Prologue - 2,375 A.R (After the Ripple) - (4,395 A.D.) - Distant Future
“Shall I throw it away, my lord?”
Illium’s dry voice made me turn around to look. My self-imposed butler was so good at keeping an even tone that I wouldn’t be able to tell if he was offering to toss a baby off a cliff or disposing of useless piles of workplace clutter. Lawd knows that he wasn’t offering to throw away my drink. That would be stupid. Utterly insane. Moronic in the highest of degrees.
A soft clink of ice against hand blown glass forced my bleary eyes to focus on the very well dressed half-breed dwarf delicately holding my mostly full beverage just out the window. His bow tie didn’t even rustle in the soft breeze of the early morning.
MORNING?! SHIT!
“While I do admire your attempts at living up to the Dwarvish standard of drinking, your constitution simply does not allow-”
My sudden and violent retching brought him up short.
“And spiking my former clan’s beer with Orcanin rum to ‘test’ out magical based tolerance-”
“UnGffffFrrrkk!”
********
The soft fall of dusk brought peace to my pounding head. With age comes wisdom, or wisdom should come with age . . . but if you can stave off aging with magic then what really comes with it is bad habits.
Drinking. I’m talking about drinking. Drinking too much. Drinking to test my healing magics. Drinking and enchanting, big no-no right there. Drinking and flying, also a big no-no. Drinking and flesh-crafting, still haven’t fully recovered from that one.
But hangovers, even magically enhanced hangovers, that one I fixed a long time ago. Several clumsy swings of my hand allowed me to finally get a grip on the back cabinet. Five apples clunked against the cedar drawer as I awkwardly opened it, nabbed an apple and slammed it shut again. Morning sunbeams glistened off the bright red apple as I squinted at it with pure vitriol.
But I did continue to glare at it. Why not? Why not glare at the one thing I could still influence right now? All I really wanted to do was glare at the damn memory crystal containing my set of memories from the first apocalypse I weathered and keep drinking.
Damn cultivators. Locusts. Demons in human form. Never satisfied. Always hungry for more.
Angrily devouring the magically enhanced apple to cure my hangover, I picked up the memory crystal and dove back to make sure the lessons of the past were burned into my brain.
Chapter 1 - Guardians of the Glade
0 A.R (2020 A.D.)
Frankenstein was my muuuuse, man. Not the pieced-together-from-dead-people monster, but the real one . . . the mad scientist behind it all. The evil genius!
Ignore his patent narcissism and obviously mentally deficient take on what kind of love he felt he deserved out of life. It was from his brilliant, yet twisted vision, that I drew my inspiration as I dramatically shouted with my clawed hands raised to the heavens.
“Rise, rise, RISE! My beautiful creation! RISE! Ah ha ha ha ha!”
The cold reality of the situation was not as glitzy as the death metal accompaniment fantasy taking place in my head, but it must have been rather fascinating to watch from the outside. Taking a page out of Flamel’s book, intergalactic mushroom-spiked potion-sniffing psycho that he is, I embarked on a theatrical journey of my own.
Today, I am a parent.
A derisive sniff off to my left cut my nascent prideful train of thought short.
“My lord, it doesn’t look right.” Reeanth’s lovely voice dripped with condescension but I couldn’t let that stop me. Why did she suddenly sound like she had acquired a well-to-do British accent?
Damn translation magic. Damn that dragon.
“Then you do it!” I growled back at her, my hands still in the air, shaking from false effort and not a little bit of frustration. “You try creating a consciousness from nothing and sticking it in literal dirt. How else do you plan on making a goddamn earth golem?”
“But you don’t need . . . “
“I never need, but I definitely want!”
Damn right. I have an inner child running the show half the time and what the hell is magic for if I can’t let that child wander out and do some fucking awesome shit? And let’s be honest here, men are simply children that got bigger. We don’t grow old, we grow up . . . our toys just uh . . . kinda get bigger.
“You don’t need to make an earth golem my lord, you can simply summon one.”
