by Dante King
I sucked back the Mana from my battle-axe, and it immediately returned to the shape of my needle-dagger. I raised my hands and summoned Mana to my Fire tattoo. I knew I could get away with expending a lot of Mana at one time; my pool had increased in capacity since I’d begun using it. I took a deep breath and summoned jets of flame from my fingertips.
The flames roared from my hands, ten jets of bright flame which hit the flagstones in front of the soldiers and poured over the ground toward them. I tightly controlled the flow of Mana through my tattoo to the spell as I began to walk slowly forward.
The soldiers fell back in disarray. The discipline of their formation broke apart, and they stumbled away from me. From behind me, I heard a voice cry, “Ink Mage! Ink Mage!” Other voices took up the call, and I saw the elite soldiers’ eyes widen in surprise and fear. As I pulled my Mana back from the spell, I thought with a smile about how quickly gossip travels in a small town. The rumor of the tattoos must have spread quickly after our fight the day before, and it seemed that the legend of the Ink Mage was known in the town of Brightwater.
Well, we’d give them a show.
My Mana was depleted and would take a few seconds to replenish, so I drew my shortsword. Veronica and Amelia ran up beside me, and we charged into the midst of the disordered soldiers. As we closed with them, they dropped their pikes and drew their swords, but they had bunched up close together and got in each other’s way. I struck one with a ringing blow on the side of the head with my shortsword, knocking his helmet off, while Amelia came in low to hamstring another.
There came a shout from the other side of the square. It was the Arcanist. “Leave the Mages to me!” he shouted. “Attack the civilians!”
The soldiers tried to obey him, and four of them grabbed their pikes from the ground and charged full tilt at the crowded townsfolk. I began to run after them, but then I saw Veronica. She stood between the soldiers and the townsfolk, and lightning flickered around her back and shoulders as she faced down the four armored men.
She raised her sword to the heavens, and there was a sudden boom of thunder. The soldiers hesitated for a moment, and everyone looked up. Clouds had appeared out of nowhere in the blue sky above, and lightning flickered. The sky darkened suddenly, and with a rush, rain began to pelt down from above.
“Charge! Charge!” shouted the Captain. The four soldiers aimed their spears at Veronica’s chest and charged.
It was the last thing any of them would do. Lightning arced from Veronica’s back tattoo, catching the soldiers’ pikes and running up the shafts to their hands. The four men were blasted backward with incredible force. Forks of lightning crackled around their bodies as they flew through the air, trailing smoke and the reek of singed hair and burned flesh.
Veronica thrust her vector sword into the air again, and lightning flashed down once from the clouds to meet it. The rain poured down, and the last remaining soldiers drew back in terror away from us. The crowd of townsfolk watched in awe as Amelia, Veronica, Jacques, and I lined up and turned to face the Arcanist.
Maximilian took a few steps forward and stopped.
“You think you have power?” he roared, and his voice was like grating stones. “You think you can defy me and get away with it? I’ll crush you, and this town! I’ll crush you like bugs under my boot, you upstarts! Ink Mage? You will die here, by my hand!”
Suddenly, he pushed a gloved hand forward in our direction. Rippling waves of green energy burst from his hands and became five thorny vines that flew toward me and my companions.
Amelia summoned her ice spear and flung it at one of them, and the two spells exploded into harmless fragments as they met in mid-air.
Veronica lashed out with her sword, and a blast of lighting smashed another of the vines with a loud bang and a flash which made the townsfolk cry out in wonder and amazement.
The final three vines were coming straight at me.
With both hands in the air, I blasted Mana through my Cold tattoo, charging in to meet the approaching projectiles. Freezing mist poured in a cloud from the palms of my hands and solidified around the vines. They moved a lot slower but did not vanish. Instead, I felt control of the Arcanist’s spell pass to me and realized instinctively that I could now control the three deadly vines. They hung in mid-air for a moment, and I saw that my ice spell had transformed them into levitating ropes of thorny spikes.
I didn’t pause to think but flung them with all the force of my projectile ice spell back at the Arcanist. They hurtled back toward him. He managed to duck two, and they shattered against a wall behind him, but the third slammed into his side. He cried out with a roar of pain as the vine’s spiked tip pierced his flesh, and I saw blue ice freeze his left side.
The remaining two soldiers and the Captain stood watching a little way off. They didn’t seem inclined to get involved.
The sudden downpour was turning the whole square into a sodden mess as the Arcanist stood to his full height again and extended his arms out to either side. We braced for his next attack, but he didn’t move. Instead, I saw his face begin to grow red as if from exertion. I heard his bones make a cracking sound, and he started to grow larger. He cast his gaudy red robes aside as he kept on growing.
“What’s he doing?” I shouted to Veronica through the rattle of the rain.
“I don’t know,” she called back. “I’ve never seen anything like this before!”
He kept on growing, and his face kept getting redder. No, his face was becoming gray, like granite. His whole body was turning gray. He was naked now, but his flesh didn’t look human anymore. It looked more like ... stone. Was this some kind of Nature magic?
