Primal's Wrath: Book VI of 'The Magician's Brother' Series

by HDA Roberts

  Yay...?

  Well, if that wasn't going to do it, nothing was. Crossing my fingers, I called a little Space Magic and grinned as a Portal opened, revealing the other side of the Fortress. No Portals were getting in or out, but nothing was stopping me from Portalling point-to-point within the Trap.

  It seemed that even the mighty Ambrosias Myrddin had his limits (thank God!).

  I ran for it. I emerged by the outer walls, staggering to a halt next to a well.

  I was not in a good way. My thigh was aching, and those burns were agonising. Adrenaline had helped, but I was approaching the end of that relief. I cast a Numbing Spell and tried to breathe, thinking hard.

  I needed a plan. I was losing energy far faster than Myrddin was. I was hurt, without the energy to spare for healing, and Myrddin was apparently indestructible. What the hell was I going to do? I could already feel him searching for me; it would only be seconds before he found me- nope, much less. He was already coming in fast!

  His rage was an almost physical thing, resonating through his Place of Power. That was an advantage, but how could I use it? If he was mad, he wasn't thinking, maybe I could lure him into a trap, somehow? I reached for the water in the well and added heat to it. Steam exploded out of the hole and filled the courtyard, which would hopefully conceal me from his ability to sense my heat. I filled the steam with electricity and gently flexed the gravity so that it would be too whacky to spot my weight. A Muffling Spell took care of the sound I was making and I put a Chemical Shield around myself to hopefully blot out my biorhythms. I was working on a lot of 'ifs,' 'buts' and half-formed theories, but these were low-power Spells, so I wouldn't lose much if I was wrong.

  In the meantime, I hid behind an empty stable and tried to think of something... anything that might get me out of this.

  Myrddin landed and I saw through Mage Sight that he wasn't smiling anymore. He started pulling the air down to clear the courtyard, so I slid a web of Dispelling energy above him to block it, which only made him madder and sloppier. He wasn't bantering anymore, wasn't playing. He wanted me dead, and that's all there was to it.

  Alright, what did I have going for me? My specialties were in Telepathy, Flesh Magic and Illusions. Illusions were essentially out, as he could see through them. Flesh Magic was out, too, because he was better at it than I was, so too with Telepathy...

  No... wait a minute.

  Telepathy might just be the thing. There's no way I could match Flesh Magic with someone who had direct control over their own body, but in the mindscape, it was all about imagination, focus and Will. I'd match my versatility there against anyone, and he had to be out of practice...

  Damn, that was dumb. Myrddin was the Primal of the Mind before he was anything else, it would be like a shark going up against a sea dragon. The shark might get a bite out of the dragon, but then the dragon would just turn around and swallow him whole. Terrible idea.

  Unless I could find a way to distract him, then I could get through his defences and strike directly at his mind, maybe shut it down before he knew what I was doing?

  I looked down at my satchel.

  And it just so happened that I did have a potential distraction.

  Myrddin brought down a torrent of rain and wind that smashed through my dainty web of Dispel like it wasn't there. I scarpered before he could spot me, using another Portal. I reappeared at the other end of the inner wall.

  Okay, here's the plan:

  1. Distract Evil Magician with suitable act of destruction.

  2. Open a Portal at bottom-height of Evil Magician.

  3. Stab Evil Magician in said bottom with Incomprehensibly Powerful Knife of Doom.

  4. While Evil Magician is hopping around, screaming like a little girl, invade his mind and shut it down, all the while preventing Powerful Knife of Doom from transferring any powers from him to me as I neither needed nor wanted any of that mess.

  5. Take Evil Magician to the Farm, kicking him firmly in the danglers every three paces.

  6. Celebratory dinner with attractive redhead.

  Sound good? It did to me.

  Yes, it's all well and good saying it's a terrible plan now; I was under stress, alright? Leave me alone.

  Chapter 31

  First, I needed to get Myrddin in the right place. So I went looking for something expensive to wreck.