The small diamond marble rolling around in the palm of my hand stilled. I had conjured the base material a week ago and then poured soooo many hours into engraving it with excruciating detail, taking my time to oh so delicately shape many, many teensy golden runes into its surface. The marble slipped through my fingers. With a flick of magic, Reeanth caught it and pulled it towards her open hand. Holding it gently between her thumb and forefinger, she raised up the intricate bauble to her eye.
“My lord, what is this exactly? I can see . . . are those hieroglyphs, ehr, tiny engraved runes?”
I snatched it back with a curse even as I still theatrically channeled my interpretation of Frankenstein. “Yes, they’re runes! It’s a total shot in the dark! A mad stab at mana-fuel-genius! This is my attempt at creating a core! A rudimentary gemstone harddrive with built-in runic restrictions of loyalty and anti-malicious intent so that I can legitimately have an earthen guardian golem stomping around and doing my will!.” I took a breath from my excited rant before continuing on.
“AND!” I said with one finger in the air. “And if this proof of concept worked, I could make a couple sentries that would keep this offshoot of Yggdrasil safe.” My other hand, not holding the small marble, was resting on the arboreal shell of my metamorphosed wife. It was all a facade, a mask, an attempt at forced levity to keep my real emotions off my face.
Reeanth troubled gaze trailed from my hand to the lumpy tree root and back to me. She opened and closed her mouth several times as I cocked an eyebrow.
“My lord . . .” She started.
“Spit it out!”
“My lord, you never told me why you’re so adamant about keeping this tree safe my lord.” Reeanth shrugged, looking around. She smacked it several times and then looked at me. Her unusual height due to being a genetically modified Alpha Centauri soldier exaggerated her motions as she spoke. “It is a World Tree. Very few things in the known universe could hurt it, and less than that few number would even want to. It is more closely tied with the fabric of existence than anything else. Harming this, any of this, would bring down the wrath of all that lives. What are you worried about?”
A quiet flood of suppressed pain seared through me with new intensity. Squashing it down resulted only in increasing the discomfort.
“My wife.”
Reeanth sniggered then stared at me with disbelief. I didn’t blink.
Incredulously, her eyebrows almost shot off her face and into the stratosphere. “I don’t understand, I’ve never met a woman near you or even seen any kind of desire from you, and I can see in every spectrum. Your living quarters didn’t have any objects that would suggest a feminine influence in your life. I’ll have you know, many suitors have vied for my attention and never once have you expressed anything-”
I cut her off. “Look, I don’t want to go into all the details, but my wife is inside that goddamn tree, and I also use flesh sorcery to tamp down on my natural sex drive. It’s amazing how much you can get done or how clearly you can think if your dick isn’t in the way. There, happy?”
Leaving her in the dust because I really didn’t want to look at her face, I turned around and gracefully stomped out into the clearing. I was greeted by a hilarious sight. In front of me, my new Asian friend Johnny was lying bloody on the ground with one hand on the enchanted healing totem poking up out of the ground. He might be skinnier than a beanpole but I’ve seen that dude chuck boulders the size of a truck tire up in the air with one hand and then kick that very same rock into dust.
“What’s got your balls in a twist?” Johnny croaked as he twisted on the ground to look at me, the small cuts and large bruises fading away as magic pulsed from the veins of earth through the magical conduit into his body. His breathing slowly evened out as my healing invention put him back to rights.
“Your leige is lonely.” Reeanth proclaimed, a bit of snide satisfaction sneaking through.
Johnny coughed hoarsely as his body pulled itself together under the influence of the enchantment. “Don’t look at me bro, I don’t swing that way.”
An almost physical pulse of mental exhaustion and frustration backed by my flesh and consciousness sorceries exploded out of me. The emotions rode a wave of condensed mana, blasting everyone and everything around me. Reeanth immediately hit the ground like a puppet with its strings cut and Johnny’s hand fell off the healing stick as his neck lost all muscle tension.
Shit, didn’t know I could do that.
Both of them were legitimately unconscious. As in, knocked the fuck out by Mike Tyson unconscious.
I poked Johnny with my toe, then a few more times.
“Hey fuckface, wake up.”
