I hadn’t forgotten Mr. Big-and-Bad scalyface that had chosen me as opportunistic prey earlier today. Freaking giant crocodile wanted to snack on me. I don’t blame him.
He’d be a perfect river guardian. Already got one for the skies and one for the forest.
Now, I didn’t set out to have a beast army, honestly, but that’s what I had available. Wisely using resources available, that’s a good way of putting it. These freaky new-age creatures twisted by the Ripples living all around my home will serve as guards for my majestic hermit-y self and the forest that I’m claiming as my domain. They’ll also serve as distractions or shock troops if I need to defend or attack mystic invaders. Already had to put down some goblins once. Lord knows I’ll probably have to do it again. Once I get this all set up and have most of the woodland freaks under my control, then it would be time to hunt down the rest of the gates.
Another hour’s worth of prep was really all I needed for my next conquest. The sun was high in the sky when Kong returned from his lunch and I had a giant Kong-sized net that was grown from Sorcery-enhanced plant fibers complete with thorns and a vitality draining enchantment woven through it. What took me the longest was folding the damn thing. Gungnir wasn’t any help, flitting through the forest messing with the various creatures I’d dominated.
“All right, you’re not gonna like this,” I said, standing over the net. “But we are taking down a croc, which won’t be as bad as the dragon. I think. We won’t know till we try.”
A feeling of smug arrogance rolled off Kong through our link. “Yeah, yeah, cocky fucker,” I said, rolling my eyes. “This would be a lot easier if Spot were here too. You could throw the net on it and jump on its head while Spot wrangles it by the tail. But he ain’t here. So we gotta do this the hard way.”
Kong picked up the net and slung it over his shoulder with one hand while picking up his ax with the other, cooing to it like a psycho with his knives.
“Enough of that,” I said, twanging the mental link to get his attention. “Let’s go fishin’.”
Fishin’ woulda been great. Riding on top of my magnificent magical mountain of a monkey to conquer the big-bad beast of the river bend made me feel like a badass. The mad sorcerer-king of the New World.
Unfortunately, as we hit the tree line, my five minute daydream was interrupted by the sight of my desired prey already laying down on the sandy beach down by the river, upside down and trussed up like a prize pig. The cavernous mouth was tied shut and the thick legs tied to its own body. It looked like freaking Gulliver’s Travels down there, a giant reptile being manhandled by an army of conniving ants.
Little green goblins with clouds of flies trailing them were scrambling over the gigantic scaly body, hammering at the incredibly thick scales. They scaled the body with ropes and evil looking picks as if they were climbing a cliff face. What looked to be two goblin shamans were standing directly in front of its beady eyes, one on either side of its face. I could hear their chanting even from way over here. Each guttural syllable was accompanied by a spark of green or red light that flicked off of their staves, soaking into the scales of the giant reptile. The little worker bee goblins scaling this beast looked to be carving or painting jagged runes on it with their own blood, while others were adding lengths of rope around its joints, small bits of shiny metal catching the glare of the sun.
I used mental communication to bypass the concerns of sound. [Kong, are they doing what I think they’re doing?] I thought at my ride, making sure to include the side hint for the need to stay silent. He didn’t move his head, but replied with a mental nod. For a tree-sized monkey, he sure was stealthy. His grip on a nearby tree tightened. I had to make sure he stayed that way for the next few moments. I wanted that gator, but I wanted these stinking goblins to have it even less. Actually, I thought about it for a minute. I wanted them in its belly, but I’ll get there when I get there.
Counting all the goblins was difficult as they kept scrambling around doing who-knows-what in the most erratic fashion, looking like insects on meth. As far as I could tell, there were three shamans, two of which were busy doing their butt-shakin’ gator hypnotism and one was on guard duty, with a stubby finger solidly up his nose. I spotted fifteen or so of the small ones crawling up and down the gator, and ten of the bigger soldier looking ones. The bigger ones looked to be about my size, complete with armor and weapons. They had permanent scowls and a whole lotta stink.
