Anyway, I shouldn’t be wondering about her Sorcery as I’m trying to fix the faulty delivery system, but I couldn’t help myself. My Flesh Sorcery kept pointing out that the body of the Centauri soldier had some hidden pieces of technology inside of her. There was an almost clear rectangular chip attached to the top part of her heart, and a weird patch made of wires and some nanotech on the inner side of her breastbone. There was also some material I couldn’t identify in her tailbone that pulsed in time with the electrical impulses of her heart. I wanted to remove the stuff out of some weird principle that my Sorcery was nudging me towards, but the focus of this was to make sure her own Sorcery didn’t get messed up.
The rainbow bonanza of power sat on her brain and then it was slowly absorbed as if the brain were a sponge. The eyes soaked up most of the magic, the optic nerve getting all the sparkles, and the lighter red-magic-fluid-stuff settled in the rest of the brain and brainstem, with bits filtering down the top part of the spine. Ten minutes of monitoring Reeanth after fixing her Sorcery assimilation, I felt comfortable enough to extract my own magic from her and plan my own.
Obviously the delivery system was built into the blood jar but the concept of placement mattered a helluva lot more than she knew. Without me there, her Sorcery would have had well over a forty percent efficiency loss due to the ill-planned journey.
Given what I’d learned, along with the added benefit of my much more powerful Chaos granted abilities, I said fuck it. Breathing in and out for fifteen minutes, I managed to put my mind in the meditative state I reached earlier that morning, where my imagination of my magical tree body/soul thing was. Using the Flesh Sorcery to automate my next actions, I focused my attention on the upper body of the tree-soul. My body picked up the blood jar in one hand, lifted it up and over my head then placed it right on the side of my neck.
Oh so carefully, I used Flesh Sorcery to deaden that section of my neck. Feeding a thin stream of mana into the blood jar, I directed the contents of the jar, the solidified concepts of self/consciousness/me-ness/soul, straight into my neck with a tube of mana sectioned off into two pieces, where sixty percent forked up into my brain while the other forty percent partitioned off into my heart.
Taking a lucky guess from all the crap fiction I’d read in my life, I figured that a person’s soul wasn’t just one piece of them, but it was a combination of the mind and heart to make the soul. I mean, it makes sense. Plenty of people used to lay in hospital beds, perfectly braindead, just vegetables waiting to go, but some of those same people also hung on by a thread for decades. We are more than just brain, or heart, though one without the other is useless.
Suffice to say, it wasn’t pain that I felt, it was agony. Mind opening, intellect numbing, brain pain on a level, nay, a dimension yet unrealized. What made it worse was that due to my Sorcery induced meditative state, I could feel every gritty piece of broken-glass-like power grind its way through my upper nervous system. The heart-centric part was rough, but it didn’t hurt worse than losing Elizabeth, so I just powered through that one.
Even though the pain was metaphorically blinding, my magical senses allowed me to stay on point and watch the tree personification of my soul made up of different sorceries actually combine with the consciousness one. My separated head and arms broke through whatever that shield of nothingness was and grew tendrils that attached directly to the trunk, sending bright bits of light straight into it. Those bits of light left a glowing trail as they worked their way from my neck and shoulders to connect with the center, where my heart was. Then, after growing in luminescence, the light then traveled down what I assumed were imitations of my veins and arteries as they filtered through my legs/roots.
The whole picture of exactly what I was culminated into a sorcerous whole, a luminescent intact magical reflection that opened up its own eyes and stared right back into mine.
Freaky.
Holding its hands out with the palms up, the combined elements of my anthropomorphized soul looked down at them and slowly put its hands to its face. Its eyes lit up with the soft-white light of joy and then began to feel around, touching the barky knees and the hips made of solid bone, flexing its stone toes and brown compacted dirt feet.
With the innocence of a child, the mirrored analogous embodiment of myself and my power began to dance with joy as the dark void we were in began to fill up with different elements that began to slowly leak outwards from the center. Instead of standing on nothing, its dance left footprints of dirt and mud that congealed to form a growing surface of earth. Jumping around left puddles of crystal clear water that sparkled and filled in the divots of the dirt. I was happy, for a few moments - the conjoining of myself, and everything that was me, was content.
Coming back to myself, the me that was a literal human body, seized with a mixture of pain and pleasure. My head and heart were pounding, throbbing as if a migraine and mini-heart attack had a mutant baby, but the rest of my body felt so aware. If I wanted to, I could watch my hand reach up and smack Reeanth on the shoulder to wake her up - but in the moments between the micro-seconds of neural impulses that physically moved my hand, I felt them. I felt the decision making process that twitched the arm just right so that I would have optimum power to swat her; the tenseness of the forearm as it locked into position; the rest of my body saying, ‘maybe this isn’t such a good idea’.
