374 days until the Arkon Shield falls

15 hours until Dungeon Purge

Supreme,

Thank you. Our mage cohorts have begun probing the orcs’ defenses around the target. As always, there remains a small risk that our efforts will be detected. However, I am confident that even if the orcs sense our scrying, their shamans will not be able to stop us.

—Archmage Cxal.

Cedric scowled as he saw me approach. “What do you want? Come to gloat?”

I shook my head. “No, I just want to talk.”

“About?”

“Magic.”

Cedric snorted. “So you did come to gloat.”

I sat down next to him. “Look, I’m sorry.”

The death mage stared at me, nonplussed.

I sighed. I hadn’t been fair to the man. Despite Cedric’s constant air of superiority, he’d been unstinting when it came to sharing his lore on magic. I had been less than forthcoming. “The wilting waze spell,” I said. “I didn’t buy it.”

The plump mage’s eyebrows shot up. “You didn’t? Then how did you—” He stopped short. “Are you saying you spellcrafted it?”

I nodded.

He shook his head. “That’s impossible.”

I sighed wearily. “I know you don’t believe me, but—”

“No,” Cedric interrupted. “I don’t mean it’s merely difficult; I mean it’s simply not possible. I’ve researched the matter somewhat. There is no record of a mage with meager Potential of ever having created rare spells.”

I frowned. “Potential? What does that have to do with it?”

“You don’t know?” Cedric asked, looking surprised. “Potentials have no direct impact on a player’s performance except when it comes to creating Techniques. A mage’s Potential affects his ability to spellcraft.”

This was news to me. “It does?”

Cedric nodded. “You must have sensed your magic move within you, right? Felt it’s… aliveness? Almost as if it is aware at times.”

I nodded, knowing well the feeling the death mage was describing.

“Well,” Cedric began slowly, “it’s accepted fact that the higher a mage’s Potential, the more aware his magic is, and consequently the easier it is for him to spellcraft. Common spells are simple enough that even mages with mediocre Potential—” he smiled self-deprecatingly—“like me, can craft them. But to create a rank three spell such as wilting waze, at the very least, you have to be gifted in Magic.”

Cedric held my gaze. “So you see, Jamie, you shouldn’t have been able to craft the spell.”

“Oh,” I said. My mind was racing as I realized that with my sudden fit of honesty, I was in danger of compromising the secret I’d gone to such pains to hide. “Then it must be my Quick Learner Trait that helped.”

Cedric frowned. “Quick Learner?”

“It’s a Trait I carried over from Earth. It allows me to assimilate knowledge faster. Do you think it could be the reason I managed to craft the spell?” Actually, now that I thought about it, the Trait probably did influence the ease with which I acquired spells.

The death mage didn’t answer immediately. While I waited for his response, I observed him carefully, trying not to fidget or otherwise betray my nervousness.

“Perhaps,” he allowed at last.

I relaxed minutely.

Cedric studied me curiously. “Is the Trait why you chose not to fix your leg with a Clean Slate?”

“Partially,” I admitted. “There are other reasons too.”

He fell silent again.

“Is there any way I can teach you the spell?” I asked.

Cedric glanced at me, surprise flickering across his face again. “You’d do that?”

“Of course,” I replied. “Why wouldn’t I?”

The mage stared at me, seemingly at a loss for words for a moment. “Thank you, Jamie,” he said gravely. “That is a generous offer, but I don’t think it will work.”

“Why not?”

“Only those who’ve invested in lore can train others in the Techniques they’ve gained. I’m sorry, but without a decent skill in the lore Discipline, you won’t be able to teach me anything.”

I laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Cedric asked.

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I didn’t answer directly. Pulling my wizard staff onto my lap, I said, “I made my first Focus, you know.” Which was also the staff I showed him. But he didn’t need to know that lest he started questioning how a Trainee mage managed to etch a ranged spell into his Focus.

Cedric’s brows crinkled. “I don’t see what—” His eyes widened. “You’ve invested in lore?”

I nodded. “So, shall we give wizard training a try?”

The death mage bobbed his head, eagerness glinting in his eyes. “Let’s.”

✽✽✽

The next hour sped by with me and Cedric lost in animated conversation. According to the albino mage, wizard trainers usually used a teaching aid of some form or the other to visualize and share the spellforms with their students.

I had no such device on hand, of course. Nevertheless, I persisted in trying to teach Cedric wilting waze, describing the shape of the spell in as exacting detail as I could and guiding him—if blindly—on the spellform to construct in his mind.

As the time passed, I felt us making progress, but at the conclusion of our hour’s break, we still had a long way to go. Cedric, though, was not disheartened. If anything, our progress had excited him. “Come on,” the mage said, rising to his feet. “We can pick this up later. The others are waiting.”

I glanced over my shoulder and, sure enough, saw the rest of the party gathered around the dead armored horror. Lumbering to my feet, I walked over with Cedric.

As we drew closer, I saw Jain bend down and pull something out of the corpse. “Another full core,” I heard Pierre whisper reverently.

My ears perked up.

“We’ve made our quota,” Liyanda added, her eyes shining. She said something else under her breath, which I missed.