[Wish I had freaking Fire Sorcery] I thought to myself. [They look greasy enough to burn].
I could take’em, easy. Well, easy enough with Kong doing most of the work. Sending him my plan took place at the speed of thought, and our next actions seemed comically slow to me.
Kong tore out of the treeline like an avenging Titan and began punting unsuspecting goblins into the river while swinging his ax at the ropes tying down the gator. I cursed inwardly, [Sneaky traitorous devil.]
My ape was trying to cut my prize free. At the same time, I used this distraction to gun straight for the third shaman. Luckily, the shaman on guard was paying more attention to the rampaging ape instead of the sneaky sorcerer.
I shaped Svalinn into blades coming out of my forearms and took his head clean off. Green blood steamed where it fell against the ground, dissolving anything organic.
One down.
The other two shamans began chanting faster and faster, waving their arms and staffs at Kong. Bits of red light streamed faster and faster from their implements. The damn ape was cutting the ropes holding down the gator with his ax. What a fucking lawyer. I didn’t mention anything or give any orders about not cutting the ropes, just getting the goblins out of the way, and it seemed that he was taking literal lateral liberty with what I didn’t say.
I yanked on our mental link to clarify that having a trussed-up lizard was perfect for us and to [STOP CUTTING THE FREAKING ROPES!]
Kong roared in anger but obeyed. He turned his wrath into a full rampage, kicking and smacking the goblins into the river while the bigger hobgoblins were throwing spears to try and slow him down. Kong kicked sprays of sand and river water causing mini-tsunami’s to disrupt any sort of organized response.
I used Flesh Sorcery to yank all the blood out of the body of the shaman I’d shamelessly ganked and formed the blood into two floating spears which I hurled at one of the hypno-shamans.
As the hardened spears stabbed into his body, the blood spears re-liquified and acted more like an invading squid, forming into tentacles that ravaged his struggling body while also strangling him. His armor was zero impediment for the caustic blood that sank in between the cracks.
The last shaman just gave up and ran and the rest of the surviving goblins joined him in the small rafts and boats that were beached on the shore. Kong really left an impression on them as his ax obliterated any goblin it touched. Each goblin that he smacked with that oversized weapon was instant hamburger, a bloody pancake for the insects to feast on.
While this helped scare the goblins away, it had a major drawback: the smell was horrible. Goblins stink. And while the smell of goblin blood made me throw up just a bit, it more than anything made the big ole’ gator wake up out of his funk, and he wasn’t happy.
“Ugrrkrk!” I gagged, clutching my stomach while using Flesh Sorcery to calm my insides.
[Restrain it!] I commanded mentally, launching that message down Kong’s mental link. He hopped on top of the upside down gator using his ax to press on its throat as it began to flex and snap the restraints.
I don’t know how those goblins got the gator to be upside down, but it really was in a vulnerable position. I could take advantage of that. Its wide muscular tail was whipping back and forth, sending waves of sand in one direction and water in the other, as it was desperately trying to move.
I walked closer, pulling blood from the seven goblin bodies as I passed. I condensed it into a broiling sphere that hovered six-inches above my hand. Forming the ball of blood into a floating rune of domination, I hurled the blood rune up and into the yellow-slitted eye of the downed gator. The bloody rune wavered for a half-second, and then dissolved, the magic slivers shooting down the optic nerve, straight to the animal’s brain. Its eye turned from yellow to red even as it began to dissolve.
Instantly, our wills began to clash. It was, at once, both easier and harder to dominate this giant reptile than it had been to conquer Kong.
It didn’t have the forebrain or capacity of complex thought to mentally work its way around the binding, but it did have rivers of pure RAGE and instinct that I had to circumvent. The entire time our wills were duking it out, I was slowly walking closer to it, using my proximity to strengthen the mental connection. I struggled to block out the sensations of sweat dripping down my forehead, beads of saltiness that threatened my eyes. The gritty sand in my boots fought for my attention while the screaming cries from the creature’s fear of the Riverswept Goblins railed at my focus.