HAHA! There it was! The voice in my head that speaks up when making a bad decision, that little bitch finally grew a pair and learned how to speak from the gut. Setting my arm down, I casually used Flesh Sorcery to slowly soothe away the pain. Merely speeding up my healing factor would make sure that I didn’t overwrite any changes to my body that inputting a new Sorcery would impart, and the day had just begun.
******
Heating up a couple cans of chicken noodle soup when Reeanth awoke constituted making lunch nowadays, but this time eating with her wasn’t the restful activity I was hoping it would be. Mulling over what the various immortals said in their carelessness over the past day was hopeless as the Centauri soldier (now sorceress) glared at me. Her vision was physically painful, her eyes emitting invisible beams of light that saw more than they should, while scouring off the top layer of flesh.
“I said I was sorry!” The glare didn’t stop.
“Seriously, turn that shit off, woman.” The circumference of ultraviolet light pouring from her eyes lessened but the intensity picked up, as if a sick kid were burning ants through a microscope. My natural regeneration via Flesh Sorcery was more than enough to keep the damage to a minimum, but my temper was starting to pick up as her gaze was burning my flesh.
“I’m going to give you to the count of three,” I growled, picturing myself talking to a child as my flesh steamed and regrew, until a light mana shield snapped into existence. For a split second, the light intensified - then it shut off. The hand holding the spoonful of soup trembled as I contemplated burying her way down deep in the earth, or teaching Spot what human tasted like.
Sometimes, imagining random thoughts of violence helped keep me sane, like thinking about running people over in horrible highway traffic but not actually doing it.
“That’s better. How was I supposed to know there were weird boundaries about messing with someone’s magic? For all I knew, you knew nothing and fucked the whole thing up.”
Her silence was a sharp riposte to my ignorance.
Looking down at my bowl and taking another bite, I murmured through the food. “Guess I should’ve let you be fucked up. Then at least I wouldn’t have to deal with some psycho who got pissed off with me helping her.”
It’s like modern society all over again, with some certain kinds of people acting like assholes when you hold a door open for them. Everyone knows what I’m talking about, instead of saying a simple ‘thank you’ and continuing on their day, the shitstain of society goes off on how they could have gotten it themselves or ‘what, I’m too weak to get my own door?’ Fuck them. It’s called being nice. Polite. Having basic manners. Some things never change.
“You know what?” I growled, looking back up at her. “You’ve swore your service to me, so either you get your shit together or I’ll make you butt-fuckin’ ugly. I can do that. I’m a damn Flesh Sorcerer and it would be waaaay too easy.” I made a stupid face while miming pinching my own face. “Think pimples on your face and all over your butt while you struggle with buck teeth and no fingers.”
My threat worked, or it did outwardly. Her attitude ceased as far as I could see which was good enough. One of the social constructs I’d gleaned from the flesh copy of Reeanth’s brain that wasn’t encrypted is that the concept of privacy seems to have a much greater social consequence in the Centauri society. This closely held belief seemed to be related to most everyone having magic on some level. Due to acts of magic being an exercise of the soul at least in part, the Centauri regarded the inner workings of their soul as taboo to outsiders.
As far as I could tell, the closest parallel is the way some fundamentalist religions of old held the burka in regards to the faces of their women or their adherents only allowing extremely modest clothing. Some things were just kept secret for the sake of it.
But I get it. In her eyes, this was a violation. Not quite to the level of sexual assault but definitely not allowed for someone who wasn’t either a lover or a direct family member. I had overstepped to some degree. Although, she did try to kill me . . . so does it qualify? How far do my morals have to decay in the end of the world? Do my values even apply to a freaking alien? And where does me being her ‘liege lord’ end? Her point of view is different from mine on a fundamental level, so how does that work at the intersect of our beliefs?
I gritted my teeth as I came to a decision. “I won’t do it again . . . if I can help it, and besides, we went over this. Random bits and pieces of the power were stuck in the wrong spots,” I explained haltingly as I wolfed down breakfast. “Anyways, magical sight and some kind of eye-beam that hurts? Wonder what it’ll do to some mutated animals?”
The tacked-on attempt at humor didn’t help.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Still not talking to me, Reeanth’s eyebrows rose as her curiosity got the better of her. “Yes, we’re going east,” I said, forging onwards. “Gotta find some random dude and then he’ll help me get my brother, supposedly.”