Nothing. I gave the boot-poke a bit more force and a little better aim, still nothing. Grasping at my instincts for an explanation, my burgeoning sorceries led me down the path to figure out the answer.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
With my self/consciousness Sorcery, somehow I could project my feelings or mental state to someone else and I didn’t have to discriminate while doing it. It operated like a wave-form shotgun blast that stemmed from repressed power and emotional release. In order to reverse the effects, I either had to wait for the mental-based-trauma to wear off or heal them. Against the annoying suggestion of my inner anti-social hermit with its burning desire for silence, I knelt down and pulsed out waves of pure healing and mana while I simultaneously indulged my inner child. The dirt underneath both of my helpless but waking targets began to ripple and bounce as I played with my magic. I had fun for once, watching as the earth rolled and bounced and shook them around as if they were on a water bed and some kids were jumping on the other end of it.
Hahahaha, mini earthquake on demand. Damn, I love magic.
After watching them uselessly flop about for two minutes while squealing for help because they couldn’t get any traction, I earth-tossed Johnny up and over to the training gravity compactor and Reeanth closer to me. She landed on her butt at my feet. I squatted to look her in the eye.
My frustration made my tone a bit sharper than usual.
“Now, instead of letting me waste an entire day on trying to plan something seriously over complicated, how about you just tell me that there’s an easier way to do what I’m trying to accomplish, capisce?”
My vassal gulped. “But, my lord, you didn’t tell me what you were trying to do. You just sat down and meditated. The next thing we knew, the earth began pulsing and gemstones appeared around the morphing bulge. We didn’t know what was going on.”
I groaned. Of course I didn’t communicate anything properly. It sucks not having my splinter-souled spear to instantly read my mind and respond to my plans.
I miss Gungnir.
Growling still seemed to communicate my intent. “Fine. Fuck it. How do I summon an earth golem?”
The incredulous look on her face did not bring me joy.
“You don’t know do you?” The earth around us began to rumble as my Earth Sorcery unconsciously translated the overflow of angsty emotion into actual motion.
Reeanth quickly gulped as the earth threatened to buck her again. “Uhm! We use a runic circle, a contract, plenty of mana, and the dwarves who have many contacts within the Lower Realm of Terra so they know who to talk to.”
“Lame, fuckin lame,” I grumbled, shoving my hands in my pockets and walking away. My frustrated muttering continued as I kicked rocks and mouthed off to the empty forest. “Johnny’s been making so much progress in the past three days and I’ve got about four more before we head out, and what have I accomplished? Shit, that’s what. Waste of time. Useless, and gross, that’s what it is, gross.”
Because I wasn’t paying attention, I didn’t even notice the oddly curved tree branch as I walked straight into it.
“FUG-RTHHH!” I spluttered, holding my nose with both my hands, blood spurting out. “You’g have goth to be kithing me!” Spitting out blood, my nose began to quickly heal from the minor injury that was about to break the camel’s back. All my power and enchantments and shielding and a stupid tree breaks my nose because I’m walking slow and not paying attention. My enchantments didn’t register the branch as a threat because who thinks a branch will cave their nose in?
Furiously grasping the compacted soil underneath the slender tree with my magic, I prepared to absolutely bury the minor annoyance. It felt like I had stubbed my pinky toe on an oaken table but instead that kind of pain radiated from my face instead of the tip of my longest limb. I was in the midst of battling a moment of pent-up incoherent rage that follows the stupid small pain, the kind that weirdly hurts oh so much, way too much where you actually want to absolutely destroy the insignificant thing that you stubbed your pinky toe on.
“Wait! No! Please!”
A soft, timid cry came from the tree interrupting what was about to be the world’s smallest earthquake. Not releasing my magical grip on the dirt but just loosening my hold just a bit, I eased off.
I glanced up and down the looming trunk. “Great, don’t tell me trees can talk now,” I mumbled softly, a little ashamed at being caught in this particular moment. “Who said that?” I asked a bit louder, spinning around.
