Chapter 14
“What do you mean its not him?” Lyra asked the medic as she looked down at the burned corpse.
“These channels, they’re developed, but up to the point of someone that would have an Orange core. The medic said, unaffected by his commanders rising tone.
It was part of the job, being used to people of a higher rank trying to overrule him.
She took a look at the channels that had been opened up to the world.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve seen the channels for hnudreds of people while I may not have seen those of someone that has a green core. I have definitely seen those that an orange core would use,” He gave her a level flat gaze. “There are also marks that make me think someone pulled this person’s core out and replaced it.”
“Thank you.” She might not like the news, but it was better to have it than not.
First, Ikor was not dead. Second, there was no reports of him exiting the city. Third someone had taken the time to put a green core into the body of someone to try and cover up the trail.
They’re inside the city. Maybe they were agents working for Ilus. Maybe other spell casters working with him and hid. Hell it could be him doing it himself.
She grimaced, the spell casters and Ikor had shown the ability for violence and the willingness to use it. Though they were barely trained and in a fight they were decent if protected. Crap if they weren’t. Well most of them. There were some that were a huge pain in the ass.
Ikor relied mainly on his spells to do his fighting for him, not his skill with his blade. An academic a teacher. No—someone with fighting skill had carried this out. Someone with the awareness to try and throw her off the scent.
She left the room and headed up the stairs of the crypt to the second medical floor, new wounded filled the ward, those that survived from the raid. Her guards were waiting for her as she reached them.
“Seems that someone thinks they’re smart enough to hide inside my city. Hunt them down, they’re protecting and hiding Ikor.” She said. “Check the area where he was last seen and expand from there.”
One of them took off running, conjuring a spell to spread her orders.
“Posters have been spotted around the city,” Idross said from beside her.
“I’m guessing not the normal kind with how upset you sound,” Lyra asked as they marched through the stone building, people moving aside.
He pulled out a sheet from under his armor and held it out to her.
“Ilus looking for mercenaries.” She read out the title.
Underneath it listed the pay rates for the various leadership positions, all the way down to conscripted fighters.
The Molten Fist were made up of mercenaries, they fought for gold. Torin was still paying them their normal rates to stay here and fight.
Ilus was not a simple city to get one over on. Thousands had died against them. They had been quietly but steadily losing people. Those looking to gain coin in at least a fair fight. Torin said it had removed the chaff. She knew the truth.
The smart ones had left, those that had become a part of the Molten Fist or were looking to settle down had remained behind. Torin was draining their war chest in this fight. This was a way to get paid by someone else to at the very least stop.
It showed that Ilus could be reasoned with. If she was learning about it, it meant that the lowest new recruit was too. Rumor and hope ran faster through any fighting unit than a galloping mount.
“Well that’s going to be a pain in the ass. Where were they located? Do we know who were putting them up?”
“they’re appearing all over the city. The guard has been alerted to their presence and is checking anyone that put up posters in the last few weeks. Several other villages have found them. Elara’s people have been finding it in our supplies.”
Lyra felt a headache forming.
“So the enemy has access to our supplies, and they’re pushing on our main pain point, possibly giving us a way out,” Lyra rolled up the poster and stored it away. At the very least it would hurt morale, at the most it could turn into mutiny and great sections of the Molten Fist falling away.
Lyra stepped out of the medical building, her feet taking her towards her office. She should be out in the damn field, not rooting through cities. Though Ilus was shut to everyone, there were no gaps for her people to get through.
It had been so much easier when they were on the move getting paid to take down cities, take out brigands and rogue armies, or defend traders.
They were stuck in the middle of this all and having a way out could be vitally important. The Molten Fist had to survive.
***
Valter checked on Ikor, still asleep. Waking him up was too much of a risk to the operation. So was using his forge burning a hole in his storage device. Next were the maintaining formations.
He added a little charge to both, topping them off.
“You should be able to make a formation that would activate a spell on certain terms. Turn it into a trap. Has to just be made to dump mana into the spell and empower it. Doesn’t need to be clean, just functional.” It would be weaker than what he could cast at full power, though using them wouldn’t take it out of his overall stored mana.
He reviewed the tests he’d done with various plates. “I have to keep the formation fed with mana to contain the spell, once the formation runs out of mana even if I put in mana again afterwards the spell dissipates. Passive spells are probably the best to use. Would instantaneous spells work?” He pulled out a small piece of metal.
The channels linked to runes that would shoot all of the contained power into the central stasis enchantment after ten seconds. Valter took the formation and put it in the sink-bucket. He powered up the mana channels and weaved together his spell, a simple spell that would draw in the moisture from the air to create water.
It sunk into the formation.
He counted out the seconds. The mana brightened and shot into the stasis runes.