Angrily throwing her soup back, Reeanth slammed her bowl into the table and walked away. “Fine! Stay here and guard the damn tree!” I yelled at her rapidly diminishing figure. “AND DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID!”
Grabbing the ball off the floor that used to be sentient Gungnir, I walked outside and leaned my back on the tree, noting that the sun was still rising to the east, the direction I needed to go. Looking down at the compact sphere of magic crystal and wood, I held a solemn moment of silence for Gungnir. My magical senses told me that it was still technically the same magical object as it was two days ago, but the driving intelligence was gone. No annoying spark to sing my ear off anymore. As I flexed my will, Gungnir easily morphed into a tri-bladed spear then into a small javelin and finished by flowing into a crystal-capped staff more reminiscent of a classic long bearded wizard.
Stabbing the metal-capped base into the dirt, I pulled a small bit of energy from the Earth up through the staff, letting it make its way through my body and then back out my arm as it reached its final destination in the crystal blades. A soft pulse let me know that non-sentient Gungnir was full-up on energy. It thrummed with power, a barely audible hum coming from the weapon.
Uhg, this reminded me of my old nemesis, or the previously conquered issue that plagues all magic users: Mana. The personal generators I had that converted matter into mana, my jury-rigged mana/nuclear process, didn’t work anymore due to the heightened levels of ambient mana in the atmosphere interfering with the delicate enchantments. The newer idea of using Gungnir as an energy tap while walking on ley lines held some promise, but I couldn’t guarantee that I’d always be walking on or near a ley line.
Using my new Sorcery of Consciousness, I felt the emanations of my soul, how the living part of me that the old Earth didn’t believe existed created mana by the simple fact of living, but not too much. It made or exuded more than I needed at any given time when I wasn’t doing anything, but the output wasn’t overly huge. What was big was how much I could hold of my excess, but that paled in comparison to what Svalinn, my arm gauntlet shields, and Gungnir, my shifting staff weapon, could hold.
Remembering my old gear, the weight vest filled with energy storing crystals, I began conjuring and shaping small diamonds roughly the size of a twenty-first century phone and then placing them on the ground. That old concept was good, but I’ve come a long way since the apocalypse shenanigans kicked off. I could make this far more efficient.
With a bit more power, I grew the small diamond plates to have a curved shape so they would contour better to my body. Then, after calling Spot over, I used Flesh Sorcery to take a small piece of bone armor off his knee and began making it grow into various sizes as armor coverings. In the concave curve of the shell-like bone coverings, I input various slots where the crystals would go, then I used Earth Sorcery to etch runes of energy storage and stasis in the diamonds.
Fitting the ten new coverings on top of various armor parts, I floundered about with my mind for a bit, managing to make a crude automated process that ran like a background program on a computer to direct the overflow of mana that I produced into the new storage containers placed around my body. It didn’t take much to add a secondary absorption function that would slowly direct ambient mana into the batteries as well if they had any room left.
Now, when I’m not doing anything or when I am traveling from place to place, my mind would automatically direct mana that I wasn’t using into the batteries, Svalinn, or Gungnir. With these devices, I could hold many times more mana than my own personal well of magic and with the magical weapons at my disposal, I could concentrate power greater than what I could summon at any one time or tap into the ambient mana much more efficiently. Now I know why wizards or Sorcerers went bonkers for magical weaponry: It’s a force multiplier, like giving a guy a freaking machine gun when he’s only used a small knife for self-defense his entire life.
Magic batteries, check. Epic named weapons, check. Taking another couple minutes, I took inventory of the flashbang light grenades I had in my pockets and then ran my senses through the layered network of silver and gold runes carved into my armor. After determining that everything was in good working order, I crawled up Spot’s back using his bony armor protrusions and attached Gungnir to my back.
With his own brand of Flesh Sorcery modeled after my own, Spot didn’t need any words to know what I wanted. Our connection spoke for itself as our magic linked. The big red lizard of a dog took off east like a bat outta hell, and the jolt of his excitement flooded through me. On a side note, I could feel that my mutated dog contained and produced enough mana to be an actual nuclear mana plant.
His joy was apparent, bounding around as every living thing in the gigantic forest fled knowing that they were much lower on the food chain than Spot.The brown redwood sized trees blurred as the canine easily ran at over forty miles an hour, hopping over small inlets from the Rapphannock river like they were puddles, while darting over fallen logs and underbrush effortlessly.
