion on the sides and top of the pillar, using the classic picture of a water wheel as the rune base, effectively making a hydrokinetic generator. With the constant flow of the river current washing and pushing on the stone cylinder with the running enchantment, it would easily generate mana. Using thin spools of conjured silver, I connected the hydrokinetic pillar to rune equations in the top of the ceiling.
Poking and prodding the active enchantment a bit more, I created a transference enchantment so that the mana generated from the kinetic action would drain into the stability runes made by Gungnir keeping the entire cavern perfectly structurally sound. To top it off, I filled the ceiling of the cavern with small quartz crystal growths enchanted to absorb ambient mana and emit soft light.
“You woulda’ loved this.” I sighed, looking around at my new living space. The light crystals of quartz gently shone, making the entire wide open area easy to see. Silver veins of wire spidered out from the hydrokinetic generator, catching the light in a pleasing way. “Magic is freaking cool babe.”
Setting my shoulders, I used Flesh Sorcery to temporarily refresh myself as I wanted to get this whole project done today. I grew another thick stone cylinder extending out of the roof of the cavern into the river then proceeded to banish most of the inner core of the pillar so that it was hollow. To prevent leaks, I conjured stone seals every ten-feet. This would serve as a river entrance with my Water Sorcery.
Conceivably, I would be able to sneak home from the river by diving in the river, locating the hollow stone tube, banishing the stone seals, and getting in. I’d have to be careful, making sure to seal each section back up and cleaning up the water. I designed after what I’d seen in movies similar to the airlocks on a submarine. This was the emergency entrance/exit if I needed it, as it had so many steps to get in and out. The main entryway to get to my latest home in the future would require using Nature Sorcery to walk into the hollow tree that I was going to grow on the river bank, and then use the stairs to get to the tunnel. Which is what I went outside to finish.
Night had fully fallen by the time I finished making the secondary entrance tunnel with stairs and growing the oak tree while convincing it that being hollow was, in fact, not a bad thing. The tree disagreed with me but I won its approval by pouring enough power into the trunk to support being hollow and thickening the bark layer to be able to withstand just about any tree-loving pests. Three entrances to my main home, and it also had a generator to start my next round of projects.
My hands were coming off the hollow oak tree when I heard a soft whine behind me. I whirled around with Gungnir pointing at the source of the whimper, the white glow of the blade illuminating a small dog cowering in the sudden bright light. My back was pressed against the tree so I didn’t have to fear a threat from that specific direction, but that didn’t stop me from using my magical senses to assault the surrounding area to try to find the dog’s friends. I didn’t sense anything other than this beat up mutt.
[Weird, dogs usually run in packs.] I thought, grunting with disbelief. It didn’t look like a threat, shaking behind a bush like a beaten animal.
I turned Gungnir into a knife and reversed the blade so that it was running along my forearm, not pointed at the dog. My right hand dangled at my side casually so as to not draw attention to it. With my left hand, I pulled a can of beef soup out of my side-leg pocket and placed it on the ground. Conjuring a small bowl of stone next to the can, I popped the soup can open with Gungnir and poured it in, not taking my eyes off of the dog.
“Hey buddy. I have food,” I said in the softest, kindest tones I could muster, wafting the scent of the soup over to the dog. “My lady always said she got to my heart through my stomach, and you’re man’s best friend. Close enough, right?”
I reached out with Flesh Sorcery and my weak mental abilities to try and send comforting thoughts to the animal.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
[ Safety. Food. Kindness. Pets and headscratches.]
The wounded canine stepped forward slowly, favoring its back legs. Black and brown fur criss-crossed its thick muzzle, the underjaw was clearly a bit pronounced leading me to believe that it was a mutt, a pitbull mixed with a boxer. I presumed that it had a little bit of a rottweiler thrown in there, too. The muzzle was thinner than a pitbull’s however. I bet it would've been a beautiful animal if it wasn’t so starved and beat up.
