I was forced to cast Magic Swords II for light. I’d lost so many spells to the warping and changing over the last few days I only had two pure light spells left, and I’d already cast both of them. Given that nearly all my other spells also summoned light it wasn’t an immediate concern, but I was going to have to pay attention to it. It had been hard enough creating light from nothing the first time round.
The slowstone wall was as unpleasant as it had been the first time, but no more danger than it had been either. The dead vizier hadn’t even commented on my presence and the orcneas had offered only a few nods and a single squealing snort of laughter.
In other words, I returned to the ogre’s mound without incident.
Unfortunately, that meant I returned to the ogre’s mound.
The rope was where I left it. In the few hours I’d been away the rope had managed to sink into the mound. On the plus side that meant it was perfectly centred with the shaft of the well. On the negative side it meant, well, everything else. I had to reach the rope after all.
I wasn’t sure if I’d be quick or accurate enough coming out of my teleport to grab onto my rope, and that was an attempt I didn’t want to fail. My best idea was barely a plan at all, but I couldn’t think of anything else other than wading forward and hoping I didn’t sink in too deep.
Lightstep
My shoulders rolled back and my spine straightened. A smile danced across my face. It was freeing, this. It was like being a child again, except no child had ever been this strong, especially not relative to their weight. The world became softer. Kinder. I could sleep in a pile of gravel or a bed of spikes and not feel sting. If I ever returned back home—when I returned back home, this spell was going straight into the records. It was a wonder Magi didn’t already teach this one to their apprentices. Perhaps they feared them flying away.
I bounced on the spot a few times, getting the feel of it. It was easy. Easier than natural. I rose so fast and fell so slow I could nearly steer my descent. Getting to the rope would be no problem. So long as I didn’t overshoot.
I stored my spellbook back in my pouch.
“Wind lift me. Rain sate me. Sun feed us all.”
I jumped before I could have second thoughts.
I easily cleared the mound, even continuing to rise as I approached the lip of the well. My right hand snagged the rope right at its edge. I rocked forward slightly, but only slightly. I’d timed my jump to leap more up than out.
My left hand swung around and wrapped around the rope next to my right. It was as easy as standing. Easier. I didn’t even feel the strain of gravity pressing down on me. I clambered up the rope hand over hand, not even needing to brace my feet against rope or wall. I felt like a squirrel.
I let my swords rise past me just before I came out of the well. One of them jostled the still swaying rope as it passed, but I’d been ready for that. I’d moved the swords slow, and it seemed to have paid off with no visible damage to the rope.
There was no one in the ogres’ room when I popped out of the hole. It was rather hard to get into the room at the moment, but I’d have been wishing for the swords if I’d needed them. It was just a shame they were so difficult to move safely up and down the well.
I’d already seen the treasure pile, but I’d not truly looked through it. It wasn’t large, all in all, but the ogres had a strange sense of discernment. Clumps of hair and torn and bloodied clothes were piled evenly with golden necklaces, a bracelet, a necklace, and coins scattered like promises.
In the centre of the small heap was a strange... I wasn’t sure what it was. That was why it was strange. It looked like a club or perhaps a statuette depicting a bundle of arrows, but not quite like either. It was wrought from a dark metal, possibly bronze, though their was a hint of gold. A central bulge lined with ridges appeared to be haft, as though it were a poorly balanced javelin. the bulge tapered to a point at either end, then from that taper sprouted five ribs on either side, which curved outward like the tines of a trident, or the petals of a narrow flower. The thing was perhaps the length of my thigh in all.
I grasped it by the central bulge to get a further look at it and—the leapt into my hand as I drew near. It was the same attraction of metal I’d experienced since the trapped door, but far stronger.
The moment my fingers closed around the haft—with hardly a thought for my own will—I felt the power contained within. The object thrummed with power, much like the druid stone had.
It crackled.
Sparks leapt from the tips of the object to the centre, to my wrists, to my elbow, and danced about all three. This was not a subtle power. The druidstone had been the inevitability of the tide, this was threat of the storm.