My long ride was horribly bumpy. I put some effort into making it better for me, molding parts of bone that were already sticking out of Spot’s spine into handholds for me. Finally getting a solid grip, I reached out with my magical senses, trying to feel the life, the nature, around me.
This wasn’t like being up in the air where everything is in plain sight. Riding Spot to some unknown guy in an unknown situation for an unknown purpose, all for a chance at helping out my brother was the least of my worries. Falling was a serious concern in this exact moment even with the handholds. Dying after falling was a more serious concern, but I had a lot of faith in my armor to prevent that.
The situation itself, or the way it was phrased at least, was cause for concern. I’m fucking powerful, and Merlin said that I would need this guy’s help, which meant that either what I’m going up against is ridiculous, or this guy is as ridiculous as me. I’m not sure I liked either of those scenarios. A third possibility did present itself, in that maybe Merlin just wanted me to rescue somebody for some reason I didn’t know yet. Maybe another distant relative descended from Merlin’s randier days. Who knows.
Spot’s sudden stop launched me into the back of his thick bony neck where I bounced up and off with way too much momentum. Luckily, my magical armor engaged a force field, preventing an unplanned broken nose, but it did slam my ass back down on Spot’s back. We’d been going at a good clip for a while now. My butt had gotten used to the cadence, enticing me into not paying attention. A low rumbling sound came from deep inside my four legged fur-vehicle.
“Come on now lassie, use your words. I know Sammy ain’t in no well,” I grumbled as I hopped off, pulling Gungnir off of my back and morphing it into a spear. The dog didn’t get the joke. I grumbled as the pain of missing Gungnir just a bit reared its head. “Let’s see what’s got you all riled up.”
A huge roar coupled with many simultaneous, smaller screams answered my good natured complaining. The smell was so bad that it hit me before the visual input did. Many small piles of what could only be poo were everywhere. Through the haze of my screaming nose and watering eyes, I made out a familiar giant ape wielding a stone ax, surrounded by many smaller monkeys that were very riled up. Either really, really angry, or really, really happy. But I couldn’t tell which.
What I could tell, was that Kong was not happy to see us. The damn monkey that the Ripple set free was still here, but this time, the bitch had an army.
Luckily for me, I had Spot. My faithful dragon-mutated giant dog crouched low, growling deep in his throat, as if he were straight up ready to brawl but just waiting for my word to go. Spot’s shoulders bunch as his growl rose in tenor just below an active snarl.
While the bigger animals were glaring at each other, waiting for the other to make the first move, I noticed that all of the other monkeys were focused elsewhere. Following their line of sight, a way less hairy monkey was up on a thick tree branch, holding a banana the size of a small suitcase while fighting off the much hairier monkeys.
Quickly conjuring some water to clean out my eyes, I took another look and saw that the not-hairy monkey was actually a limber young man in dirty tattered clothes around fifteen years old. [Oh the balls on that kid.] I laughed, watching him taunt the monkeys. The weird grace he carried himself with spoke of either years of gymnastic training or something more arcane at play. The hand not carrying the over-sized banana was wielding a thin bendy staff that sparked everytime it came in contact with a monkey.
I yelled up at the kid, “That banana better be worth it, dude! ‘Cause these monkeys ain’t gonna stop!”
My poorly timed shout knocked the kid off his game, causing him to misstep just enough for one monkey to yank his feet out from under him. “Fetch!” I screamed at Spot, who understood all too well what I didn’t say.
My dog bolted to where the kid was falling while I tossed a small flashbang pebble at Kong’s feet. I purposefully underpowered it so as not to overly piss him off too much.
“Hey, remember me, big guy?” I said to Kong, swaggering up to him like a cocky pirate. I channeled my inner Jack Sparrow. It made me crave a shot of rum. “Don’t want any trouble today, but I’m leaving with that kid and the banana.”
Kong’s howl said otherwise. Yellow eyes with burning slitted pupils glared at me with all the hate in the world.
I gripped Gungnir with two hands and pointed it at Kong, shimmers of crimson light pulsing menacingly from the crystal blades. Jagged white arcs of pure energy lashed up and down the wooden body of my spear. “Hold on right there. I’ve made some mistakes in the past but I can sure as hell repeat them. My conscience is a bit too much of a bitch when my life might be on the line. Now what’s it gonna be, big guy?”
Raising his arm, which was rippling with enough muscle to tear out a mountain, Kong pointed his ax at me and roared.