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[Fuck, all, of, YOU], I raged in my mind, grimacing as I moved bit by bit with the inexorable force of a falling mountain. [No matter how big, or how many, or how goddamn smelly, I will rule!]
It was more than confidence, more than mental power, it was recognizing that my will had the power to create fact. I could bend this, this insignificant reptile, to my will. I just hadn’t done it yet.
That was it, that was the key. I was fighting a battle of will when I didn’t have to. Reaching into its brain, I found its bundle instincts and just added one more fiber by growing it out of an old one. Quickly healing its eye while I had a moment, I massaged the hindbrain with mana as I backed up a bit. Tentatively, I bade Kong to hop off the gator and go back up to the forest, while the gator looked at me as if seeing me for the first time.
Using Water and Earth Sorcery concurrently, I pulled the water of the river up onto the shore, and I shifted the sand to pull away from the gator on one side, pushing up on the other so that the creature could flip over on its own. As it shifted with a flick of its tail, the gator landed on its belly. Flexing its limbs and breaking the ropes, it glared at me with one eye and then took off into the river as fast as its bulk would allow.
A questioning grunt from Kong reminded me that he was still there. I had forgotten about him for a full ten-minutes as I was watching the river with my new minion, the gator making the swimming goblin survivors disappear as the river took its due.
“Don’t worry about him,” I said to Kong softly, his keen senses easily picking up my voice. “I just helped him realize that I was the biggest, baddest croc around. From there, it was easy.” Turning towards Kong, I gently took our mental link in my ethereal mental hands and squeezed just a bit, making him wince. “And don’t you forget it.”
******
I used my druid-like abilities to smooth over the damaged landscape erasing all evidence of the great Gator vs Goblin battle. The workload ended up becoming my next couple days as the goblins’ blood was simply poisonous to the land. Definitely not something fun but absolutely necessary.
Norn would alert me about some minor invasion of green people that would start to deforest or defile the immediate area and I would go take care of it with my animal army. [Damn goblins. Little green nasty fuckers just kept coming back.] They stank and apparently didn’t care that this was my land - all of it.
To be fair, I hadn’t formally delivered a message to them, but slaughtering them every time I saw or smelled them should be crystal-fucking-clear.
I also couldn’t seem to find a chain of command or some dude who was in charge to talk to, but my message at this point was clear: Stay off my goddamn land. Maybe this comes off a bit xenophobic, but who cares about that crap in a magical apocalypse?
I laughed aloud as I worked, humming a bit off key. [Not me. Already sacrificed my conscience in the hopes that maybe I’ll get to live a couple of thousand years.]
Gripping my mental hub, my magical visualization in my head where I could communicate with all my bonded creatures, I sent a command to all of them that goblins were to be driven away or killed. And if they could not kill the goblins without sustaining casualties, then I was to be alerted. What made it worse was that I had no idea how the goblins actually got here, or why they kept popping up randomly. I assumed it was through some sort of portal or spatial gate that I hadn’t found, or that the little green men were just really good at sneaking around.
It’s hard to tell or communicate why I harbored this instinctive hatred for these alien invaders, but something about them made it feel like my soul was reflexively vomiting. Regardless, Hermes had advised me that getting rid of them was in my own best interest and I had zero reason to disbelieve him. The very core of my magic reacted to their presence like it was food-poisoning, an instant disgust that made me want to annihilate everything about them, then burn the land just to make sure they were gone. It made me glad that I had a deity’s stamp of approval to wipe them out. Their very presence disgusted me - even while I washed them away in the river or buried them far below the forest floor. And since my magical instincts had kept me alive so far, I figured that I’d just run with it. But it just kept making me angrier as I stomped out each infestation.
I found slimy goblin dens underneath fallen trees, between natural rock formations, and more burrowed underneath trees for their homes. I had to uproot everything and then level the area just to make sure that I got them all. A disgusting task.