“Come on then . . .” I whispered. “I got more food.” I popped another can of soup out and set it next to the bowl. As the trembling dog came closer, I nudged the bowl further away from me and took a step back to give it space. The mutt never took its eyes off of me while it ate, wolfing it down. I slowly reached over when it finished and the dog jumped back. I poured the second can of soup in the bowl and retracted my hand.
“Hey now, I’m not gonna hurt ya, I promise” I said soothingly. “Wouldn’t go through all the trouble of feeding you just to getcha.” It finished the second bowl faster than the first. I sat down Indian style and sat Gungnir on the ground, just watching the dog as it gave me the puppy eyes treatment.
The dog looked at me for a moment and then limped over and laid down in front of me. I slowly reached out and put my hand on its side. I looked down and checked, yup, that’s a male dog.
“Hey, you got a name? Maybe a nice fancy collar from a rich family that loves ya? Someone with a convenient bunker with a hot shower?” I asked, slowly petting the dog, letting tendrils of my Flesh Sorcery slowly connect to the open sores and start the healing process. I took my time, carefully easing in a pain block and patching up the poor animal as I talked to him about nothing. My magic healed a couple nasty open cuts and the beginnings of an infection, pulling the broken skin together and pushing out the nasty pus. Just as the pain block fully set in, the break in the front leg that had halfway healed popped as the misaligned bone straightened out and healed over. After fixing the surrounding tissue, my magic combed him from head to tail making sure that he was in tip-top shape.
I lay back, exhausted and done for the day. My Flesh Sorcery revealed more details to me as my power receded. The dog was an adolescent mutt and that I was probably right about the mixture of the breeds. Turns out, the poor dog was probably around two-years-old.
“I don’t have the energy for cool names right now.” I declared, fighting the mental strain of a full day of working magic. “I dub thee Spot! Cause you got a big-ass spot of soup on that dirty face of yours.” I conjured a bit of water to wash out his bowl and then more to fill it up. Spot eagerly licked his own face clean and then drank from the bowl.
Groaning with effort, I picked myself up and opened a small doorway in the hollow oak tree. Spot’s head shot up off the ground. “You comin’?” I asked. He looked at his water bowl and then proceeded to get up and lap it all down. When he was done, he sprang into the tree without a second glance. I picked up Gungnir who then changed into a glowing mace to light our way. Ten-minutes later, I passed out on the floor of my river bottom home with a new friend.
******
A nasty wet tongue woke me up out of a dead sleep, which I pushed away with my hand and wiped my face off.
“Gerroff.” I mumbled.
A sharp bark finished waking me out of the dead sleep. “All right, alright!” I sputtered. “I’m up!”
Spot was prancing back and forth and whining. Ah, morning time.
I had a dog years ago; this is when they like to sniff and crap. Gotta explore and mark their territory. I picked up Gungnir from where it was charging all night on the generator and walked Spot down the tunnel and out to the front of where my suburban house used to be. He sprinted around sniffing his new territory and doing his business.
As Spot was doing his morning routine, I was doing mine; checking my armor. I let my magical senses flow over everything, making sure everything was still good to go, fully charged, and that the enchantments hadn’t degraded.
When I noticed Spot wasn’t back just yet, I pulled out my two pocket generators from where I kept them.
[I really needed to rework these.] I complained internally. I’ve noticed that the bigger generators, due to their size and structure, are far more stable than these little ones. The power outflow at this size just overpowers the structural integrity of the enchantment, causing it to degrade faster over time. I could see the points in the embedded enchantments where the power dial was loosening, and then on the back where the runes were no longer as sharp and clear. The ingrained layer of precious metals that formed the runes were thinner than they used to be.
My nerdy brain pulled an idea that I had read from way too many sci-fi and fantasy books.
What if Gungnir could do even more crazy shit?
I mean, it’s already carved runes without me, charged up on power without me, and even changes weapon shape according to my need and mood. Gungnir seems to almost follow subconscious desires or instincts.
