I emerged into an almost alien landscape. I sat on top of Spot, riding on the crook of his big neck with my new platinum shield and tricked out spear at the ready, ready to do battle with whatever was here but nothing was the same. Spot spun around, unable to keep himself contained as new scents assaulted him. My dog sneezed, snapping me forward and back in my seat.
Nothing was the same.
Every part of the landscape had been remolded by the unfathomable wave of power from the Ripple. The river behind me to the north was gigantic with a waterfall over it, which should have been impossible as the Rappahannock river is a very small and tame river. Children could walk from one side to the other with little supervision. I didn’t even have to see it to know. My Water Sorcery screamed its presence to me.
Not that I could see it from my house before but now it wasn’t even that far away. It went from being a twenty minute walk to the river to a five minute walk. And that’s not even the biggest change. Every tree around me was suddenly huge, so big that California redwoods would be jealous. The smallest one that I could see, I still wouldn’t be able to fit my arms around and the canopies almost blocked out the sun.
“Stay.” I quietly ordered Spot as a herd of whitetail deer the size of cars bolted through the forest. I followed their trail with my eyes as they ran, the Rappahanock river within sight from a particular angle through the trees. The oversized glowing deer sprinted past us onto the river and ran on its surface out of sight. “Gungnir, I dearly hope you know what’s going on.” I whispered very, very quietly.
“Duh.” Gungnir scoffed at an equal volume. “Alter, shift, change, adapt, transpose, grow. Don’t you remember? It was less than an hour ago. Gotta love how magic does weird shit like that. Why does it speak? Why is it a wave? And we have ZERO answers! Woohoo!”
I let out a sigh of sheer exasperation. “Right you stupid spear, but what exactly does that mean?” I pressed, looking around me and seeing nothing of the old Earth. Bushes wiggled their leaves around me almost as if grasping for prey.
“It means that maybe the dimensional seal fully broke and mana is all the way back, which also means that the next two waves are really going to fuck shit up. Check it out, the mana levels are ridiculous!” Gungnir celebrated, its happiness translating into emitting lights to rival an old school rave.
Just when I think I’m coming out ahead, like I should be right now, when I’m sitting on top of a huge fucking attack dog covered in bone armor that could eat a rhino for breakfast, some-fucking-how I still feel small and unaccomplished. The trees are huge, the deer are huge, the river is huge, my dog is huge. And my sentient weapon has more than a few screws loose. Yippee.
I groaned, shaking my head. [I’m gonna need some fucking therapy by the time I’m done with this shit-show. I don’t have a Napoleon complex, I don’t have a Napoleon complex, I don’t . . . I don’t . . . ]
“Oh hell yes!” Gungnir screamed, interrupting my short bout of existential crisis. “Get them bitches, go on, don't let prey get away!” Apparently Spot heard the encouragement he was looking for as we were all mentally linked together through me. Time slowed for just an oh-crap moment as I felt his massive haunches bunch up and his barrel shaped body aim at the tail end of the fleeing herd of deer, his snout honing in on the darting prey animals. Even as I felt his instincts scream just before he launched, my own butthole tightened. I used that second to grow a set of bone handles and footrests on Spot’s new bone armor, which I barely grabbed in time as the living crotch-rocket took off.
In my panic, I hadn’t even noticed Gungnir casually slipping out of my hand and morphing into a floating sphere the size of a bowling ball, one half of it glittering with a strange crystal the color of blood. The other half was a smooth brown veiny wood shot through with striations of precious metals from when I crafted it.
Modified Gungnir floated by my head keeping pace as Spot tore through the forest. It was all I could do to hold on for dear life because I knew that if I let go or somehow slipped, then this dumb dog would chase the deer to the ends of the Earth.