  Myrddin found me before I’d been at it ten seconds and nearly flattened me with enough Gravity to turn rock into pudding. Thankfully I managed to jump through a Portal with only a fractured arm for my trouble (clipped by the edge of the gravity field).

  That hurt, but compared to radiation-soaked testicles, it was a somewhat low priority. I cast another Numbing Spell and stuffed the damaged limb into my jacket where it would be at least be somewhat supported.

  I ran through another Portal before Myrddin could get too close again and continued my search for a suitable piece of bait. I smirked a little evilly as an idea occurred to me. Camelot had been built to withstand a siege, so supplies were very important; water, especially. That meant that there were quite a few wells. I could do a lot of damage with one of those, but I decided that it would be far more amusing to use a cistern instead.

  In castles, these were huge, generally subterranean, water tanks, sometimes even entire caverns, that provided a water supply when wells might not be enough for the task. They tended to hold a lot more water than the average well, which, in turn, would cause a lot more damage when that water was suddenly converted into steam.

  Long story short, I demolished an armoury. The sudden heat and pressure of the steam blew the top off the cistern, and the cistern was built into the foundations of the aforementioned armoury. It sounded like someone had mixed the contents of an over-full pan cupboard with boulders and flung them down a hill, it was hilarious.

  Going by the enraged sounds coming out of Myrddin when he saw it, some of that stuff must have been expensive...

  While he was screaming, I was skulking behind a nearby building, just one over from the armoury, close to the one of the curtain walls. I was hidden as completely as I could manage, tucked under an archway and covered with Spells. I was working almost frantically, trying to construct a Gravity Trap before Myrddin stopped swearing and came looking for me again.

  I tried not to rush too much; Gravity Traps were finicky at the best of times and could go spectacularly wrong if I screwed up even the tiniest part of the Spell Matrix. Just as Myrddin started descending towards the remains of the armoury, I cast my Spell and started it charging. In amongst all that gravity weirdness I was generating to stay hidden, I hoped that Myrddin wouldn't notice it until the Trap started knocking down the... oh dear, I'd cast it on a chapel.

  I winced and sent a brief 'I'm sorry' in Heaven's direction, hoping that Himself wouldn't hold it against me too much, bearing in mind my situation.

  I slipped away and lifted myself onto a nearby roof so I could see better. Timing was everything. The Gravity Trap wouldn’t hold its charge for long.

  Myrddin landed atop the pile of rubble which was all that remained of the armoury. He was panting as he looked over the devastation, his face contorted in hatred. His eyes slid over the fortress’ skyline, and he gritted his teeth. His anger was understandable; most of his home was on fire at this point and more than half of it was simply wrecked.

  "I'm going to take my knife from you, boy," he growled, "and then I'm going to spend the next twenty years carving your powers out of you piece by bloody piece! I'll cut you up and fix you so I can start all over again! I will make you beg for death!"

  It got steadily more graphic after that. I tuned him out after he went into details about what he planned for my genitals, it wasn't pleasant.

  Eventually, he ran out of gory details and just stood there, glaring around himself, his Magical senses oozing into the world around him, trying to find me.

  Time to poke the bear a little.

  "You certainly have an imagination, old boy,�
� I said, projecting my voice from the direction of the Chapel, trying to make it sound as casual as I possibly could. It was tricky, those descriptions had left me feeling a little ill. “But the real question is where do you plan to do all of those things? After all, how much of your house is going to be left by then?"

  He roared and charged the sound of my voice, moving out of my line of sight.

  I dropped through another Portal, and reappeared on top of a relatively intact tower overlooking the chapel.

  I waited to make sure that Myrddin was in the right spot... and then I activated my Trap.

  Oh, I actually regretted that. The chapel was a lovely little building, white stone, carved arches and beautiful little statues of angels and knights on horseback. It was set into the middle bailey, near the inner wall, perched on the edge of a rather impressive complex of buildings. Joined together, it was like a mini-castle within the greater fortress. Along with the armoury I’d already broken, there was also a blacksmith, a set of stables and a knights' chapter house going by the red and black banners hung from it; a black dragon on a red field.