Following a gut feeling, I took the generator that I hadn’t fixed and reinforced the enchantment while making the overall stone base bigger so that it was now a cylinder the size of a large water bottle. The power outflow was several times more as it directly correlated with the size of the generator. Remaking the runes and lining them with a thick layer of silver, I then turned Gungnir into a spear and laid the Chaos crystal spear blade on top of it so that they were parallel. I focused on sending the image of Gungnir enveloping or storing the generator to the spear.
Pop!
The modified generator vanished!
Looking around, I couldn’t see the generator anymore and it definitely wasn’t in my hand. I could still feel it though to my arcane senses pumping out mana which Gungnir happily stored away, which in turn flowed to me when I linked myself to Gungnir.
[FUCK YES!] I celebrated, trying not to shout out loud. I threw a few punches in victory before slapping my hand against Gungnir. I didn’t realize that I had morphed Gungnir into a knife in my celebration and Gungnir didn’t have a normal knife shape. The twisting three blades slashed through my glove into my hand, blood flowing over the weapon.
“FUCK!” I yelled in surprise. “OOOOWWWW!”
The flesh on my hand wove back together but that wasn’t what caught my attention. Gungnir drank in my blood, glowing a soft crimson for a moment. The connection I felt with my blade grew stronger even as my Flesh and Mana sorcery sang together in harmony, calling for more.
“Whooa there . . .” I joked, a bit queasy. “That’s a bit too weird.” Threads of information ran through me as my instincts spoke up, memories of wizards using their own blood to mark their most precious tools and weapons. My Mana Sorcery thrummed with recognition as the arcane bond between Gungnir and I strengthened.
“That can’t be a thing!” I protested even as my disbelief cautiously shrank into the background. My curiosity and power warred with my fear. On the one hand, I don’t like to bleed. On the other hand, I do honestly believe that I’m just going to have to bind this weapon to myself, as it is just way too useful to let go. Look at the pros. It can change forms, use my own Sorcery and others that I can’t, and store my mana generators for me! Hell yes, I’m pumped! But I have to do the ‘binding’ part consciously, it can’t just be an accident.
Putting my thoughts off till later, I set my mind to other more important things. It took about an hour of experimentation to figure out how big of a generator Gungnir could hold. The two generators back at my river-bottom home were way too big; the biggest Gungnir could fit was about the size of a basket-ball, so I made that generator special.
The design ended up being a large granite sphere, as a sphere is the most stable of all the shapes and I recall reading somewhere that granite has a fairly low molecular bonding. I believe due to that, granite outputs more power than metal as a matter-to-mana power source. I took the time to outfit the sphere with extra runes of stability and conversion along with the classic matter-to-mana formula. I filled every rune in with gold and silver, following the dictates of my sorcerous instincts. The precious metals seemed to hold onto enchantments the best and I made the runes real thick to make sure they didn’t degrade too fast. I then put the modified generator inside of my wondrous weapon.
Gazing in wonder at Gungnir as my weapon vibrated for three seconds adjusting to the internal stream of power, my spear settled down to a soft hum. Laughing, I shaped it into a mace and stuck the base into the ground, patting it on the spiked head.
“You should be good for a while.”
The last generator I held was meant for my personal use. Using what I’d learned from my projects so far, I shaped the conjured granite plate into an inch-thick disc four inches wide and wrapped it in black-gold. After seeing how it bounced uncomfortably against my chest when I walked, I then reshaped it a bit and then covered it with conjured bone that I shaped to fit around my neck and cover a bit of my upper chest.
“That’ll keep ya still.”
Grinning with excitement, I etched two new enchantments on it and designed a split-flow valve enchantment to govern the power to both. The first enchantment was only for boosting my natural healing regeneration and stamina upkeep which effectively made me an endurance superhuman, and the second was for focused healing at my direction. And then I put a conditional statement in the enchantments, that if they are damaged in any way, that they’ll just shut down completely.
Last but not least, I decided to just bite the bullet, cutting open my hand and covering Gungnir in blood while I healed and conjured more of the precious red fluid inside of my body. “Just fuck it!” I grumbled, shaking my head as I used my Flesh Sorcery to block the pain and stop the clotting factor for a minute. With a lot of my blood covering Gungnir, I stood there hoping I hadn’t just made a big mistake. I wove a binding enchantment of joining in my blood as Gungnir drank it in the precious fluid.