“Gungnir!” I yelped at the satellite that was my weapon. “For the love of fucking god, shoot one of those deer! But just one, and in the leg!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blue flash pulse from the ‘eye’ of Gungnir, a long blade of smooth ice ripping out of it and spearing through the haunch of a giant fleeing deer. There was no hesitation whatsoever from Spot. As soon as the deer was tumbling from one leg being taken out, the furry linebacker hauled ass and trucked it right into a tree, biting its neck in his jaws and whipping it around like a chew toy. The deer’s spine was clearly broken from the nasty pops that echoed out.
“Bullseye bitches!” Gungnir celebrated. “Another one bites the dust!” I felt it condensing mana.
“WAIT!” I commanded from atop Spot. “Go for one with horns, the male.”
Another bright blue bolt of hardened ice shot out. I turned my head to watch it travel, mist trailing behind it.
“Pooper shot!” The modified floating sphere cried out as the ice spear disappeared from view.
“Spot, come on . . . “ I started, but after seeing him enjoying his meal as if he’s never eaten a day in his life, I decided not to get between a mammoth dog and his food. Probably needs all the calories he can get after the Ripple-induced growth spurt.
“Gungnir, with me, you’re my eye in the sky.” I commanded, drawing on the energy flow from Gungnir to buff myself up as I carefully hopped down from Spot’s back. It felt weird not actually holding a weapon, especially the one that I crafted and is now actually bound to my soul. I’m not sure how much effect it had or what exactly I did when I bound it to me, or what the effects of the Chaos shard spearpoint are. Did I give Gungnir true sentience? Or did he copy/absorb a part of me, so that I’m fighting with an extra limb, so to speak?
What I would give to speak to an experienced magic user at some point in time.
So many questions. So little time.
Pulling myself from my thoughts and sprinting to where Gungnir fired the ice bolt took no time at all as the magical energy blasting, smart-assed, partially psychotic satellite had really damn good aim. The second deer was less than fifty-yards away from where Spot was feasting, lying on the ground with its vitality pooling on the ground. The sight was humbling.
What clearly used to be a normal but majestic white-tail stag that I could haul with a sled would now require a crane to pick up and a tow truck to carry away. Each limb was thicker than my entire body, the ebony hooves gleaming with uncharacteristically sharp edges and its fur much thicker than usual, almost as if it were getting ready for winter. A savage crown of antlers adorned its head.
“End it.” I said, being respectful of the hunt. “Always be thankful for the gift.” Without snark, a slender ice bolt speared the poor animal through the head, instantly ending its suffering.
A deep growl suddenly erupted from the left. Stepping out of bushes twenty-feet away with shadows pooling around a large shape that I’d never seen before, something bigger than Spot shook the ground. I stuttered a step back as scaled forearms with thick fingers revealed themselves and a giant chimeric gorilla head roared at me. Hot spittle sprayed everywhere.
The livid monster was a rough cross between a steroidal gorilla and an angry monitor lizard complete with scaly limbs covered in dark brown spines and torso dragging a thick tail behind it slowly stepped forward, confident in its size and prowess. The alpha of its territory.
I gulped. [Great. Basically an armored gorilla-lizard came here to take my kill. Joy.]
Gungnir displayed no reticence, no fear, no hesitation, and instantly met the aggression with its own, pumping out bolts of arcane lightning and whirling ice spears coupled with high powered balls of condensed wind that exploded on contact. As Gungnir was my lethal eye in the sky that didn’t need much direction, I stepped back with the distraction keeping the monster’s attention and whistled loudly for Spot while desperately yanking on our mental link.
The tsunami of blazing magics crashed against the scaly chest of the gorilla, the ice spears barely leaving thin slices while the air cannons affected him as much as a child’s flailing fists. What really got him angry was the lightning leaving him momentarily paralyzed with second degree burns arcing down his neck.