Water condensed around the plate so rapid it recoiled and spayed over the kitchen air, the bucket half full of water.
“Okay, so to have a constant effect and an instantaneous effect, you can do it, but you would need two different sets of formations.”
If he could have a bunch of spells ready in enchantments in his armor and he only needed to activate them. They could be powerful assistance.
The thing that would happen with the stronger materials he was working with, the enchantments would get stronger and stronger. Instead of needing to put in three enchantments to increase his overall strength and reaction speed. He would be forced to put in two or even one, as putting in three would make the effect so strong that him turning his head might snap it. His enhanced strength overextending the ability of his body.
“Each material holds more charge so the enchantments will get stronger each time.” He pinched his chin in thought. If I could use some kind of barrier spell? It would work passively as he was fighting, acting as an additional layer of defense.
“I’d have to make sure that I could send out attacks while inside the spell. They’d have to grind through that before they could even touch my armor.”
He was looking at new ways to use what he already had.
The spell holding enchantments were immediately useful, and there had to be more applications for them. Valter could bring one to mind.
He finished off the hand sized piece of metal, clearing away the last bits of metal. Instead of powering a spell for a long period of time, this one would dump all of the stored energy within the enchantment into the spell after a period of time that the user could pick.
Everything should work, but he didn’t have anywhere in the city to test it out. He stood and stretched, moving through the apartment, checking on Ikor, getting some food into himself and returning to his desk. He’d replaced the hard chair with his own on the first day.
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He drew out his metal book and put it on the desk, flipping through the pages till he got to the page on the hammer in the bottom of the Nether Chasm.
The runes were a thing of beauty, tightly packed, weaved together into something beautiful and functional.
“All of these runes should have been interfering with one another so much.” His eyes started to pick out patterns. He followed the links, having to pause when he got through several of them.
He took out a piece of paper and started jotting down notes to keep track of the links as he went over the surface of the hammer.
“That is elegant, two formations laid over one another, without touching one another. The sheer number of runes. I guess they were trying to overcome the definitive nature of enchantments and runes.”
Valter took another piece of paper and started tracing out runes and channels across the hammer, having to continuously pull up the paper to check the enchantments underneath.
It was a time sucking task, though it was rewarding, the nature of the enchantment becoming clear.
He finished one page, a patchwork of runes and channels, then started on the second page, using the enchantment on the book and the other page to help him.
After two hours he was left with three images, one the complete hammer, two of the different enchantments interwoven across its surface.
Valter put them against two new pages of the book, adding them into his notes. He did not want to lose these ones, not after all the work he had put into finding them from the mess.
“Now for the fiddly bit.” He traced through the formations on the hammer to find out the originating point. Where one would insert mana into the enchantment.
From there he took out a piece of paper and started writing out the chain old channels and the runes that they connected to. Many of the runes connected to at least two others, sometimes there were several.
“It’s a way to work around the straight nature of enchantments. Create several paths that work together. Runes give you one definitive outcome, with this melding here you can change that pretty dramatically.”
The new runes he didn’t know he added to his book, looking through to try and figure out just what they were for.
Mya had figured out the enchantments, figuring out how they worked was a series of educated guesses with the layout of the problem and some of the parts, and the final sum. Then trying to backfill everything that wasn’t covered.
In summary, fiddly bits .
What if I was to add in a material that would have that effect? The thought pushed him back into his chair, holding his chin as his brow pinched together.
Layering materials upon one another. Desari could make a contract from paper and a potion ink. Mesurial’s timbers were artistically carved in several rituals. Metal, wood, cloth, each of them working together.
A weapon could be—well it could be a damn rock tied by a leather strap to a piece of wood. A sword was made up of a lot of metal, but then it had the damn hilt and then there was the handle and pommel, not to mention the sheath.
Why waste a maintenance spell on a weapon when you could put it on a sheath and everytime you put the weapon back it cleans and sharpens it?
“I’ve been an idiot. So focused on forging the weapon. On the alloys, on the makeup of the metal and not on the parts around it.” He rose from his chair and started pacing, still holding his chin. The ways he could layer enchantments together? Not just looking at metal and sometimes wood as his material, looking at cloth, everything and anything.
He moved to the desk again, the book open to the thermal energy enchantment.
“Hot and cold, that’s been the basis I’ve been thinking on, but then these, they’re all different.” He tapped on a cluster of runes. “They’re different types of energy. I can store thermal energy, there has to be other kinds of materials that could contain different energy types right?”
His eyes rose from the page, his finger still on the cluster, his mind making connections faster than he could speak on them. Parts and ideas clashing with one another, some making spontaneous connections, others throw aside.