My heart skipped a few beats as my power was pulled out of me. My mind wavered for a second before Gungnir completed the circuit, returning more energy to me through my grip on the golden control ring. My mind blossomed with new possibilities as the connection strengthened between me and the weapon. I instinctively knew that I could call Gungnir to me without words and it would return to my hand even if it wasn’t within reach and that I would always know where it was, a sort of ever-present compass in my mind.
“FINALLY DID SOMETHING SMART DID’YA!!!!”
[No fuckin way.] I whipped around. [Definitely wasn’t Spot, or Rath . . .]
I spun again, keeping my ears and eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary.
My breathing still as I processed impossibilities while all of my magic screamed at me with joy. I kept working through the sequence of events. [Duh.] I thought shakily. [Logic dictates that it’s probably the magical shape-shifting weapon that I bound to me with buckets of blood.]
I looked the bloody Spear up and down, then reached towards it with my mind.
“I’VE ONLY BEEN BEGGING FOR ATTENTION, BUT NOOOOO.”
The mental shouting from the spear felt like a jackhammer inside of my skull trying to burrow its way out.
“Way too loud, asshat.” I grunted out loud, massaging my head. “Please turn down the goddamn volume or I’ll throw you in the fucking river.”
“Not likely.” It retorted, albeit a bit softer than before. “I’m too epic for that.” I could feel its smugness through our link. “AND, I’m gorgeous. Check out these lines of POWER!” The inner veins of magic and metal flowing through the wood lit up different colors. “Dude, let’s go slay goblins! Or wreck some nightwalker’s day!” It crowed, then adopted a grunting chant, “We got monsters to kill and mana to drink, blood to spill and thoughts to think!”
[Way too much energy this early in the morning.]
It’s like I combined the yappy energy of a Chihuahua with my own inner sadistic, sarcastic dark side. “POWER OVERWHELMING BITCHES!” Gungnir shouted, sending out an omni-directional pulse of multi-colored mana.
“HEY!” I snapped, blasting my thoughts at the weapon. “You are mine! No doing crazy shit unless I fucking say so. GOT IT?!”
Gungnir sent thoughts of a dog tucking its tail between its legs. “All right.” I relented, my tone just a bit softer. “That’s better. Now, with all that crazy energy ya got going on there, what smart thing would you recommend I do?”
“Dude, that’s easy. You need a familiar.” It answered. “I’m awesome but you need a set of eyes and ears watching your back, like that furry thing over there, forty-feet behind you. My scans show that its senses are far superior to yours, as well as its stamina. Does that translate sexually?”
I didn’t even know how to answer that, so I just ignored that last part. I can’t be seen arguing with my own spear about the sexual complexities of humans. “Familiar? Spot? Wouldn’t some awesome magical creature like a dragon or wyvern be better?” I asked.
“Hahahahaha, you couldn’t handle bonding with one of those if they were unconscious and brain dead! You could barely handle a weapon you made!” Gungnir replied, vibrating with laughter. “The dog is man’s best friend, practically pre-made to be your traveling partner. Besides, who says you can’t give it an upgrade?”
It’s right. I could totally pimp out Spot. I let out a sharp whistle and Spot came running, jumping right into my arms and knocking me over, licking every scrap of skin he could find. Pushing him off and petting him, I lay back against a tree and started to think, which of course Gungnir just had to interrupt.
“Yo! Make it bigger! Make the fur sharp and spiny! OH WAIT, merge it with an elemental! Or expand its brain! WAIT! Use one of those morphing rocks to give it Sorcery! That would be so cool, a furry-attack-thing shooting fire or surfing the earth!”
Ya know, maybe the incessant spear had a point. I could experiment with the dog, see if some of the upgrades I had planned for myself were viable in other living things. But I gotta make sure this dog actually likes me and plans on sticking around, so that’s how I spent the next couple days.