“Fine, fuck you too, dick. Let’s see how you like this!” A tiny bit of fear mixed with the adrenaline coursing through me. Working my versatile Earth Sorcery, I channeled the gravity aspect to greatly increase the weight of the stone ax so much that it just slipped right out of Kong’s hand. Another blast of power yanked the massive ax towards me; it tumbled ominously until the long ax blade stuck into the dirt.
Putting my hand on the smooth handle, I looked Kong right in the eye and banished it. The look on his almost human face was worth it. I grinned. “Yes, I gave you that ax, and at the risk of sounding like a suburban mom with a bad haircut, I can take it away.”
Pointing Gungnir at Kong again, pulsing lights and all, I let just a teensy bit of anger reach my eyes. “Anything else that you want me to remove, fatty?”
Kong took a step back and looked at his screeching army. With another roar and a shaking finger, he pointed at me. “Shit, shit, shit,” I freaked, turning and sprinting to Spot, who was proudly holding his catch of the day. “Some help here, mutt?” I yelled frantically. “And drop the kid!”
A wet splat heralded the sad looking boy as he desperately tried to defend his fruit. I reached Spot’s side and pivoted as he stood at full height over the kid. “What’s your name kid?” I asked hurriedly. “Chop chop let’s go. Spot’s scary for about three minutes before people realize his weakness.”
“My name’s Johnny,” the messy splatter said. “And what’s his weakness?”
“Belly rubs, duh. Never met a dog before?”
Wisely forsaking an answer, Johnny simply pointed at the oncoming tide of raging monkeys. “Shut your eyes, trust me,” I said as I grabbed a handful of my flashbang pebbles and threw them, overloading them with extra mana just before they left my hand.
As the discordance of explosive raving fun went off twenty-feet away at the feet of the incoming horde, I turned and pulled Spot’s head down and used our combined bodies to cover Johnny just for a second or two, then whipped back around. All of the monkeys were on the ground, clawing at their eyes and ears. Even Kong was leaning on a tree howling in pain, tears streaming between his fingers.
Spot started a high pitched keening sound which cut off after ten seconds. I felt his Flesh Sorcery healing up his burst eardrums and retinas. While that was going on, a couple well placed bursts of my Earth Sorcery violently buried the monkeys up to their necks in dirt and stone. Kong was too big to bury as fast as the others but I knew for a fact that he already knew who the top dog was. The smaller apes… man, I was actually more afraid of them. Sheer numbers is a strength all its own.
I grabbed Johnny and sent a pulse of healing magic into him just before hurling him up on top of Spot where I joined him. “All right boy, hush now,” I cooed to Spot as his healed eyes focused on the crowd of helpless prey. “Now's not the time.” Spot harrumphed to show what he thought of that, but did quickly pad past the dazed troop.
Ten-ish minutes of silent riding later, Spot shook us off and jumped in the nearby creek, lapping it up with his surfboard-sized tongue.
“This shit really happening?” Johnny asked me.
Finally getting a good look at him, I noticed that he was Oriental of one flavor or another. Probably got some Japanese in him, not that it really matters, not that it really ever did. Humanity has much bigger issues to worry about than our old divisions.
[How petty and small we must seem to other races?] I thought. [Which makes me wonder what stupid things they discriminate about. Can’t believe that my mind can wander around like this, but really, wait. Wander . . . thinking . . . holy shit.]
I noticed that my ability to process thoughts was way faster than usual. Without trying, I can see it or visualize it. Hohohoho, hell yeah! Right about now, Johnny actually finished asking the phrase that I saw him asking, like right now, his lips just closed. Sweet. If this is something I can get a serious handle on, maybe I might just live past a year. Somehow, probably related to my Consciousness Sorcery, my brain is thinking at a faster rate, like having a higher RPM on a computer, giving me precious seconds to think, decide and plan.
And I’m using it to wonder about alien discrimination.
Can’t fix stupid, huh? Maybe I can outthink it, though.
“Yes, this shit is happening, no it will not stop, yes we need to go, and I’ll tell you more later.” My rapid fire answers shut him up for a second, which he used to take a deep breath.
“Yes that’s my dog, no that’s not my monkey but it used to be, I’m a Sorcerer. What are you?”
“Cultivator!” He answered quickly.
“Haha!” I exclaimed, excited that he’d shared information about himself so easily. “My wife taught me that trick. Get people nodding or agreeing with you with rapid fire questions and answers, then hit them with a question. Works half the time!”
A little bit of red colored his cheeks. “Don’t worry, whatever the hell you have is probably cool too,” I said, laughing at his discomfort. “But trust me, magic is better.”