“An enchantment that would allow one to absorb different energies, charge upon them and then release them? Defend against the incoming attacks, passively charge, and act as a force multiplier for yourself.”
The higher grade materials could handle more mana, that was an energy type, he already used his core shards to store more of than energy.
The higher the grade of material, could it store different kinds of energy?
“Thermal energy is given, kinetic energy possibly? Electrical? Mana for sure.” Just what could he use those energies for?
“Hot, cold, enhance my movement and attacks. Though that would be as hard as using my thermal bursts to move me around. Took a lot to get that working in any way smoothly. Electrical. Well I could shock the fuck out of someone who touches my shield. Maybe throw lightning. I need to ask Desari about all of this, and Mya.”
His thoughts turned to Petor.
“There could be something I make him, when he’s going over what he can store in the way of mana it either sends it to us or it stores it.” He pulled out a piece of paper. “It would need to have a big damn core in the heart of it to make sure it can store all of that power. Same with the medium around it. It also needs to allow mana to pass through with low impedance. Don’t want it leaking out all over the place and going to waste. The in would be just coming from him, but the out needs to be selectable. Into his own enchantments, into him when he runs low, to us as well.” That’s going to need some soul help from Mya .
Petor was using the tethers between their souls, so there should be something there then, right?
“He can draw the very mana out of the world, if we could do that to a battlefield, stop people from gathering their mana anymore?” They’d be like me, have to rely on the mana that’s inside them . “It would be a truly huge amount of mana though, you’d need that to all go some—” He looked up at the window. “--where.”
Ilus had teleported itself from the material plane. That had to have taken a lot of energy. A system that was able to store it and use it all as one. Desari hadn’t said that there was a lot of people casting it in concert, it sounded like a system, an enchantment. Something like what was in Aetheria.
Petor had stolen power from people from weapons and gear. If he could do the same on the battlefield and it was directed…
Vatler pressed a hand to his forehead, spreading his fingers over it. “I’m not sure what material would allow him to increase his range and control. Though that would change a battlefield.” He added notes to his papers draining everything from his mind, then got more.
“Okay, so, energy gear. It would need to have objects that could store such energy, an medium that could pass them through.” His eyes looked at the elegant runes.
“Looks pretty, but the time it must have taken to design all of this and then work it into the hammer in a way that it wouldn’t interfere with the other formation.” He shook his head, too complicated, too complex.
He’d need to simplify it. He would need to have the runes laid out in a way a path could be made between them and around them.
A star formed of two triangles over one another snuck into his mind. He drew it down, then circled the end points of the star. Tracing the lines he could bypass all of the end points, or connect them in any pattern he wanted to.
Valter hesitated, where the points met inside the star he added two lines, creating short pyramids. “That would give me twelve points I could add in runes. Six powerful ones and then six moderate ones on the interior. There would just be a lot more mana there and easier to have a deviation.”
He tapped his pencil on the page. Now he had a form to work out of. A smile spread across his face. “Feels like I’m just starting all over again.”
His armor was pretty simply laid out, each piece could take on two enchantments. His helmet’s enchantment let him see in every direction and increased his strength. His chest plate held a soul binding enchantment holding his core and another strength enchantment. His armored sleeves held his soul and a linking enchantment, tethered into each piece of his armor allowing them to all work together.
The boots held a part of his soul in each, boots were normal and seen on everyone, few people paid attention to them. They also both held formations to draw in mana and charge the parts of his core there. Then the interlinked nature of his soul, it spread through the other sections.
The interlinking formation made all the parts work together.
The channels linked with one another, carved into his armor, acting as the primary connector. Valter smiled and tapped his boots on the ground. Even without wearing all of his armor, it was interlinked through his armguards.
Wearing one piece was as effective as wearing them all. Only difference is I have to rely on my skin instead of armor to protect squishy old me .
His amused grin twisted into thought. “Increasing defense, barrier, though draining away the power too. If I could create a series of focused barriers, attune them to what I am fighting. Could drain away the energy from the attack in its different components. Then form them into what I require and use it back on them.”
He took out a fresh page and drew the inverted triangles and started writing on the different points. “Barriers are grounded into something, do they have to? Could I have them move around to intercept the spell before it even arrives?” He jotted down the question. “Maybe there’s a way to make it resonate with the energy of the incoming spell and then it seeks it out?”
An image rose in his mind. Standing upon the battlefield, a bulwark against incoming attacks, each of them empowering him, making him stronger as he unleashed them back upon the attackers. The other horsemen using the ambient energy with their own spells.
It reminded him of the shield drills he’d done, crouched down and throwing bags of sand back and forth between Mir and himself.
Taking the hit and redirecting it back out.
Now just have to fit that into twelve runic components. Who doesn’t like a good old fashioned challenge.