And storm was more than a fancy metaphor. The sparks turned into arcs of lightning which played up and down both the object and my entire arm. Ozone filled the air.
The object began to glow. Subtly at first, only visible in the dark. Then it grew. And grew. And grew until it was brighter than my will-o’-wisps, until it left light-scars when I closed my eyes. The light didn’t illuminate the room, it sent it into chaos. Shadows swirled about, details were revealed in harsh blue-white flashes, then obscured again as quickly.
The object no longer appeared to be cast from bronze. It was a bar of lightning, held in my hand. A thunderbolt of the gods.
My hand trembled slightly as I placed it on the floor. Gently. As gentle as I could.
Where had the ogres found this?
Their other “treasures” seemed to be from the packs of group of craftsmen; a hack saw, a hand drill, a set of weights, the aforementioned clothes and jewellery.
And then there was the thunderbolt.
Did the warlocks have access to such things? Did anyone? Could the ogres have killed a god for it? Or, more reasonably, stolen it somehow?
It was said great smiths lived under the foam and waves of the sea. Monstrous creatures of terrible strength who forged the weapons of the gods. Perhaps the ogres... but then, where was their smithy?
The play of the lightning slowed. Lashing tendrils settled. Became sparks. The thunderbolt dimmed. The room darkened. The gentle glow of my will-o’-wisps became the source of light once more. And there, the thunderbolt, a staff cast in bronze. I could almost believe it was harmless.
I knew better.
Even though I’d never seen anything like this, nor even believed they existed, I knew something of what it was capable of. What it had to be capable of. It was the manner of such things to be imbued with certain properties. Bound by them. Nature had her laws.
Fire illuminated; light, wisdom, revelation. Water quenched; thirst, heat, soil.
Lightning destroyed. Annihilated.
This was no substitute for Lightning Cascade or one of the warlocks traps. It couldn’t be. Natural law wouldn’t allow it. If I wanted the ogre dead, even Lightning Cascade might not have done it. This would.
It was fitting, to find the means of undoing the ogre in his den. It was the nature of such things.
Not that I dared wield it.
Not unless no other recourse was available to me. I had no idea what it meant to annihilate. Was that the object I threw it at? Pointed it at? Stabbed with it? Was that everything within a days travel from the point of impact? Natural law could only imply so much.
I looked back over the scraps of cloth. Torn, damaged, and destroyed though they may be, if they came from the same source as the ogres’ thunderbolt, they might be worth a second look. Clothes could be repaired. Especially if of a magical nature.
The only piece which held promise was a single tattered shoe. It was small, but the dark colours and raised heel suggested it was a man’s shoe, perhaps a courtiers or a cavalry officers.
I shoved it over my toes as best I could, but nothing revealed itself to me. It was actually a bit of a relief. Who wanted to wear a single, ill-fitting shoe?
The clumps of hair I brushed aside. Any powerful properties the hair of a corpse might hold I wanted nothing to do with. Nothing good came from desecrating the dead—The feel of the warlock’s corpse collapsing beneath my weight send a frisson of ice along my arms—I’d been lucky to be left with haunting memories as my only punishment.
The sun rose.
I rose from the pile and dusted my hands. What further treasure there might be could wait. I only had the king’s compass for a limited time. If my hands were starting to write the wrong spells half the time I’d have to take every opportunity I could.
I started for the rope automatically, then caught myself. The vizier had pointed me to the nearest room he knew about where a compass could function, but that didn’t mean he knew of every room, nor that he knew where I’d come from. Even one wise and knowing couldn’t be expected to account for wizards climbing down an ogres’ outhouse.
I pulled out the king’s compass and placed it on the floor, then took a few steps back. On the dim light of my jack-o’-lanterns I could just make out the compass pointing toward the wall on the other side of the well from where I was standing. That was direction I’d come from, which was promising.
I retrieved the compass and carried it to the wall it suggested was west of the well, rotated it, deposited it, then retreated.
