God of Magic

by Logan Jacobs

  “Like this,” she said triumphantly, and she tossed me the rock.

  I was just pleased that I had managed to keep the blade live for so long, but I did want to test the limits.

  “Here we go.” I caught the rock my friends all stepped closer to get a better look as brought the shining mana blade to it.

  Then my mana blade did more than simply cut into the stone, it passed through easily and severed the rock in half.

  I could sense the drain on my mana better than before, and I let the blade flicker out before I started to get light headed.

  “Woah,” Maruk breathed. “That is impressive.”

  “I bet it could go right through armor,” Lavinia said.

  Aerin’s hazel eyes glittered. “Impressive?” she echoed Maruk. “It’s incredible! If only we didn’t have to hide it, people would pay out the nose to see a dagger that can cut through anything.”

  “Seriously, Aerin?” Lavinia crossed her arms. “You would have the world’s only living manipulator performing on the street?”

  “Just at first,” she answered as she rolled her eyes. “He’d become so famous that we would be able to perform in proper venues within no time. Kings and queens would pay to see him.”

  “Yeah, the location wasn’t really what I was talking about,” Lavinia replied with an arched brow. “Unfortunately, Gabriel can’t be your circus pony.”

  “You say that like I wouldn’t give him a cut,” Aerin said. She turned to me, her expression serious. “I would give you a cut. We would both be fabulously wealthy. You know, if your existence wasn’t illegal.”

  I laughed. “Sorry, Aerin. Maybe things will change, and someday, when the Mage Academy isn’t out for my blood, we can go on tour.” I tucked the hilt back into my pack, stood, and brushed the grass off my legs. “Fortune awaits with this bounty, at least. We should probably get going.”

  The others nodded and got up as well, and we started back down the road.

  “About how long do you think it’ll take to reach the Shadow Delves?” I asked Lavinia as we walked.

  “We could get to the entrance before dark, probably,” the archer answered. “Getting to the caves isn’t the difficult part, it’s getting through them that’s tricky.”

  “And back out,” Maruk put in. “Let’s hope our map is a good one.”

  “It is,” Aerin replied with a defensive tone.

  I wondered what our chances were of meeting Ren and his guild in the caves. We were looking for the same thing after all. If we did encounter them, would it lead to a fight? Fighting in Ovrista was against the rules, but there would be nothing stopping us from having at it out here, and I suspected Ren was just the type to take advantage of that.

  If we did end up fighting the Stewards, I would have to be careful that none of them found out I was a manipulator. That meant no magic dagger, for sure. I might be able to use some illusions, but I wondered if I could get away with blocking the Stewards’ mana. A mage like Ren would probably notice if I tried it, but the Stewards had warriors and rangers, too, and it was easier to chalk up a failed nonmagical attack to personal error. If going after their warriors and rangers was to be my primary mode of dealing with the Stewards, I wanted to practice in a similar situation first.

  “I want to practice blocking mana again before we reach the Delves,” I announced. “Lavinia, Maruk, at our next stop, would you mind helping me with that?”

  Lavinia frowned at me. “Uh, Gabriel, Maruk and I aren’t mages. We don’t use mana.”

  “Yes, you do,” I argued with a frown of my own. “I’ve seen both of you do it.”

  That was enough to make everyone stop, and all three of them stared at me.

  “What in the nine hells are you talking about?” Lavinia asked.

  “It’s not all the time, but you use mana when you shoot,” I insisted, “like when you shoot multiple arrows at once.”

  Lavinia was unconvinced. “That’s skill, Gabriel, not magic. I’ve been practicing since I was a child.”

  “I’ll prove it to you, then,” I said. “You try one of your trick shots, and I’ll stop it.”

  “Sure,” she said with raised eyebrows, “but nothing’s going to happen.”

  Aerin grinned. “You want to bet on it?”

  Lavinia turned to her. “Are you serious? You know I’m not a mage.”

  The elf shrugged. “Gabriel can see mana. I trust him.”