Quota? I wondered.

Jain nodded imperceptibly and then stiffened as he sensed our approach. Palming the core into one of his pockets, he waved the others to silence and swung around.

“Did you two spend the entire hour gossiping with each other?” Liyanda asked when we reached them.

Cedric glared at her. “I don’t gossip. Jamie has been trying to teach me wilting waze.”

Liyanda snorted in disbelief.

Jain’s eyes flitted curiously between Cedric and me, but he didn’t say anything.

“Shall we get going?” Pierre asked. Not waiting for a response, he strode towards the room’s only other exit—a door on the right wall.

“Wait,” Cedric said.

The ranger paused and swung around.

The death mage gestured to the dead armored horror. Its exoskeleton was shattered in some places and riddled with cracks in others, but the creature’s corpse was still intact. “We should revive it.”

“You have a pet already,” Jain said, his gaze drifting to the undead lesser horror. It had suffered no damage from the battle and was still in good shape.

“I do,” Cedric agreed. “Let Jamie raise this one.”

Jain’s eyebrows rose. “You sure he can manage the spell?”

“I am,” Cedric replied. Pulling out one of the reanimate scrolls from his robe, he handed it to me. “Ready to try this?”

“You bet I am,” I said, grinning.

Taking the scroll from his hands, I unfurled it and ran my gaze over the runes covering the thin parchment. I could make no sense as to their meaning, but as my eyes slipped from rune to rune, a spell weave took shape in my mind—almost involuntarily.

From what Cedric had told me, I knew that lore scrolls contained the spellform of a single casting encrypted in a manner that prevented the player from deciphering its spellform while still allowing him to replicate it with the aid of his Trials core. Despite knowing this, I tried to capture the shape of the reanimate dead spell as I cast it, but the scroll and my core defeated my attempt, keeping its spellform disappointingly opaque.

Mana flowed into the casting, not from the well at my center but from the runes disappearing off the scroll. The mana had been embedded in whatever ink had been used to create the scroll.

A few heartbeats later, the spellform snapped into place, and I released it in the direction of the dead horror. The weaves slipped from my mind through the air and into the dead creature, giving it false life.

You have reanimated a level 120 armored horror. Spell duration: one day. Maximum undead controllable: 1.

I blinked, my awareness returning to my surroundings. Gazing upon my new pet, I saw threads of mana stretched between me and it. I tugged at one, and its left thumb twitched.

My face fell. There were dozens of threads conjoining me and the undead. Would I have to work each to move the creature?

Cedric smiled at my alarm. “Piloting an undead takes practice,” he said, “but you will get the hang of it.”

I stared at him aghast. “Do I have to manipulate each thread individually every time?”

“Not for basic commands,” he replied, “but for complex ones, unfortunately, yes.”

“I see,” I murmured.

“Try willing your pet to its feet,” Cedric suggested. “Think ‘up,’ at it.”

I did as he asked, projecting the order through the weave connecting me to the undead. The threads of mana rippled, and the reanimated horror rose to its feet.

“Excellent,” Cedric said. “We can go now,” he added to Jain.

The party leader nodded and waved Pierre forward. Cedric turned back to me. “Now, here are some other commands you should try…”

✽✽✽

To no one’s surprise, the corridor leading out from the room was identical to the previous two we’d traversed, and like them, it too was riddled with traps.

The dungeon’s design was becoming clear now: guard rooms interspersed with trapped passages. The question on everyone’s mind, though, was how many such chambers we could expect, and would we have time to clear them all before our time ran out? At this point, we’d spent nearly half of our allotted time in the dungeon, and while time was not a pressing concern just yet, it would soon become one.

It took a few hours to navigate through the new passage, after which we came up to a stop at another barred door. Jain called a halt and beckoned Cedric and me forward. “Position your pets at doors,” he ordered.

I complied, sending a pulsed command through the spell strands anchoring the undead creature to myself. Armored horror and lesser horror lumbered to the door while Pierre worked to disarm the trap placed on it. When he was done, he waited for Jain’s nod before pushing the door open.

The moment he did so, lightning arced across the chamber towards us.

Pierre was alive to the danger, though, and slapped his hand to the door’s threshold, activating control ward. Tongues of lightning splashed into the shimmering curtain that materialized across the doorway but failed to cross it.

The sudden racing of my heart subsided.

“Damn, that was too close,” Pierre muttered. I couldn’t agree more. Eyes narrowed, I peered into the room.

Again, the chamber beyond contained only a single creature. A nine-foot giant humanoid. I sighed, having little doubt as to the nature of our latest foe.

Another horror.

This horror was unclothed like the other two, but where they had been physically impressive specimens, this one was thin, grotesquely so. Shrunken strands of muscle hung loosely off its frame, doing little to hide the bleached white bones beneath. Our latest foe was no fighter and judging from the bolt of lightning earlier, it was an air mage of sorts. Reaching out with my will, I cast analyze.

The target is a level 141 horror witch. It is gifted with Magic, has meager Resilience, meager Might, and no Craft. Additional information revealed by anatomy: this is a creature champion.

Pierre swore. “A magic-user! Now, isn’t that bloody great.”