The needle spun away from my hand and once more pointed at the same wall.
I moved and placed the compass twice more before I was convinced.
Compasses worked in the ogres’ chamber. What were the odds?
Even if it wasn’t pointing north, it was pointing the same direction each time, which hopefully meant I could use it to orient myself, and not that the wall I thought was the north wall was highly magnetic.
I prepared myself to write.
Will-o’-WispII
Will-o’-Wisp
The second spell vanished from my spellbook as it was cast. Why had—could it be because it was altered—No, I’d already cast a number of altered and enhanced spells multiple times without losing them. I’d—Time was wasting, I could worry about it later.
Rapture
My compass rose and turned to face me. For the second time in as many hours, I swept the compass and my lights through the air. The dimmer will-o’-wisp remained fixed to the pivot while the brighter point danced along the axis. North, always pointing north.
North Star: Two large wavering lights appear. One is as bright as a candle, the other twice that. Both dim over the course of an hour. The lights remained fixed along an axis pointing north-south, the dimmer pointing south, the brighter north. The axis moves following the whims of the caster. The spell lasts an hour.
Success! It had cost me my new Will-o’-wisp, but the trade was worth it. I could duplicate North Star if I wanted more lights. And I was going to to. I only had a single spell focused solely on light left. My fireballs could substitute if it came down to it, but I needed to be careful. A bright light robbed me of the advantage my dim jack-o’-lanterns gave. I could see in the dark, others couldn’t.
Magic Swords II
That said, summoning an armoury every time I wanted to see was rather inconvenient.
I still had lease on the compass for another day, giving me plenty of time to return to the dead king. Which meant I could return to the ogres’ treasures.
The necklaces had caught my eye from the start. Glittering and gold, not a single one of them broken. The ogres had been more careful with them then with the clothing. I placed all three over my neck in quick succession.
None revealed to me any powers, though one was wrought into the form of a series of orcneas runes with a masterful hand. Perhaps the orcneas I’d met in the king’s chamber would find a use for it, or some sort of affection. I placed all three necklaces in my pouch. They were valuable enough to bargain with if I met the right sort of creature. Maybe Tom’s mother could use a bit of jewellery.
Stolen novel; please report.
A single bracelet and ring joined the necklaces.
Visions assaulted me. More than visions. My tongue ran across stone. My fingers trailed through the pool of blood, under my jacket, rifled through the piles of debris. The laughter of the walls rang in my ears, louder now than the warlocks’ whispers. Still wind blew across the bare skin of my back, my eyes scoured the depths of the well, the holes in the wall, between every crack in the brick.
Light was irrelevant. Distance was irrelevant. Sand entered my mouth and blood poured down my gullet. I felt it all, heard it all, saw it all, sensed it all. All but the albatross, which flew overhead still unseen. Unheard.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but the sensations remained. My teeth bit down on cloth and drank deeply from potion bundled away in the ogre’s stash. Tore pieces from the piece of hardtack wrapped in a map. I hadn’t seen either, but now I could see every scratch, ran my finger along every tear in the paper, sniffed the musk of the parchment and the crushed the hardtack to crumbs between my fingers.
It was too much. Too much. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t be. Only feel. Only see. The sound. The laughter. The lapping of blood. The groan of a mountain borne on the back of a stack of crude bricks. Insects skittering. Hearts beating. Blood rushing. The shuttering of my eyes. The twitch of every muscle fibre.
It had to go. I couldn’t—
The sounds stopped. The sights remained, and the tastes. And the smells. And then, and then, one by one, I shut them off. Only sight remained.
“Pools stilled.”
The visions had began the moment I’d put on the ring. I could “see” in a sphere about myself, thirty or so feet in diameter. It was as if I was outside myself, viewing myself from above, and from every angle at once. I could see inside the pouch at my waist as easily as I could count the hairs on my head. Beyond that the vision grew blurred and dimmed, and beyond that there was nothing. Not even darkness, simply an absence.