A slender brown arm grew out of the tree, slowly waved at me, then placed its palm on the trunk and pushed itself out. What flowed out of the tree was a feminine shape, an exquisite woman crafted from smooth brown bark with softest leaves of autumn red for hair and the brightest green eyes that no human could match.
My eyes bugged out of my head even as I took a small step back. “Is this a common thing, are all trees hiding women out here?” I took another look around and called out, “Heeellooo????”
“I don’t understand, I’m not a woman.” The clearly feminine figure said, her soft form pressed against the tree.
“I mean, sure, but ya look like one, so, what are you?” I pressed, a little weirded out by the minor assault on my current grip of reality, tenuous as it was at the moment. Just another thing to chalk up to ‘magic’. Now I have to be on the lookout for trees capable of birthing sentient beings at the drop of a hat.
“Do you not know? Has your lore forgotten so much?” Her eyes seemed so very inviting, submissive almost.
I was taken aback. This encounter was nothing like I’d expect. Significantly less violence than usual. “Not sure,” I stalled, taking in my surroundings which had gotten slightly darker all the sudden. “Yeah, being separated by a veil for a few thousand years will muddy the mythological waters a bit. So, what are you? A tree thing, uh, an awakened tree? Uh, uh . . a Dryad! That’s what they’re called, am I getting close?”
Her uncertain chuckle was oddly sexy. “Silly mortal, I am a hamadryad. We are the tree spirits who protect and guard the land upon which all walk and play.”
My thoughts kicked into high gear for five full seconds. Hmmmm, this might work. “Do you know any earth golems, or dirt elementals that might wanna talk to me?” I asked politely, slowly easing back my magical grip on the soil beneath her tree. “I’m not sure what they’d want, but I can bet that a sorcerer like me has a lot to offer.”
“Oh, they’re easy to please,” she tittered. “Me on the other hand, well . . .” Her innocent smile bled its soft look as her teeth began to look just a bit more pointed as she gently stepped towards me. “My kind needs a strong hand with a caring touch.” The inviting hand reaching out towards me grew nails that looked like sharpened sticks. Jagged roots sprang up from underneath me, wrapping my legs and trapping my arms close to my body.
Oh, hell, no.
My magic reacted faster than I could, instinctively lashing out. Grasping the constricting roots with Nature Sorcery to hold the roots still while still giving me room to breathe, I peered into the dense tendrils of vibrant green and brown, focusing on the magic animating them and followed the pulses like a map of veins as they led down into the earth, out to and up the tree. The pumping circulatory system connected to the deceitful and hungry tree woman whose mouth steadily grew wider. Drawing on the ready energy contained in my crystal batteries, I seized the constricting roots with my will, forcing the wide open veins to act as a conduit to shove my instinctive command of Nature through them and take an inner hold on the glowing green core of the hamadryad.
Impotent feelings of rage mixed with helplessness blended together with a feral hunger for minerals and the primal need to protect assaulted the fringes of my mind but my grasp on her held firm. The feminine form froze as my magic completely overpowered her. Even her eyes stopped twitching and focusing. Instead of an animated creature imbued with her own will, the hamadryad to the naked eye appeared to be a horrifying wooden statue made by a loving craftsman.
Flexing my will as a quick test, I found that I could easily and quite literally control every single part of her body. Every tendril of her vine and wood filled form moved at my unthinking whim. Her leaf-hair trembled at a thought. Forcing the constricting roots back into the ground, I stepped around her to her tree and placed my hand on it, maintaining the flow of power. With a bit of mental effort, I forced her to turn around and face me.
“Maybe we should start over.” I said slowly as if speaking to a child while commanding her eyes to focus upon my own. “I’m a sorcerer, and Nature is part of what I am, and since you’re a part of nature, well, you get the picture.” She couldn’t even glare if I didn’t let her, but I could certainly feel her trying. “Seriously, I don’t want to hurt you, or even control you, but what in the world? You attack me for no real reason? I know you’re not actually hungry for human flesh, I can tell that from your core.”
Releasing her facial muscles, I watched as she shook her head and smacked her lips. “We’ve been watching you sorcerer for most of a season now, defiling the Mother, playing with the soul of the forest and somehow thinking that you would get away with it?!” Her growing tirade ended with a scream, to which I eloquently answered.