  “It’s not quite seeing,” I explained, and they all looked at me. “Well, I can see it, but I also hear it, and kind of… I dunno. I feel it. Is that weird?”

  “No,” Aerin said. “It’s great! You just do you, Gabriel, and manipulate all the magic you want to. I can’t wait to see you stop Lavinia.”

  “We’ll see,” the beautiful dragon-woman scoffed and shrugged her bow off her shoulder. “Let’s just get this over with.” She drew an arrow and fitted it to the bowstring, then looked to me expectantly.

  “Wait,” Maruk said suddenly. “We need to set parameters so that we can get an accurate measurement of the results, and Lavinia will need to shoot once without Gabriel attempting to influence her so that we have something to compare it to.”

  “Just tell me where to shoot,” Lavinia replied testily. “I don’t make mistakes.”

  I looked around. On our left was a pine forest, and on our right, open plains. Aside from us, the road was deserted, and there wasn’t anything in the immediate area to shoot at. Then I got an idea.

  “Do we have any more apples?” I asked.

  The four of us rifled through our bags and produced six apples between us. Merlin scurried around our feet and sniffed the air curiously.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll throw a group of three into the air and Lavinia will try to shoot them all down at once. We’ll do it normally the first time, and then the second time I’ll stop her from using her mana.”

  Maruk took the apples, and Aerin scooped up Merlin so he wouldn’t get in the way. Lavinia drew two more arrows from her quiver and prepared to shoot. She nodded to Maruk when she was ready, and the orc tossed all three of the apples high into the air at once.

  Lavinia drew back the bowstring and aimed. I saw the bright light of her mana flare up and heard a tone a moment before she released the string. The arrows arched forth, and each arrow pierced an apple before they fell back to the ground with a series of soft thuds.

  Lavinia tossed her hair proudly and turned to me. “Skill,” she insisted.

  I grinned back. I had no doubt of her incredible skill as an archer, but that didn’t change the fact that she was using mana. “You’ll see,” I replied.

  Lavinia readied another set of arrows and nodded to Maruk again when she was ready.

  I got ready myself and raised my hand out to her while I focused on the light the burned within her chest.

  Maruk tossed the second volley of apples, and as Lavinia took aim again, and her mana shone brighter, I willed it to stop. I thought back to my confrontation with the necromancer, how I had snuffed out his mana, and I imagined doing the same now as I brought my fist closed. Again, I could feel the heat of the magic against my palm, as though I was closing my hand around a candle flame, and then suddenly, the light of Lavinia’s mana dimmed, her draw arm trembled, and I caught a flicker of shock in her eyes as she released the string.

  The arrows arched up as before, but this time, not a single arrow struck an apple, not even a glancing hit.

  “What?” Lavina gasped.

  Aerin watched them fall and then turned to me with wide, excited eyes. “You weren’t kidding!”

  Lavinia lowered her bow and was staring at the apples on the ground. She shook her head as she said, “No way. There’s got to be some kind of mistake.”

  “I thought you didn’t make mistakes,” Aerin said with a smirk. “Admit it, Gabriel was right.”

  Lavinia scowled at the elf woman, but when she turned to me, her eyes were wide and almost... scared. “I’ve been training my w
hole life to be a great archer, and now you’re telling me it’s just magic?”

  “No,” I said quickly as I stepped forward and put my hand on her arm. “Lavinia, if it was just about using mana, anyone could do it. I think you probably learned how to tap into your mana while you were training, but you wouldn’t be able to do all the things you do without having built up the skills.”

  The ladona woman’s red eyes met mine, and she held my gaze for several seconds before she broke away to retrieve her arrows.

  “I didn’t mean to upset her,” I said with a faint frown.

  “She’ll be alright,” Aerin replied quietly. “She just likes to think she’s got everything figured out. She’ll come around.” the elf set Merlin down, and the puca scampered off to collect the apples that had fallen with an excited chatter.

  Thankfully, Lavinia’s mood already seemed somewhat improved by the time she returned with her arrows.