  Wait. That was Arthur's banner...

  Had I just cast a Gravity Trap on Arthur's chapel?!

  Oh, I didn't know if I could forgive myself for that. Had I just collapsed Arthur's armoury?!

  God, was Excalibur in there?!

  Well, too late now, but I still groaned as the Gravity Trap engaged.

  Myrddin felt the sudden pulse of energy and darted right at it, no doubt assuming that it was me. He arrived just as the building was starting to shake and crack. The stone crumbled away, the statues fell to shatter on the cobbles, priceless stained-glass windows shattered into a million bright pieces.

  To Myrddin, it would have looked like I was trying to demolish yet another of his buildings, a futile act out of either spite or desperation.

  Certainly nothing he needed to be afraid of (not that I’d managed anything so far that might cause him even pause, much less fear...).

  He roared in pure rage as he landed next to my Trap and started doing his best to counter my Spell, flexing gravity in a desperate attempt to stop the damage.

  The instant his gravity manipulation came into contact with mine, the real trap was sprung.

  A colossal wave of energy encased his Spellwork, travelling along the path of its Magic and right onto Myrddin, forcing him to defend himself or be flattened into the ground by the sudden shift in gravity. He may have had the affinity for Earth and even gravity itself, but fifty gees were still fifty gees, his body would have been crushed under its own weight.

  He was pinned between throwing off my Trap or saving the chapel, forced to make a choice.

  Like many arrogant pricks (myself included), he decided that he could do both. And damn if he couldn’t! Even in that bind, he was still throwing off both parts of my Trap. He would be free in seconds.

  But, in that moment, that precious moment, he was stuck... standing in one place, where I could see him.

  And he was too distracted to do anything to stop me.

  I fumbled the Gods' Blade from its box, took a breath, and opened my Portal. I nearly recoiled from the sight of Myrddin's naked and none too fragrant backside, but dared not. I had one chance. My Telepathic Probe was ready, complete with Sleeping Hex, ready to deliver the mother of all knockout punches.

  I'd never used a knife in this manner before, but the Blade itself seemed to know what it was doing; it even corrected its course mid-flight. The knife slid right through what had to have been a hundred layers of Magical shielding like they weren’t even there, and then it punctured Magic-hardened skin to sink into the meat of the Primal's rump.

  It was impossible, it was majestic, it was hope that I’d make it through this alive... and then things started to go thoroughly down the crapper.

  Just as I was lunging in with my Telepathic attack, the Blade... woke up.

  And it had apparently decided that I wasn’t in charge anymore.

  Again, for the record (oh, I was having to justify a lot of dumb things today...), in all my explorations of the Blade, I'd never once seen even the barest trace of a personality, a mind, anything that could set itself against me, and I’d looked for one. I’d been as certain as I could possibly be that it was not sentient, not alive in any way, nor was there any sort of consciousness lying dormant in the thing. There simply hadn't been any foreign agency in it.

  But there sure as hell was now.

  And it was far more than I could fight against. It was as if I was trying to push against the very weight of Reality itself. I felt the knife in my hand shift and the Blade slid into Myrddin’s rump just a little deeper.

  Then, like a dam being opened, its energies flooded the old Magician, suffusing him and ripping inwards, further and further, reaching for the very heart of him...

  Myrddin's powers snapped off, every Spell and defence he had shut down. Thankfully that caused my Trap to dart back into the Chapel, or we’d both have suffered for that one.

  Within a second, the Blade’s power reached Myrddin’s Well and he screamed in absolute agony and depthless terror.

  He knew exactly what I'd done.

  And then I realised what was likely coming next.

  I panicked.

  "No!" I screamed, trying to pull the knife out. I wanted no part of what was about to happen. That wasn't for me, damn it!

  I all but screamed that at the knife, battering at it with my mind, but all my efforts served to do was yank Myrddin's buttocks part way through the Portal, singing his skin as it contacted the breach in Space-Time.

