by Sever Bronny
Jengo nearly jumped out of his own skin as he spotted the undead circling the village. “Gods help me,” he muttered as he kneeled beside Leera, placing a hand on her forehead, crossing his brows as he concentrated. “Examino potente morbus aurus persona.”
Instead of Slam, Jengo’s 2nd degree element spell was called Diagnose. The healing element was strictly about healing—except for standard spells, it had no offensive capabilities. When Jengo had asked why that was, Mrs. Stone replied, “Healers save lives, not take them.”
But Augum’s thoughts quickly drifted to more important matters. “Bridget cast Cron, Nana.”
Mrs. Stone strode over. “How many heartbeats?”
“Fifteen.”
“I see.” She sighed. “Excessive for a first casting, I dare say.”
Augum felt his throat go dry. “What … what do you mean, Nana?”
“By my calculations, observations and research, fifteen heartbeats would mean that her body has aged approximately thirty days during the casting of that spell.”
“A whole month?” But truth be told, he had feared it was going to be something much worse, like a year. A month was nothing in the grand scheme of things. A month they could handle.
“Yes, but the more time spent within the confines of Annocronomus Tempusari, the more the caster courts the unknown abyssal arcane edge. Allow me to put it another way—if the ether is the center of a great arcane ocean, the abyss is its horizon.”
Augum recalled that cold, dark, and infinite place that had held him in limbo during his arcane fever, a result of overdraw performing Teleport, a spell far beyond his degree and competence.
“So what does that mean, Nana? That Bridget is going to catch arcane fever like I did?”
“I do not believe so, not unless she overdrew while under the influence of the spell. The side effects of Annocronomus Tempusari, beyond simple aging, have a lot to do with the mind and are based on each individual. It is … difficult to explain.”
Augum wondered if that was what had been happening with Nana of late, that she was fighting the side effects of Cron.
Jengo groaned as he lay himself down on the dirt. Beside him, Leera sat up, groggily rubbing her eyes.
“Thanks, Jengo,” she said. “Ugh, bastard hit me hard with some sort of drain spell. How in Sithesia are we supposed to defeat Sparkstone? We just got our butts handed to us by a single 8th degree necromancer.” Leera startled. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Stone. Uh, please excuse my language, I, err, didn’t see you there.” She dusted herself off, helped Jengo stand, the pair making way over.
Bridget finally started slowly coming to. “I … I did it. It was incredible, but painful. Hard to explain.” She continually shook her head. “Felt like everything wanted to … murder me. It was sharp and hard and mean, I don’t know, like I said, hard to explain. I saw myself too. I was a ghost, doing everything backwards along with everyone else. So strange. And I felt the river of time—” She made clumsy jabbing gestures at herself. “—piercing me all over, even in my mind. It was … sweetly horrible.”
She glanced around her. “Everything moved backwards in slow motion. But I was able to move in normal speed, and placed myself just there.” She pointed at a spot beside Audenteroch’s body. Then I saw …” She covered her mouth. “Oh, Lee, I’m so glad you’re alive.”
“What? Of course I’m alive.”
“You don’t understand. He murdered you. Audenteroch murdered you in front of Augum and I. It was … it was awful.” She drew Leera into a gentle hug, shoulders shaking. “I cannot stop seeing it. I cannot stop seeing it!” Tears flowed freely as she drew Leera back, holding her at arm’s length so she could look into her eyes. “Audenteroch tried to bargain with Augum. He wanted the protective enchantments dispelled.” She sniffed hard.
Leera’s face melted. “Oh, Bridge …”
“But then … but then he changed his mind. The look on his face … it was pure … malice. Aug and I knew what he was going to do and we couldn’t stop him. And Aug, he …” She glanced Augum’s way. “It destroyed him …”
Augum felt the hair rise on his arms and his hands tingled. He dared not think about what could have happened, or what poor Bridget had witnessed.
Bridget drew Augum in as well and squeezed both of them tightly, sobbing quietly. “I grit my teeth and really, really focused on casting Cron properly, as Mrs. Stone had taught us. When I did, everything slowed down and … reversed. It was unbelievable to see what had happened unhappen. I counted the heartbeats as I went. Everything was super hard. Dust felt like … iron flakes, it was strange.”