The only upside was that I encountered and got to dominate a whole bunch of weird, magically-twisted animals along the way. A grumpy armadillo that spit acid from its two heads - which Gungnir named Grump and Gramp - was not a fun experience. The exploding-seed-throwing chunky squirrel with eight legs and three tails was even worse.
I couldn’t stop Gungnir from naming it Gumbo.
The stupid flying orb weapon was really upset when he found out that I had dominated the gator and let him go without being named, which is why he kept giving the other creatures stupid names.
“Gumby! Rocky! Fuzzball! Haunchy!” Every name was accompanied by a bob in the air, combined with a burst of rave-light from Gungnir.
“Enough! Fucking Stop! Dear god, please!” I begged as I picked my way through the underbrush. “It was just a herd of deer. Plain-ass normal deer with a size problem. You don’t have to name every living thing in this Ripple-cursed forest.” We were trekking through the forest, gathering creatures and scoping out the land.
“This is your fault!” Gungnir whined. “Which technically makes it our fault!”
“Look,” I said, grabbing the orb with magic with both hands and glaring at it. “If you can find out why the damn goblins won’t go away, or why they keep coming here, then you can name the gator.”
“Really? You mean it?” Gungnir rejoiced. “Scaly! Rath Jr! Fat legs! Treecodile!” Kong started groaning from behind us, his displeasure at the one-track weapon coloring our mental connection.
“AFTER!” I yelled, chucking Gungnir into the air. “After you solve the goblin problem.”
Gungnir bolted upwards and slammed into Kong’s forehead. “Fine, but I’m taking the monkey!”
“What the . . “ I said, turning around to see Kong’s eyes glow red to match the light that Gungnir was putting out. “How did, what . . .”
“Your Flesh Sorcery, duh,” Gungnir said. “I’m a piece of you, remember? See ya!”
The orb-controlled reptilian gorilla wheeled around and took off, its gait looking far too much like a human instead of an ape. I don’t even know what to think of this. Screw it. I leave the forest in the stolen hands of Kong, along with my psychotic, split-self weapon.
Stalking back to my cavern, I began to prepare for the second-to-last Ripple that I knew was coming soon. The worst part about the Ripples was that Gungnir seemed to be the only thing that had the capability to shield me from it. So, what would happen to Spot and all the other bonded creatures when the Ripple hit? And then, when it hit again? There were other effects of the Ripples that I only noticed after they hit.
First, magic is a lot easier to do after each one, as if it is slowly loosening the strict laws of reality. There was a sort of mental and spiritual strain associated with doing magic but it was getting easier, and not in the ‘I’m getting used to it’ kind of way. Things that shouldn’t be possible are almost fantastically easy for me.
Second, it also seems that enchantments are less stable each time - like magic itself is fighting against being bound in any kind of ordered way. The evidence for this observation was the miniature generator around my neck. I could easily see that what used to be a smooth process of slowly converting matter to mana was breaking down, the structure of the enchantment simply wasn’t enough anymore. The flood of power went from being a calm stream to a raging river, wearing down the integrity the way a stream erodes a mountain over time. I kept having to fix the enchantment and dial-down the amount of power it was converting so that I wouldn’t inadvertently start a nuclear process I couldn’t control.
If I couldn’t use my power generators, I would be forced to find a new way to cheat, to make free mana some other way. And to be perfectly clear, my generators were the number one reason that I was still breathin’.
And the weirdest part of all of this that I noticed was that even though I was shielded during the last Ripple by Gungnir, somehow, my personal reserves of mana were growing, or stretching. I couldn’t tell if it was due to simply being full with mana all the time because of my generator, or if my soul was similar to a muscle and channeling power through it, such as using Sorcery, was the equivalent of hitting the metaphorical gym.
Really makes me wish I had grabbed some kind of Soul Sorcery to help figure this crap out. Thinking about all of this wasn’t really helping me out as I simply didn’t know. I concluded that my ignorance will be the death of me more than anything else.