I gathered power from my link with Gungnir and began pooling it while slowly stepping off to the side. Condensing the growing pool of power in my right hand, raw mana ready for molding, I began infusing my Flesh Sorcery into the barely contained power. A few seconds of focus molded concepts of domination, submission and obedience into it. The mana became visible as enough power manifested, the energy mass morphing into a solid rune. I tried not to gasp as my surprise, fear, and anger chapped the rune into chains of wicked thorns wrapping around a still-beating heart. I felt Spot getting closer, the ground shaking as he leaped, angry that his beloved friend and master was in danger.
In combat, words are too slow. The events themselves happened way too fast. As the gorilla tilted forward preparing to charge, he sucked in a deep breath to howl. I sent Gungnir a quick mental picture of Gungnir charging and launching a giant lightning strike, knocking the mutated gorilla to the ground. Not even a second went by before Gungnir made it so, a white-hot bolt of lightning thicker than a man’s torso lanced directly into the gorilla’s forehead.
The lightning struck so fast the gorilla didn’t even react, just completed its step forward and continued that momentum into an unconscious fall directly into the shoulder charge of a giant armored dog. The ensuing tackle completely reversed its momentum, slamming the oversized gorilla into one of the redwood-sized oak trees behind it.
My next mental image sent to Spot was of him subduing the beast, his jaws clamped around its neck and a truck-tire-size paw on its chest. But as Spot finished his tackle into the tree and both of them rebounded from the impact, Gungnir snuck in another lightning bolt, smaller this time. Spot bit the lead foot of the gorilla and yanked him off his feet, then lunged and secured the gorilla by the neck. Spot held him just tight enough to make breathing difficult, his long fangs hooking the underside of the gorilla's throat. I waited for ten seconds, just to make sure the gorilla got the message. Spot stood ready to rip its throat out.
My faithful companion’s slavering jaws held the monkey in a position of great danger. Any sudden move on the gorilla’s part would instantly result in death. I watched as the gorilla’s heartbeat pulsed in its neck just under the tip of Spot’s teeth.
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Walking around the gorilla, my mind idly wandered for a second, thinking of Norn. Our mental link felt very thin, probably meaning that he’s very far away. Back to king kong over here though, his eyes tracking me and the pulsing red rune of dominating flesh magic vibrated in my hand. I used Earth Sorcery to conjure layers of stone all over the gorilla’s limbs and then cranked up the weight by adding a temporary gravity enchantment on all four limbs. It was shaky, but I only needed it to last for a minute. I quickly stepped to the giant head of the gorilla and slammed the basketball-size rune I’d been holding into the gorilla's forehead.
He roared and the world shifted.
“Enter my mind and think to restrain me?!” The reptilian gorilla roared, his voice reverberating off the dark cavern we suddenly found ourselves in. He was oddly small in this new mental space - definitely small enough for a normal dog to take him out. On the other hand, I was huge. Comparatively, I was the giant for once.
Confusion only held sway for a moment as my magic processed the unusual scene for me. I didn’t really understand his words in a literal sense but the thoughts in his roar communicated well enough, my Flesh Sorcery being kind enough to translate the gist. My body felt less real but more powerful than I remembered. My image solidified as I marshaled my thoughts.
The rune I had slammed into the gorilla’s head back in the real world pulsed on the back of my hand but was smaller by half. I flexed my will to conjure stone but nothing happened. I couldn’t feel my magic except for the Flesh Sorcery. The little ape launched itself at me and I reflexively caught it by the throat and backhanded the rune into its head again, this time slamming it with the full force of my Flesh Sorcery.
“Serve me!” I intoned, my command of magic making this mental realm shake inside of the ape’s mind. I went with the flow, letting out just a little bit of that little evil mastermind that had always raged against the confines of my heart. “Bind to me, to my will, your will bound to mine, tighter still.”
My chant was a bit lame, but it seemed to make the crimson rune vibrate with hungry desire. The rune of a heart bound in thorny chains unwound and speared into the small ape, winding through his ghostly flesh like a vicious sewing needle. I let go of the ape as it fell to the ground, ethereal blood leaking from the small wound. The heart itself crawled down to its chest and sank in, then the chains dug in after it. The ape sat up with a painful gasp, hate in his eyes and his tail whipping like an angry cat before it lunges.