Augum was nodding along. He remembered what it was like when he had cast the Slow Time spell using a scroll, and how strange of an experience it was, how bright and shiny the flames of a fire were, how soft things felt hard and nearly immovable.
“Mrs. Stone, look!” Jengo said, pointing at the southern arcane boundary. “The reavers … most of them have turned to ash!”
“Indeed, it is as I had hoped. The reavers are life-bound to the necromancer that cast them, thus if he or she dies, they do so as well.” She raised a single finger. “But I have a greater hope still—vanquish the Lord of the Legion himself, and all his necromancers turn to dust—”
“—which means all his undead forces fall!” Bridget finished. “Oh, that would be brilliant!” Then she flinched, raising her arm in defense, before seeming to realize nothing had attacked her.
“But some reavers remain, Mrs. Stone,” Jengo said, pointing. “Does that mean a different necromancer summoned them?”
“I believe so.” She turned to Augum and opened her palm, revealing the Exot ring she had taken from Audenteroch. “This will most likely allow you to communicate with he who trained that necromancer … should you ever feel the need to do so.”
“You mean … my father?”
She gave the slightest nod.
Augum accepted the ring with both hands.
“Is it … is it safe?” Leera asked.
“Not yet.”
Augum realized she intended for him to practice Reveal and Disenchant. He placed the ring on the ground and kneeled over it. After a moment of careful concentration, “Un vun asperio aurum enchantus.” His hand floated just above as he slowly became aware of the many arcane intricacies involved in the various enchantments that had been cast upon the ring. Except they were the most complicated he had ever seen, and the arcanery was strangely foreign.
“I can barely discern the tendrils, they’re so tightly packed.” He leaned closer. “Multiple, deep layers.” Ah, there it was. The familiar enchantment of Object Track was confined to a small portion of the ring as a tiny interwoven tapestry of complexity. The Reveal spell faded and he sat up, expelling a breath. “That is some weird arcanery. Very foreign looking.”
“I think I know why,” Bridget said, withdrawing her Exot orb.
“Right!” Leera said, gesturing between the orb and ring. “Can’t it, like, track it?”
“The orbs can track the rings at a 7th degree Object Track proficiency,” Bridget said.
“Which means the incantation had been cast by a Dreadnought,” Augum said slowly.
Bridget absently put away the orb, eyes following something behind Mrs. Stone. “Hence the complexity.”
Mrs. Stone, observing, gave the slightest nod.
“All right, Bridge?” Augum asked.
“Sure.”
Augum shared a fleeting look with Leera before focusing on the task at hand. “Here goes.” He shook out his hands before placing them above the ring again. After another moment of deep concentration, he uttered, “Exotus mia enchantus duo dai ideum exat,” and began daintily peeling back the invisible layers of the spell with his nails, bit by little bit, like an onion. But the spell was far stronger and more complicated than the typical Object Track casting, and so his Disenchant casting timed out before he could finish.
“One of you take over,” he said, moving aside. Leera repeated
the process: Reveal followed by Disenchant, yet she too timed out before concluding the disenchanting. It took Bridget to finish up.
“Done,” she said at long last, expelling a satisfied breath.
“Good,” Mrs. Stone said. “You have yet again demonstrated the power of friendship and teamwork.” Her head bobbed. “Very good indeed.”
The trio exchanged ecstatic looks, not used to hearing such high praise from her.
Bridget handed Augum the captured Exot ring, now untraceable.
“Don’t mix it up with yours,” Leera said.
“Right.” That would be a horrifying mistake.
“It is time,” Mrs. Stone said quietly.
Jengo, who had been watching curiously while sitting on the edge of the well, patted its stained stonework. “I’ll miss this place.”
The group took a moment to look around one last time. Smoke curled skywards all around the village. Those goods worthy of being scavenged had been crated and teleported to Castle Arinthian. The buildings stood forlorn and quiet. What remained was a husk.