“Huh?”
I had no idea what she was talking about and I could feel that her anger was genuine. She really did believe that I was somehow to blame for some crime I didn’t know about.
The hamadryad's inner core of power, that magical thing that really was her, began to pulse and shake trying to throw off my grip.
“Are you talking about the tree, Yggdrasil?” My words sparked another round of inner struggling on her part.
“Fucking stop it.” I snarled. “I’m not playing around, the only reason I’m still in the area is that my freaking wife is in THAT tree. That one, the big one.” I sighed angrily, pointing at the looming tree before gesturing all around me. “I’d rather go hollow out a mountain and play around with my magic than sit here and guard this tree BUT I CAN’T!”
I let my own anger pulse through my magic and spark up and down the tree-lady’s core. The red manifestation of my anger clashed with her green core, leaving red lines that bled a light green light.
“That’s why I asked about elementals or whatever they are. I need guardians to place around the World Tree that has my wife so that I can leave the immediate area with some peace of mind.”
She cut in with a puzzled look on her face, her eyes suddenly big as if she knew my internal struggle. Damn. She did look like she actually gave a damn. “But that’s our duty! We guard the Tree, the well of Life, the door to the Heartland. The veil kept us away until several moons ago and the scent of fire and drake keep us away still.”
I relaxed my grip on her essence just a tiny bit while pushing a bit of healing into her. “I’ll say it again, I am a Sorcerer of Nature. Hurting the land and anything about it is contrary to everything I am.” Solidifying my magical grip for a second, I stepped closer to her so I could look deep in her eyes. Tightly bound rage bleed into my voice as I growled.
“But I do have one promise for you. If any harm comes to me or mine because of you tree-spirit ladies, I will personally shatter every tree in this forest to root you out and grind them into sawdust. And when I’m done, I will drown this entire area in a flood of ice and water and salt. Am I clear? Nothing will grow. Everything will die. And I will laugh and cry while I stand victorious over a dead forest with a heavy heart and dying conscience.”
If she were made of flesh and blood, the amount of terror I felt in her would have been the piss-her-pants kind of fear. I even surprised myself with the amount of venom I injected into my voice.
“Great and powerful sorcerer,” a soft voice interjected off to the right of me. I turned carefully while engaging all of my defensive gear and not loosing my grip on the hamadryad. Another woman very similar and yet perfectly different stepped out of a tree.
Watching her move reminded me of what we learned about snowflakes as little children in elementary school, each one visually being the same as every other snowflake but completely different at the microlevel. Every piece was simultaneously unique and yet possessed enough of the overall theme that you couldn’t help but marvel at its construction. This hamadryad was clearly very similar to her sister while intonating with her body and mannerisms that she wanted to be considered different. To my magic sight, this lady was straddling the line between vegetation and humanity to the point that I had to double-take and then go back to re-verify again.
I summoned Gungnir in short spear form and leveled the glowing blade at her as the beautiful quickly and gracefully fell to her knees. “I entreat you to release my sister, and we, we of the sap of the forest will gladly guard the great Mother who stands in the glade. Have mercy, and we will happily be the buffer to all that enter Her shade.”
“Kinda quick to change your tone huh?” I growled, my distrust not allowing me to relax my guard. “I’m not holding her prisoner for shits and giggles.” The new lady’s confused expression told me that American English wasn’t exactly up to date around here.
I sighed and pointed at the first one. “She attacked me first.”
The beautiful newcomer placed her hands on her heart as she bowed low. “I am much more mature than the zealous youth you’re holding right now with your mighty magic. I easily can feel your nature magic while she is still untrained in our ways. Silly young fruit trees are not the best of us.”
My prisoner let out a low growl as I eased off my control just a hint.
“I can also show you how to accomplish what you’ve asked for and provide that which you haven’t yet asked for, great sorcerer,” the bowing one pleaded. “A grove of hamadryads with several rock and crystal elementals would make sure that the Mother is never harmed or disturbed. We can chase away all manner of those who stalk in the night and even the Unnatural run from our power.”