I took a cautious step towards the pool of blood, rocking unsteadily from the strange perspective. I watched myself, as if a stranger, move as I moved—No, I moved. No other. And yet I couldn’t help shake the sense of alienation. As if I was being stalked by my doppelganger. The sphere of vision moved with me, slid through stone as easily as air. I could see around the corner, see the dead ogress sunk into the still trickling stream of her husband’s blood.
I moved to the wall to my left—left of the me I stared down on, stared up at, stared out of even though my eyes remained closed—north, by my compass. I was careful to avoid the well. The few steps to the one wall had not been enough to get my bearing. I was still unsteady on my feet.
My vision slid through the wall as easily as around the corner. I saw a long corridor, with another stream of the ogre’s blood and another pool at its end. I believed it to be a corridor anyway. My vision didn’t penetrate far enough to reveal the wall on the opposite side, if indeed there was a wall there.
South revealed a massive room, which stretched out in all directions further than my vision could pierce. The small amount of it I could see was empty, but it was deceptive. A toad-dragon could linger exactly at the edge of my vision and it would be as if it never existed.
The ring offered none of the normal tapering of normal senses. None of the vague feeling of a presence even when none could be seen.
But perhaps I could hear?
The laughter came back with a thought. And the dripping. The pooling of blood, the rushing of breath in my lung... the glistening of my lung—my lungs were made of gold!
I watched them expand and contract in consternation. Ripples spread across their surface like a hammer cold forging a leaf, then crumpled like the same leaf being crushed into a ball. No wonder I’d had troubles breathing! How was I still alive?
I’d have doubted the visions offered by the ring, but everything else was too real, too perfect. If I couldn’t trust the ring, I couldn’t trust my own sense. Which, in the warlock’s dungeon wasn’t an unreasonable proposition, but the golden lungs lined up with every last bit of my ordeal.
The introspection of my internal organs occurred at the same time the sounds were rushing around me. I could hear the crinkling of my lungs as loud as if I’d pressed them against my ear. I could hear the insects in the room beyond the wall scuttle to the edge of my vision, then go instantly silent when they passed beyond.
There too, were there limits.
I was starting to get a headache.
I shut off the sight and the sound. Blessed darkness descended around me. The laughter of the walls was drowned out by the whispers inside my head.
I opened my eyes and nearly vomited from the disorientation of the sudden shift in perspective. The world felt like it had flipped over and my feet were above my head. My body reacted quicker than my thoughts, and sought to redress the wrong.
A moment later I was lying on my back with my feet in the air while the flagstones swirled around me.
I closed my eyes and waited for the spinning to stop.
The ring could grant senses and also remove them. Could it grant senses unavailable to the human mind? Could I see heat of a fire, or the bite of the winter wind?
With the thought my body began to glow. My sphere of sense expanded once more, this time showing the world in hot and cold. Hot was the waves above the stove, cold the bite of frost on pitchfork left out under frost.
I blazed like the sun. The frozen flame in my pouch a warm coal next to me. The pool of blood had cooled, only slightly brighter than the surrounding stone. The stones beneath my back bore the print of my body, and the wall where I’d touched it before I’d fallen.
Was this why wolves feared fire? Did it burn with the presence of a thousand passings?
It was not sight, whatever it was this heat-sense offered. It was unlike anything I’d experienced. The closest I could managed was “impressions”. It was the connotation of blizzard’s bite and the sun’s scorching pain. The refreshing cool grass beneath my cheek and the warm sand on the beach.
Despite this alieness, it felt wholly natural. In fact, it confused me less than the sensations of sight or sound had, and was far less invasive than taste and smell. Perhaps it was my lack of experience which protected me. How could I over-analyze what I didn’t understand? Perhaps a snake or a wolf or whatever sort of creature experienced the world painted hot and cold would be as disoriented by this heat-sphere as I was by the sound.
I shut off the sensation.
I reopened my eyes.