The rest of the day was spent under the river in my home conjuring crystals of all kinds and placing enchantments of energy entrapment and absorption in them and sticking the crystals in the walls of the cavern. My plan was to create a kind of energy sink/drain for the Ripple using all of the enchanted crystals, and see which crystal actually accomplished what I was setting out to do. Some of them were rubies and sapphires and quartz, and then interspersed with those were some wrapped in gold or other precious metals that seem to hold enchantments better but have lower energy efficiency overall. What I wouldn’t give for an experienced wizard right now so I could pick his brain.
Brain… BRAIN! I have a brain! One that isn’t mine!
As smart as I am, I sometimes forget that I had planned this course of action out already and it was not time for this yet. Gungnir’s nightly task has been to organize the several millenia’s worth of information from the dragon’s brain, which was still ongoing, and that means that me personally diving into the barely alive brain of an ancient dragon is probably not the best idea.
Well, the walk back from the cavern to the glade in front of the main entrance wasn’t completely useless though. I had used earth magic along the way to send out pulses of mana to see if I could find those test materials from forever ago that I’d put outside prior to the last Ripple. I really wonder what happened to them, but I honestly had no way of knowing. Something could have eaten them, moved them, or they could have simply disintegrated from the Ripple.
Thinking back as I walked along a widened dirt path, I was way too comfortable seeing all the trappings of modern life swallowed up by the forest. This new environment is an inexorable beast devouring everything as new life takes over. Every house from the former neighborhood was either a boxy tree or bush now, and every car and truck was either mostly disintegrated, eaten, or partially subsumed by a plant. It wasn’t uncommon to see trees with metallic streaks glossing the areas between knobs of bark, or leaves that gave off a metallic twang when they fell off of their trees.
Asphalt roads were now obviously dirt or completely covered in thick emerald grass. There was a criss-crossing network of power lines that had either fallen over or were covered in some kind of ivy that sparked when you walked past. Norn has been mentally sending me updates from his patrols as his intelligence started increasing, and it looks like the sleepy town of Fredericksburg had become a gigantic forest cut through from West to East by the bigger Rappahannock river that was at least several times wider than it used to be.
The department stores have been rapidly decomposing and even the nearby University of Mary Washington is nothing like it used to be. The brick and concrete dorms and other buildings are now rock formations that look like molten brick. Some of the steeper hills had in fact turned into monster infested sinkholes. Thinking about this, the changes in the landscape, sort of put me at peace.
I froze in my tracks, my hands cradling the latest ruby I had just conjured. [Whoa, hold up. Is my magic affecting my thinking?]
My hands started to shake slightly as my thoughts ran wild. [I mean, my abilities are centered around nature, or that which is a natural-state or found-in-nature, which might be affecting me in some way. Oh hell, is this the road to hippy-dom? No, no, no, no. I need bacon and whiskey, and I need it right now.]
Banishing the large ruby, which would have been a priceless gem before the Ripple, I sprinted towards my stores of food. Racing past the giant trees and alien foliage, I hurtled the glade, opened my door and flew down the tunnel to where my pantry was. Canned goods lined my stone shelves, none of it was bacon. In all of my panic, my dumbass had forgotten to get the four basic food groups: beans, bacon, whiskey, and lard.
What kind of an American am I?
I know for a fact that my dad would say a piss-poor one right now. A sense of loss came over me. Thoughts I had put off for too long swept over me.
I had served in the US Army Reserve for a few years and was the son of a bona fide Marine. Now, there was no America. No real borders existed, and humanity wasn’t the only race out there. Norn confirmed it with his constant updates. Towns were gone, interstates completely reshaped and consumed by nature.
There was no one to save my bacon if I screwed up. This was all on me. And it didn’t even have to be, I could hole up in my boltholes and play with my magic till the entire world rotted around me. I didn’t have to do squat. Yeah, a war was coming. Who cares?
“My, my, my, how you’ve grown, young sorcerer.”