  “You said I also use mana?” Maruk asked. “How?”

  “I mean, yeah,” I said with a shrug. “You did it when we were fighting those dwarves when you charged through them.”

  “I did feel rather powerful then,” Maruk mused.

  “So, if you can make me miss a few shots, what’ll happen to Maruk?” the archer asked. “Would he fall on his face?”

  “Uh, I don’t know,” I replied.

  “Perhaps we can save that experiment for another time and place,” the orc said quickly. “We do have a schedule to keep and our guild to save.”

  I laughed, and Lavinia shot Maruk a half-grin. “Oh, sure, put it off,” she said, “but your time is coming, orc.”

  Our shadows stretched beside us on the road as the afternoon waned and the late sun gilded the treetops in a golden light during the last few miles of our journey. Although the terrain immediately around Ovrista was fairly flat, hills had begun to rise up around us as we left the main road, and the pine forest closed in on either side. I had begun to wonder how long it would take to find the entrance to the Shadow Delves when the trees began to thin and the road ended abruptly at the base of a large, rounded hill of bare, pale stone.

  Two large pits stared out from the face of the hill part way up the side, and the tunnel of the entrance sat between them. A few scraggly trees grew up between the cracks in the boulders that surrounded the hill, but my first thought was still that I was looking at the top of some enormous creature’s skull, with those pits as eye sockets, and the tunnel like the nasal cavity. I felt slightly colder and drew my cloak around my shoulders.

  I sensed Aerin tense up as she walked beside me, and even Lavinia’s usual confident tone had an edge to it when she announced, “We’re here.”

  “Does anyone else think that it looks like--” Maruk started, but Aerin cut him off.

  “Yes, yes,” she said quickly, “but it’s bad luck to say it.” She fished the map out of her bag. “Come on, we’ll feel better when we’re inside.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure about that, but we didn’t have much of a choice, so I followed Aerin’s quick steps up to the tunnel and tried not to think about how it looked. As we got closer, however, I realized that we might have a more significant problem than the creepy appearance of the cave entrance.

  Aerin’s steps faltered, Maruk groaned, and I heard Lavinia swear behind me.

  The entrance of the tunnel had been shrouded by shadows from a distance, but as we drew nearer, I could see that after just a few yards, the tunnel was completely filled with rocks. No, not just rocks, but boulders and sand, even some creeping vines.

  The entrance to the Shadow Delves was completely caved-in and effectively sealed shut.

  Chapter 15

  “No, no, no, no,” Aerin murmured as she ran up and placed her hands against one of the boulders. “How could this have happened?”

  “It looks like it caved in,” I said, but even as I did, I knew it couldn’t be as simple as that. The walls of the tunnel didn’t appear to have been affected, and many boulders here still had patches of moss clinging to their sides. It didn’t look like a natural rock slide.

  “It was Ren,” Lavinia said as she kicked at one of the boulders.

  “He can do something like this?” I asked.

  Lavinia pursed her lips. “Not personally, but he has an earth mage in his guild. This was definitely his idea.”

  “Do you think they’re still inside?” Maruk asked. “Might they come out this way?”

  “We can’t exactly wait around until they do,” I replied. “They might have planned another way out. You guys said there were lots of entrances, right?”

  “Sure,” Aerin said miserably, “but this is the one on our map. We’d just get lost trying to take another route.”

  Lavinia kicked sharply at the blockade again, and a stream of dirt trickled down. “Damnit!” she growled as she whirled around and began to pace. “That fucking asshole!” Suddenly she stopped and turned to Maruk.

  “You’re strong,” she said. “We can move these boulders and get through.”

  Maruk looked warily at the pile of rocks, sand, and vines, and I could guess the reason for his apprehension. The whole thing was stacked up like a Jenga tower, removing the wrong piece could send it all crashing down and bury us beneath it.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I said. “I think it would be better and faster to try to find another entrance nearby and go from there. I’m sure we’d be able to trace back to where our map leads. What about those--” I almost said ‘eyes’ but stopped myself. “What about those tunnels just above us?”