The world was still spinning, but not so fast I couldn’t bear it. As sure as spring, this ring was a force on par with the thunderbolt. I’d seen more of my innards in a few unfortunate seconds than a doctor could hope to cobble together from a lifetime of study.
It was too valuable not to use. Medicine aside, it could detect traps for me, find creatures hidden from natural sight, peer beyond doorways or discover secret passages. If only it wasn’t so overwhelming.
Perhaps touch could be the compromise. I experimentally restored the sensation. Immediately, I felt naked. I felt more than naked. I felt the cold stone and the cold air as if it were directly against my skin. I swam in the pool of blood and slithered through the piles of fabric with every inch of my body.
I ended the feeling. No amount of disorienting visions compared to the feel of a dozen blades about your nethers.
I shivered. Ghost sensations still travelled up and down my skin. No longer an outline of the room and beyond, but a false memory of the world pressing against me.
Perhaps the ring had been part of a set. Another item allowing its continued use. I sat up and restored vision. My eyes were open this time, and I was once again assaulted by the strange double vision this caused.
Before me was the corridor leading back to the ogress’s corpse, which stretched out perhaps thirty feet before turning left towards her body. My eyes, with assistant from my will-o’-wisps, could just make out the far end of the corridor, but my ring-vision cut out half way.
Before the halfway point I could see the corridor from all directions at once, after my vision turned outward, as if cast like a stone. The distinct helped. The ring-vision was akin to a realm of my imagination. One which I could see from anywhere, but always from the outside looking in, never able to travel beyond its boundary. My real vision was more limited. A cone I cast forward, but one which had no limit in scope.
To hold both “visions” at once, it was a matter of treating the distinction the same way I might imagine and long for my room back in Blackbridge, while simultaneously navigating the long path to the village in the rain.
I stood, wobbling as I did so, but less than before. It wasn’t as easy as imagining, but it was already an improvement. With practice I might not need the paired magical item, if indeed there was one.
The focus down the corridor with both my visions had revealed a second truth. Though the ring gave me sight of everything from every angle all at once (but always out-to-in rather than in-to-out) my focus could slide within the bubble like a bead along a string. The rest became periphery, as though seen out the corner of my eye. I could still see my lungs, my blood vessels, the dirt between the cobbles beneath my feet, but I could ignore them.
In. Out. Golden golden foil crinklin—
I wobbled may way back over to the treasures. This time I already knew what remained, for I could see them all at once; a potion—which had tasted like berries, two piercings—one for an ear and the other a sort of elongated horseshoe with a large stud on either end I didn’t know the purpose of, a dried blackthorn covered in sloes—I shook my head and looked “closer”—a carving of a blackthorn somewhat crudely wrought from a piece of wood, two pieces of hardtack which had my stomach rumbling, and written directions to a place called the Forsaken Tomb.
The earring and the horseshoe piercing were the most likely to be paired with the ring. I wasn’t about to pierce my ear on the off chance the earring might be magical, but I could bend the hoop enough to sit uncomfortably on the lobe for a few seconds, so I promptly did so.
Nothing other than pain and being forced to look at myself looking like I had aspirations of foppishness transpired. I placed the earring in my pouch along with the necklaces.
That left the horseshoe. One end was threaded—someone had paid a fortune for whatever it was—which most obviously suggested it was meant to go through a fold of skin and re-secured on the other side, but where that skin was supposed to come from I wasn’t sure. It was too wide for my nose and anywhere else I could think of seemed inconvenient and painful.
I’d stored my needles by weaving them in and out of a small piece of fabric I kept in a small chest under my bed. Perhaps the horseshoe was meant to do the same with someone’s ear? It was all I could think of.
It might not matter. To reveal a magic item I had to use the item as intended, but there were levels of intention, otherwise I could never test the too-small shoes or the tuttenseck. More than anything, this horseshoe was clearly a piece of jewelry meant to be fixed in place to a piece of skin, and that I could do.