The undead stirred and stalked the invisible protective enchantment, the number of reavers significantly reduced but still ample enough to burn the place down with their fiery blades.
“Gather by the well,” Mrs. Stone said. When they did so, she cast a protective enchantment, tracing a large circle around them. “I shall return in a moment,” she said upon finishing, then shuffled to the perimeter where she raised a single shaking hand, the other remaining on her staff. After some quiet words, the invisible barriers dissolved, and the undead surged in. But they ignored her, and they ignored the trio and Jengo. Instead, the reavers hunted for people in buildings, setting each one ablaze with their burning swords.
It was then Augum remembered the ancient prophecy. When thy fallen can’t be slain, when lion children rise again, when fires burn from east to west, blood of kin can vanquish death.
He wondered how long until all of Solia was ablaze. He wondered who the lion children were. He wondered how much time they had before he had to face his father.
Mrs. Stone rejoined the group and for a time they watched as building after building began smoking, and then burning. Panjita’s scribe shop. The Good Medicine Shop. The blacksmith. The Miner’s Mule Inn. And in the distance, barely visible beyond the trees, the Okeke cabin.
A Secret Place
Mrs. Stone returned them to the rear bailey of Castle Arinthian. A great slew of people were already working on the buildings, sawing wood, carrying timber, replacing missing stones, and fashioning windows and doors. Many bowed and waved their greetings and blessings upon seeing the melancholy group.
But Augum’s shoulders felt heavy. Witnessing the village burn had brought back awful memories. Sparrow’s Perch, Willowbrook … and now Milham.
“I shall prepare myself for this evening, Mrs. Stone,” Jengo said with trembling hands. He was plainly nervous, but who wouldn’t be knowing they would soon have their own bone broken and have to try to heal it?
“A moment, Jengo,” Mrs. Stone said as he strode off.
“Mrs. Stone …?”
“For the sake of unity, we will require all the young warlocks to attend training today.”
“But … won’t the castle be left unattended?”
“I will instantly know if the castle is under attack. Please fetch Haylee and Lord Bowlander and return to me.”
“Yes, Mrs. Stone,” and he ran off.
Mrs. Stone glanced sunward, shielding her eyes with a trembling hand. “We are late.”
“Do we have an appointment, Mrs. Stone?” Bridget asked.
“A rather important one.”
The trio exchanged looks, knowing better than to press Mrs. Stone. She always imparted what they needed to know, and very rarely more. And her patience should never be tested, especially before a training session—that tended to end in catastrophe.
“I’m bothered by what Audenteroch said,” Leera whispered to Augum and Bridget after a while.
Bridget raised a brow. “Oh?”
“Called one of my castings ‘inept’.”
“You’re not still worried about that false prophecy, are you?” Augum asked, referring to the time they had found their own tombs in the dungeons of the Library of Antioc, each etched with dark epitaphs. Bridget’s foretold that she would fall from a cliff, Augum’s that he’d die trying to save Leera from his father, and Leera’s that she’d die from ineptitude … also while facing Sparkstone.
Bridget tapped Leera’s chest. “I proved that whole thing wrong … by not dying.”
Leera nodded slowly, yet the anxious worry did not slip from her face so easily.
Bridget abruptly chortled. “No, that’s silly.”
They glanced over at her.
“Huh?” Leera said.
“You just muttered we’d all fall off a cliff.”
“No I didn’t.”
Bridget blinked. “Oh.”
But before they could discuss it further, Jengo strode over with Bowlander and a limping Haylee.
“Mrs. Stone, Miss Burns, Miss Jones,” Bowlander said with a broad smile and a nod, before adding, “Augum.”
“Lord Bowlander,” the girls chorused happily.
“Is the potion working, Archmage?”
“Better the second day than the first,” Mrs. Stone replied.
“Excellent. The effects are slightly cumulative, I believe. If you require anything else at all, anything, please do—”
“—thank you, but we are late,” Mrs. Stone interrupted, curdling the grin on Bowlander’s face. “Ready yourselves, for where we go next, a stumble will cost you your life. Do not let go of each other.”