It sounded too good to be true. Exactly what I wanted and needed, huh. Which to me meant that there is a price hidden in there somewhere. A veritable snake in the garden, a hooker with a knife. Down little brain.
But it just might be worth it.
“Well, based on my experience so far, we got ourselves a Jekyll and Hyde situation going on here.” I remarked, planting Gungnir’s butt into the ground, casting around with my senses. I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary, well, ordinary for me. Ignore psycho one and begging hottie. They don’t count.
I hesitated, keeping my voice light so as to not spook her. “So, I’m going to trust but verify. Walk over here slowly and let me put one hand on you and get the truth of this with my Nature sorcery. That work for you?”
Wide doe eyes looked up at me with fear and a hint of wonder. “And if I say yes, great sorcerer, will you let me and my sister go?”
I took a long minute to think that over. Her innocent eyes were just the right kind of watery and her lips were oddly attractive as my forcefully repressed sex drive began to pound at the cracks of my sorcery-reinforced self control.
Greek mythology spoke of the proclivities of the dryads, how they liked to tease mortal men and steal them away to secret groves. Their gods kept them as luscious pets while satyrs tried to sneak them away for nightly frisks. I wasn’t about to fall under the same trap. It’s the damn apple trick that got Snow White out of the picture, tempting you with something delicious that’s laced with just a hint of poison.
My Consciousness Sorcery sent me a little ping from the back of my mind, overlaying another spectrum of magical vision over what I already had running. My caution paid off. My eyes shifted as I picked up on small and barely perceptible waves of green and lusty red magic wafting off of the hamadryad, bits of unconscious seduction magic that were ever so slightly changing the vector of my thoughts. Another ping from my consciousness told me that she probably wasn’t currently influencing me other than her natural presence.
Goddamn, I love that sorcery comes with at least some instincts. I’d be even dumber if I didn’t have that built-in guidance.
Reluctantly sighing at my own paranoia being proven right but forging on anyway, I said, “If you mean me and mine no harm and are not being deceitful in any way, then we’re good.”
Her smile lit up her entire face as if sunlight poured over a hidden idyllic clearing in the rainforest, naturally beautiful. Uhg, I gotta figure out a longer term solution to my primal drive to procreate. She slowly stood up and walked over just slowly enough to show off her assets. With unearthly grace, she then knelt at my feet with an impish smile.
Taking charge of the situation that I was starting to lose control over, I placed my unoccupied hand on top of her head, mainly so I wouldn’t be able to see her eyes. A soft resonance hummed between us as tendrils of nature sorcery connected my inner soul to her mind, and boy was she out of this world. The mental image of my personified sorceries, the bizarre tree form of my soul, gently connected to her core. A kind of distant familiarity resonated here in this place where we couldn’t lie.
Diffuse clouds of soft dark green light mixed with a nutty brown scent of untouched nature permeated every mote of her. The dark boundary of my mental manifestation grew out until her core joined to the edge of that landscape. The hamadryad appeared as a glowing orb that was just a bit longer than six feet, floating with small roots hanging off of her. My roots connected and I felt it, her true intentions: open honesty, curiosity, and the desire of a tree to be one with the forest.
As I pulled my hand back content in the knowledge that she was telling the truth, she grabbed my hand and pulled me down to her level.
“What, what are you?” She breathed, sadness and joy making her voice crack. “I can feel your thoughts still, you’re . . a tree, and yet, you’re not? I don’t understand?”
She wasn’t wrong. Even now there was a whisper, a gentle wind on the edges of my mind that carried sensations back and forth. “Master?”
“Yooooo! Magic man got himself another lady!”
Johnny’s yelp was shrill enough to bring reality crashing back to the forefront of my mind. “Damn it Johnny, I told you, I’m married.” I cursed brusquely, roughly stepping back from the kneeling woman and yanking my spear out of the ground. “Besides, this lovely hamadryad, uh . .”
Our mental link whispered her name. “Meliad.”
“Meliad, and her grove will be the new guardians.”