Out in. Heart shudders. Intestines puls—
I prepared my spellbook with my righthand while I... I could read my spellbook without holding it, couldn’t I?
I placed my spellbook in my pouch and then activated my sense of touch once more.
Much like with vision, I could slide my attention among the sensations, focusing on one even while feeling all others. Which meant I didn’t have to focus on the feeling of my dagger sliding across my—
My spellbook. I was focusing on my spellbook. My left hand pressed the earring against the top of my ear and then—
Coathanger
I released my hand. The horseshoe remained fixed in place on my ear.
It worked!
I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to connect the pieces. A mage’s magic was limited by his senses, but the ring extended my senses. I could teleport through any wall I could see through, effect any object I could feel, cast as long as my spellbook was within fifteen feet of me.
A world of possibilities had opened before me, the rush of it completely sweeping away the fact the horseshoe seemed to be nothing more than a pretty piece of metal. This called for celebration.
I dug out one of the pieces of hardtack. It looked fine to my eyes, my ring-vision, and my life sight. It was clean enough despite having been found in an ogres’ midden. No fungi grew on its salted surface. No more than everywhere else.
It turned out, however, that it was called hardtack for a reason. These biscuits more so than others. Even with my enhanced strength, I couldn't scratch the surface with my teeth. No problem. They were made to be tough. I could just pour a bit of water onto it to soften it up.
A bit of my precious water later, and I had a very shallow saucer to drink it from. The water stood in a gentle pool like I’d poured it onto stone.
I lay the biscuit down on a piece of cloth. My ring vision was able to study where hardtack met water as though my eye was pressed against it. Not so much as a bubble rose from its surface. The water level remained steady.
So be it. I’d cast Magic Swords II for the light, but there was no sense in letting the blades go to waste.
Two blades struck down at once, each with the full strength of my arms behind them. Both skittered across the hardtack like it was the toad-dragon’s hide and scratched a long furrow in the floor.
The hardtack went spinning away to land in the far corner of the room. Not a single scratch marred its surface when it landed.
“So that’s why the ogres didn’t eat them,” I muttered.
I was mildly disappointed to have my celebration cut short, but cereals had never sat well with me on the best of days. Some swore they were great for digestion, but I’d found those things harvested from the natural world didn’t require any extra digestive properties in the first place. So long as you could stomach the prices.
Much like magic items, agriculture toed the line between dark and true magic. True magic was the process of helping nature reach her natural end state. Dark magic was a trade. Worse, a demand masquerading as a sacrifice. It was an attempt to impose your will on the world, rather than serve the world’s will. “I worked hard, therefore you owe me” were the first words of dark magic.
As long as the components of the ring did not demand of nature, as long as the activation held no price, as long as the farmer kept no expectations of his yield, as long as he didn’t promise the future away to the present, all worked in harmony with nature.
The distinction between hope, expectation, and demand was a difficult one. I myself could only hope the forger of the ring had understood it. The ring was too valuable to give up otherwise.
The forger of the hardtack could return to the waters from whence he came.
I raised up the carving of the blackthorn, which revealed itself to be nothing more than an unusual choice of carving. Crude, when taken in miniature, but blackthorn were crude.
The potion lacked identifying markers and was round rather than the vials of the others I’d seen. It went in my pouch for future study or trade. Tom might want it if nothing else.
That left only the directions to the Forsaken Tomb of Secrets. Apparently it was “Þe reſting place of þe legendary ſorcerſs Myrræ þe Enigmatic, buried wiþ her treaſure in þe depþs of Bleakfort.” which was mildly intriguing, but the directions failed to include what those “treaſures” were, or which floor the directions applied to. It was entirely possible the thunderbolt and ring had both already come from her tomb.
Still, in my pouch it went. The directions had included an ancient stone well east of “þe Fountain of cryſtal waters”. I’d keep an eye out for a “Cobbled Pathway wiþ high pitched peals echoing þe darkened walls”.
Until such point, I had tasks to do. The vizier would be wanting his king’s compass back. It was time to descend.