The next moment had me back in my body staring at the prone ape, his will bound to mine, his body completely still.
“Let go boy.” I said to Spot, taking a step back to give everyone room. “It’s ok.” Spot stepped back gingerly as well, not trusting the former attacker of his master. His lips were peeled back from his teeth, a low growl rumbling out as he kept his eyes peeled. His muscles were bunched, still ready to pounce just in case the gorilla made the wrong move. Gungnir crackled with lightning, floating around my head while I stepped forward and put my hand on the gorilla’s head, pushing my Flesh Sorcery in. With a pulse of magic, I took command of his body and mind.
Taking a deep breath, I carefully decided my next words. “You will not harm me or mine. You will obey the language and spirit of my commands, you will do everything to help me with whatever context I clarify at the time. Your main job is to serve as my guard. Your priority is that my enemies never get close to me. Treat well with me and I will do the same for you. I will do my best to make sure you are healthy and well taken care of.” My Flesh Sorcery imprinted every emotion and intent of my words into the gorilla’s cells, binding him to me and creating a Master/Slave mental link.
I stepped back and let him up. That big body rolled over surprisingly quickly for its size.
“All right, I need a name for you. I’m not too good with names, I mean, I called the dog ‘Spot’, but ‘Kong’ is overrated - even though it fits,” I jokingly rambled on, feeling more safe now that I knew that this animal was literally incapable of hurting me. Its glare wasn’t comforting but his body was completely relaxed. “But it could be short for ‘Wukong’ instead of ‘King Kong’, so that may work. Nerds could make a good case for a roided-out skyscraper climbing gorilla versus the mystical martial arts master monkey. Eh, this requires too much work, Kong it is!” I declared.
Being a little drunk on my own power was its own special brand of high, good enough to let the lameness of the naming slide. I reached out with my Flesh Sorcery and healed the newly dubbed Kong, then I carefully used my power to carve a conditional trigger enchantment into his spine near the base of his skull. If I ever needed to, I could trigger it through a code word or a touch of Sorcery and it would instantly paralyze him. Paranoia isn’t paranoia if it might actually happen, so instead, I’m going to prepare.
“Listen up, Kong,” I said, looking up at him. “I have a job for you. I want you to patrol this forest and chase away anything considered a legitimate threat to a deer. If it’s too dangerous for you to take on, watch it and learn about it and report back to me. Be back at this tree by tonight, got it?”
Kong nodded his head, chuffed and then looked himself over, slightly amazed that his wounds were all gone. Growling softy, his lips covered his fangs before he took a look at Spot and then a much longer look at me. Then he walked into the bushes and vanished with scary silence.
“Fuckin sleuthy snake monkey.” I muttered, turning back to Spot. I puffed my chest out. “That’s your new friend. You both are my guards now, got it?”
Agreement came in the form of enthusiastic barking that nearly made me deaf. Using Spot’s muscle after his excitement waned, I used him to drag the huge deer Gungnir iced back to the river-bottom cavern. It took forever as Spot kept trying to eat it the entire trip. Gungnir was oddly silent the whole time, staying two-feet away from my shoulder, floating smoothly but erratically crackling with sparks and breaking ice.
Upon arrival at the under-river-bottom cavern, I conjured a large stone box near my makeshift magical kitchen to be my meat freezer and shaped runes of cold and freshness up and down the sides of the stone walls.
Butchering the humongous deer took forever. I was even using a ridiculously sharp conjured stone knife that never really got dull to do it. Figuring I’d pass the time getting to know my main weapon a bit better, I asked Gungnir while evaluating the crackling orb with my magical senses.
“What’s going on with you?”