  Aerin shook her head. “They don’t lead inside, they’re just irregularities in the stone.” She frowned and chewed on her lip as she stared at the cave-in. “Still, I think you’re right, Gabriel. We ought to try to find another way inside. I’m pretty sure there used to be a mining shaft around here, we could look for that.”

  “It’s safer than trying to pull this apart,” Maruk added with a nod to the pile of boulders.

  Lavinia’s red gaze passed to each of us, and then she shrugged. “Whatever. As long as we’re doing something productive.”

  Aerin led us back outside, and we circled around the base of the hill into the forest. “Alright, so all the mining operations were abandoned decades ago,” she said as she examined the map from Magdalena. “There might still be some equipment that they left behind to give us a clue where to look, but don’t count on it. Just keep an eye out for anything that looks like a tunnel.”

  I set Merlin down, and he ran ahead several paces as he usually did to sniff around. Instead of his usual seemingly aimless wandering, however, he immediately seemed to catch onto the trail of something that interested him and tore off through the undergrowth. I knew he would be able to find us again, so I didn’t bother trying to call him back, but a moment later, his whiskered face appeared from the bushes again, and he let out an urgent trill.

  “What is it, little guy?” I asked with a frown. “Did you find something?”

  Merlin snorted in what I guessed was an affirmative and disappeared into the bushes again. With a quick glance to the others, I followed him.

  I heard Lavinia mutter something about taking directions from a puca, but I was learning to trust the puca’s instincts and intelligence. I figured it would be worthwhile to see whatever it was that he evidently wanted to show us.

  Merlin continued to bound ahead and turn back to check that we were keeping up, and his long tail flicked in an anxious sort of way whenever he had to stop to wait for us. I wondered what could have caught his attention since it appeared to be important to him, and I couldn’t help but hope that he somehow understood our predicament and knew what we were looking for.

  As it turned out, we didn’t have very far to go. Merlin led the way through the forest for about five minutes, and then as the trees began to thin again, he came back and returned to his usual place atop my shoulder with a pleased little purr. As I picked my way through the brush and finally saw where
the puca had led us, relief and a strange sort of pride bloomed in my chest. Though we had lost sight of the hill a few times along the way, it rose up before us again, and set into the bare face was another tunnel supported by decaying wooden beams.

  It was one of the mining tunnels Aerin had spoken of.

  “Good boy, Merlin.” I scratched the puca beneath the chin and he headbutted my cheek.

  Aerin was the first to catch up, and when she saw the tunnel, she gave a surprised little laugh. “What-- How did he know where this was?” She reached out to stroke the puca’s fur, and Merlin received her affection with a long purr.

  “You really can understand a lot, can’t you?” Aerin asked him.

  Maruk and Lavinia weren’t far behind, and we all stepped out from beneath the trees in the fading evening light toward the tunnel.

  “Is this the place you were talking about, Aerin?” the orc asked. The supports along the tunnel wall were the only sign that any people had ever been to this place, at least as far as I could tell.

  “Yeah,” Aerin answered as she summoned light into her hand to get a better view of the map. “It’s actually marked on the map here, but it’s not listed as an entrance.” She frowned. “It might have been sealed up farther down.”

  “I guess we’ll have to find out,” I said. We didn’t have any time to lose, and the tunnel appeared safe enough, so I took the lead as we started down into what I hoped was a safe entrance into the Shadow Delves.

  Lavinia produced one of several torches that we had prepared and packed so that we wouldn’t have to rely on magic to light our way, and she lit it as we left the feeble twilight behind. The tunnel was fairly narrow and the walls roughly hewn though I thought I saw the remnants of a track for a cart in places along the ground. After several minutes, the wooden support beams continued to march on ahead which made me feel hopeful that we had found our way in.

  The tunnel sloped steadily downward, and the air became cooler as we descended. Our shadows wavered against the walls like spectral companions, and as Merlin scouted ahead, his pattering steps seemed to echo slightly in the tunnel.