The group exchanged foreboding looks as they reached for each other’s hands. Curiously, Mrs. Stone flicked a finger and out popped a pumpkin-sized crackling globe of lightning. It was a lamp she used for illumination. Wherever they were heading, she expected darkness.
“Remember, do not let go,” and after a moment of long concentration, with her lips barely moving, there was a great THWOMP. Augum felt the usual sharp yank before he reappeared … on the side of a cliff.
They gasped and squealed at the suddenness of their precarious position. It was dark, with only a small area illuminated by the lamp, just enough light to know there was a great void directly before them. In fact, their toes hung over the edge of a thin outcrop, forcing their backs to the cliff wall.
A sudden flash of lightning illuminated a vast valley.
Bridget squeezed Augum’s hand so hard he thought she might be trying to break it. She used to have a serious phobia of heights, yet now was steadily gaining control of her breathing, and even managed to look down, despite what she had thought she heard Leera say earlier.
Another flash of lightning allowed Augum to properly appreciate the view. And what a view it was! A wide river cascaded over boulders thousands of hazy feet below. And far across from them was another jagged cliff, the top of which disappeared in a mass of roiling black clouds that regularly flashed. Clouds funneled between the two cliffs like a river. A shrieking wind sent their hair flying and robes flapping.
“I don’t want to die!” Jengo said, frantically hugging the cliff while jerking on Leera and Haylee’s hands.
“Stop it, you’re going to pull us over!” Haylee yelled.
Jengo closed his eyes and flattened himself against the cliff wall, head raised slightly as he repeated silent prayers to the Unnameables.
“I have you, Miss Burns,” Lord Bowlander said from between Bridget and Mrs. Stone.
Bridget flinched, only to catch herself and smile. “I can take care of myself, Lord Bowlander, but thank you.”
“Hold on to her,” Leera hissed into Augum’s ear. He knew why too—she still feared Bridget falling off a cliff, making that prophecy come true, not to mention she had been acting strange since the successful Cron casting.
“Where are we anyway?” Leera shouted over the wind.
<
br /> He could only shake his head, having no clue whatsoever. For all he knew, they weren’t even in Sithesia, but some other wild and exotic continent.
A blinding flash lit the sky directly overhead, immediately followed by a gut-ripping crack and a long rumble of thunder, stiffening the group further.
Mrs. Stone began slowly guiding them in the only possible direction—to the right, since the path ended immediately to their left. Augum glanced up. Another flash revealed the cliff wall rising a thousand feet before disappearing into black cloud. Wherever this place was, it could only be reached by teleportation.
But looking up disorientated him just enough for him to misplace his foot—right into thin air. He slipped and felt his heart jam into his throat, and was saved only by Bridget and Leera’s firm grips.
“Be careful!” Bridget said from his right, giving him a stern look.
“But I have a death wish—”
“This is no time for jokes!”
On the other side of her, Bowlander shook his head in a condescendingly disappointed fashion, which annoyed Augum, especially because Bowlander seemed to be trying not to look down. By the way he was clenching his jaw, Augum suspected he was as terrified as the rest of them. Augum made a rude sucking sound through his teeth, lost to the wind. Bowlander was really starting to get on his nerves.
The winding trail steadily thinned until they were on their tippy toes. Then the ledge disappeared altogether, leaving small rocky outcrops they could place their feet on. Cracks and divots in the rock allowed them handholds at the cost of letting go of each other and having to turn around, stomachs to the wall.
The lightning lamp floated near, illuminating the cliff face in blue light. Mrs. Stone scaled carefully, slowed by her age, the scion-tipped staff left to float free near her, following along much like the lamp. Like Lord Bowlander, Bridget mostly refused to look down. But she hung on, as did Leera, a stiff-lipped Haylee, and a trembling Jengo. Augum found this all rather fascinating … and exciting. It reminded him of when he used to scale the great willow outside of Sir Westwood’s hut.
At last, Mrs. Stone stopped. She placed an open hand on what appeared to be three black dots in a triangular pattern carved into the cliff. The ancient witch’s mark. It was a traditional sign of arcanery, for supposedly much of it came from the witch language, eons ago.