A cursory glance at my weapon showed that something was off. A verifiable sun of magical power vibrated within the confines of Gungnir, beating at the inner edges of the crystal half. “Dude, what in the world is going on?”
The lack of an answer worried me. Gungnir never shut up. It’s like having a bunch of kids but hearing only silence. That alone is enough to make any parent worry. Silence means danger.
Poking around with my mind, my senses diagnosed the obvious cause of Gungnir’s issue. The matter-to-mana power generator that I had placed inside of Gungnir had been altered somehow. It looked like the power governor and conditional shutoff had been removed and now the entire enchantment structure was rapidly declining, pumping out insane amounts of raw mana and being condensed inside of the Chaos crystal that was Gungnir.
Freaking out at the likelihood of possibly being next to a magical nuclear explosion, I grabbed at Gungnir with my mind and forcibly wrenched its shape into spear form then sprinted to the far side of my cavern where my magical senses showed me the river’s ley line of power flowed. The natural river of Earth’s magic showed up blue to me as my Nature and Water Sorcery outlined the exact location.
Gripping Gungnir, I stabbed it into the wall and forcibly lengthened the crystal tip until it just barely physically touched the ley line, carving out a channel for the excess energy to flow from the spear to the ley line, like how a lightning rod attracts and safely bleeds off the power of a lightning bolt. It was the right idea, but the smart thing to do would have been to let go just before making the channel and let the magical energies do their own thing.
I let go half a second too late, and it was as if I was connected to an electrical socket the size of a mountain, blowing me back forty-feet. My shield protected me from the inertia and my armor absorbed the excess bleed off of the spear, completely charging every bit of it to full.
The sight of the barely contained cosmic forces being unleashed was amazing to watch even as I saw stars from my head smacking against the far wall of the cavern. The veritable sun of arcane power contained in the spear being injected into the river of natural mana was awesome, magnificent reds and yellows swirling with purples and greens meeting the blue of the ley line and dissipating in the overwhelming flow of the ley line.
As it became safe-ish to approach, I tapped the handle with a finger just to make sure it wouldn’t blast me again. Laughing at my uncanny ability to avoid being vaporized, I grabbed the handle of Gungnir and reached in with my magic. I felt the power generator, pulled it out and replaced the conditional triggers and safety governors on it. Storing it back in Gungnir, I rubbed a bit of powdered stone off the blade.
“That, was, AWESOME!” Gungnir’s tinny voice squeaked out. “We need to do that shit again!”
“You did this?” My temper rising as I clarified.
“Well duh . . .” My weapon replied. “I wanted to see how much power I could hold.”
Seeing the utter lack of responsibility and intelligence from my spear, I began building an enchantment of restriction and confinement and placed it inside the crystal surrounding the generator.
“Oh come on!” Gungnir whined. “That’s no fair! What if we need the power?”
“Then I’ll take it off!” I snapped, continuing to MacGyver the enchantment until it felt right. “But you do that again and I take it out, completely. You get a set amount of mana, a constant low stream. I can’t have you going nuclear here.”
“But, but, POWER!” My weapon pleaded.
“Is outweighed by intelligence.” I finished, pulling on my own stores of power to make sure I wasn’t irreparably damaged. Luckily, my armor and shields absorbed most of the damage from the initial bleed off blast. “Nothing is more dangerous than pure stupidity. I have to make sure that isn’t you. Now, we need to do something about this,” I gestured, pointing at the bloody surroundings. “We could’ve been blown away, dead as this fucking deer.”
The massive stag had leaked plenty of fluids on the floor during Gungnir’s idiotic escapade. I reprimanded my weapon as I got to cleaning. “I have to finish butchering and storing and then get on to crafting another weapon. If you’re going to be floating around as my Rod of God satellite and power source, then I need another weapon . . . something to hold and focus power through.”
“I vote ax! Or a humongous sword, ladies love a big sword!” Gungnir chirped.
Crap. It was back. I already miss the silence.