  He burned, screamed again, and this time, he didn't regenerate.

  Then the Blade’s power started burrowing in the other direction. Into me.

  It wasn't an ugly process from my perspective. It was sort of a gentle slide, like a flume at a water park, liquid energy slipping its way up my arm and into my chest, where it vanished deeper into me, past what could be seen on an X-ray and into those parts of me that are Eternal.

  I still fought it, though, with all my might and all my Will, I fought against it. I even tried shutting the Portal, but something stopped me.

  The Blade found my Well.

  And my world exploded.

  At best (or was that worst?), I expected it to transfer maybe one of those Primal powers to me. I begged the thing not to even do that.

  It transferred them all.

  Each and every one. Even the one Myrddin was born with, Mind Magic.

  At first, my Well felt like it had been torn open, like there was a gaping chasm right at the heart of me. Before I could even scream, the hollow suddenly filled up with a nearly incomprehensible amount power, until I was full to bursting... and then it expanded so it could take even more.

  I could feel Myrddin’s Well shrinking as mine grew, the very boundaries of his soul contracting, making him feel smaller and smaller. He was already down to little more than two or three high-end Sorcerers’ worth, and there was no sign of the drain stopping.

  It was too much. I felt like I was going to explode, and in that moment, there was only one place for all that Magic to go.

  The Portal.

  As you might imagine, Portals had two parts, origin and exit. The origin was on top of the tower, with me, and Myrddin's bony arse, the exit was down in the courtyard. Not that it should have mattered, but they were roughly perpendicular to one another.

  All that power rushing through me caused those Portals to massively overload.

  My brain was a misfiring mess by this point, as everything about my powers was being fundamentally altered. I lost any control over those Portals... and they started to expand.

  At my end, it sliced through the tower under me, carving it in two. The other end did much the same thing to the chapel, causing one part to collapse completely, wrecking my Trap into the bargain, which caused a minor implosion in the vestibule.

  I was so badly scrambled in the head that I couldn't do anything ab
out it. I hadn’t even recognised the true danger, which was that the two Portal apertures were about to touch.

  Portals were, at best, bending the laws of nature a long way. A very long way. Einstein would have had kittens, though Hawking loved them when he was showed one.

  So, having the two ends of a Portal Spell contact one another was an awful lot like sticking a nasal spray full of pepper up Reality's nose and asking it to breathe real deep.

  Reality didn't like that, not one bit.

  The apertures instantly collapsed in on the point of contact, leaving me on one half of a bisected tower with a Reality-warping knife stuck into a smoking slice of Myrddin’s buttock.

  That was followed by an explosion that made the one I'd created up at the citadel look like a firecracker.

  Chapter 32

  Somehow, and I still have no idea how, I managed to surround myself with a Will Shield before the explosion hit me, catapulting me out of Camelot and through the now shattered Trap Shield. It wasn’t my best work with my head so scrambled, and I was braced for burns and broken bones... but that didn’t happen.

  I felt heat and force penetrate my flimsy defences, but as soon as they hit my Aura, my Magic flared and the energy was simply absorbed before it could hurt me. I was dimly aware of noise, energy, power and my own Well just drinking in everything around me, drawing off anything that might have been even remotely harmful.

  There was a moment there when I thought that the sheer power of the explosion was going to overwhelm shield and stolen Affinity alike, but then I was in the clear, in the open air above the lake. My Magic flowed into the world around me, completely instinctually, like I’d been doing it for years. The air responded, cushioning me, flowing around me; it was like being cradled by the world’s softest pillow...

  But then my stupid brain rebooted and I panicked, thoroughly ruining the effect. The cushioning air dispersed and I fell a hundred feet into the lake (which hurt, by the way), where I panicked again at the sudden lack of oxygen. My Magic flared once more, and the lake froze for a good hundred metres in every direction, startling me further and causing a small earthquake that knocked down what little remained of Camelot (amounting to one very wonky turret and two badly mangled latrines by that point).