It took three hours to fully dress that deer and clean up the mess. I was tired, but I had enough meat to last a whole year. My freezer had to be enlarged a few times to contain the meat I wanted to save and all of the scraps and bones went to Spot. Earth Sorcery also had zero issues conjuring enough flat plates of salt to separate the cuts of meat from each other. Salt preservation plus magical refrigeration.
Refreshing myself with my Flesh Sorcery after that amount of work felt like a good night’s sleep combined with three shots of espresso. It was definitely time to create a new weapon. I figured I had Gungnir for killing or stunning huge monsters like Kong, and my own powers are pretty good for improvising, but I did need something for many small targets - like a swarm of goblins.
A gun would be perfect. The whole point and spray to take out crowds is kind of ideal but I didn’t have those anymore and finding them would be hard to do, especially if the entire world got changed to what I saw just a few hours ago. I wanted to go find my test materials as well, but I really had no confidence that I would be able to in that wild mess out there.
Giant lizard gorillas, oh my!
I conjured a large stone plate, circular in shape and about two-feet across and placed it on top of the generator in the center of the room. Then I ran down my tunnel to where it came out near the World Tree and began pumping mana into the main root, coaxing it to grow a small disk of wood which I then separated with Nature Sorcery and put in my pocket. Running back to my experiment plate, I put a rune of joining/combining on there and framed it within a rune of will and concentration.
Focusing on the symbology and intent of what I was trying to accomplish, I placed the piece of the World Tree on the plate and conjured a disk of bone the same size next to it. Taking a bar of gold from the pile of potential test materials closer to the entrance tunnel of the cavern, I placed the gold on the plate as well and put the bone disk and World Tree fragment on top of it so that all three touched, and then gently placed a small, smooth riverstone on top of that.
The experiment layout looked like a pyramid that any two-year old playing in the dirt would make. I grabbed Gungnir and focused on sending my thoughts to it, as it was going to help me with this process.
My plan was to craft something that would be a complement to my sorceries, a sort of focus for the magics I have since Gungnir left my hands to morph into an incredibly powerful security satellite, which was not my original intention, but useful nonetheless. Wizards need a staff, but sorcerers need something else, and I need something more than that.
“You’re missing something,” Gungnir chimed in, ruining my focus.
I rolled my eyes. “What?”
“Well, think about it. Your armor is pretty damn good, and I am an epic generator of raw power with incredible mountain destroying magic with a tiny piece of your soul, but you have no weapons.”
“I already know that.” I replied. “That’s exactly what I’m doing right now.”
“Yeah, but your thoughts were unfocused.” Gungnir clarified. “You basically wanted something awesome with these materials, but didn’t have an end goal. And you can’t lie to me, we’re connected.”
“He’s right ya know.”
I know that voice. Surprise removed all of the questions that my interrupted conversation generated. Whirling around brought me face to face with Rath.
Big Rath. Uhm, not happy Rath?
His voice was much deeper, but I could swear there was an undercurrent of anger threading through his words.
“You are missing something.” He rumbled. “Humility.” A small exhalation of flame washed over me, my shield easily blocking the small puff.
I was still kneeling over the crafting plate with my materials and Gungnir in knife form in my right hand. Somehow, Rath had gotten into my river-bottom hideout and was ten-feet away from me, and now he wasn’t so small. This little dragon-lizard was now big - bigger than Kong had been, and he did not look happy with smoke curling out of his nostrils. His slitted eyes were larger than truck tires and his head bigger than an eighteen wheeler’s engine block.
I slowly stood up, Gungnir in my hand. “Whatcha talking about there, Rath?”
“I should have eaten you when I had the chance.” He growled, straightening up, each syllable punctuated with bits of sulfur tinged flame. Gorgorath really was an impressive specimen. His visage could have been pulled from off the cover of a child's storybook, except for the long scar of torn, blackened flesh that looked like he had almost been cut in two.