The townsfolk were staring up at this giant in fear. Even the two soldiers had their arms hanging loosely at their sides as they craned their necks to watch the Arcanist’s transformation.
“Shapeshifter!” shouted Amelia. “Shapeshifter! He’s using a transformation spell to turn himself into a stone golem!”
“That’s forbidden magic!” said Veronica, “worse than anything! It’s the most dangerous, uncontrollable magic known!”
The Arcanist’s body kept on growing and kept becoming more granite-like. I hadn’t faced anything like this before. Like the rest of the crowd, I was mesmerized by Maximillian’s metamorphosis, but my mind was busy working on some tactic that might defeat the enormous creature he was becoming.
Water might possibly have had some effect, but the rain continued to lash the square, and the giant seemed unaffected by it. Even as I watched, his skin began to harden. Great boulders bulged out over his knees, shoulders, and elbows. His head was like a great gray rock, bulbous and misshapen. He threw his head back and laughed horribly, the sound like an avalanche in a hollow valley.
Around us the townsfolk were fleeing. I caught a glimpse of the remaining soldiers tearing their tabards off and flinging them away as they sprinted away up a side street. I didn’t think we’d be seeing them again.
I turned and looked through the rain toward the tavern. Mistress Blossom was leaning in the doorway with one hand on the edge of the door. She looked pale.
“Mistress Blossom,” I yelled. “Can you do anything to stop him?”
“I’m already trying,” she called back. “He’s drawing power from the earth. All I can do is prevent him from drawing any more. Hopefully he won’t grow any larger.”
From where she was standing, I could make out the glow of her tattoo on her midriff.
The soldiers were gone. The townsfolk were gone. Mistress Blossom was doing all she could to hinder him. Even Jacques, who seemed to realize there was little he could do against this stone-clad horror, had retreated to the tavern.
That left me, Veronica, and Amelia.
It was up to us.
The monster which had been the Arcanist Maximillian stopped growing at about twelve feet tall. He was nearly six feet across the shoulders, and the same across the chest. It didn’t look like he had any weapons, but his huge,
rocky fists looked like they could have crushed a house without too much trouble.
He must have used the robes to start the spell before casting them aside. My guess was that the only way to break the spell now would be to kill him.
The monster stomped forward, stopping in front of the pile of his soldiers, most of whom were now dead. Veronica and Amelia hurried back to stand beside me.
“So, these are my challengers?” the Mage boomed in a muffled voice. He laughed, a hollow laugh. Some of the shingles slid off one of the nearby houses as the sound reverberated through the square.
“What are we going to do?” Amelia asked.
“We’ll just have to try our spells and hope he’s vulnerable to some of them,” I said. “Spread out, so he can’t attack us all at once.”
The monster stepped forward, over the broken bodies of the soldiers and thugs, covering three yards at a single stride. He was only 20 yards away from us now. I pushed as much Mana into my Fire rune as I could manage and let loose a huge fireball at the monster’s torso. Amelia fired an ice spear a moment later, aiming for the giant’s right leg.
My fireball burst against the giant’s chest with a blaze of light. With my upgrades and progression, it was hotter than usual, and it scorched him, blackening the stone of his chest. He roared in fury as the force of the blast made him sway backward. There was a cracking sound as Amelia’s spear hit the giant in the knee and stuck there for a moment before melting. The monster roared again and buckled at the knee, limping as he stepped back again.
I could feel my Mana pool regenerating, but it wasn’t quite full enough to cast another huge fireball. Instead, I stepped back and drew my Elemental dagger, preparing to feed Mana into it and create a stable Elemental weapon with one of my affinities. That way I could be magically armed while still leaving Mana in my pool for spells.
Veronica saw what I was doing and ran up, pointing her vector sword at the monster’s chest. Lightning forked down from the sky and ran along the blade, and power crackled from her back onto the blade as well. She shouted, and the raw power flashed from the sword point, running down the blade and blasting across the space between her and the advancing giant.
He roared and raged about when the bolt hit him, but it didn’t seem to penetrate. Instead, the forks of lightning skittered over the surface of his rocky skin, and he batted at them as if he was trying to swat a fly. They seemed to cause him pain, but no damage.
Well, he was distracted by them, and this might give us the chance we needed to inflict some real damage.
Dagger in hand, I focused on it as I had done before. This time, however, I channeled Fire rather than Ice or Lightning. The results were impressive. With only a small amount of Mana expended, dark clouds of smoke formed and solidified, and the dagger transformed into a blade made of flame.
It was a straight sword, as long as my arm, with a solid edge as if the whole thing was made from red hot metal. Flame and sparks flickered along the blade’s edge. I could feel the heat that emanated from it, but it did not burn me.
As the monster continued to stamp about, beating at its chest and head to get rid of the lightning, I ran in and swung my blade at its thigh. That did the most damage yet. My Elemental blade sliced cleanly into the stone, leaving a great gash in the rock skin. Dark blood oozed from the wound as I leaped back to avoid the giant’s wild kick.
“That did something!” said Amelia as she rushed up to me.
“Yes, but it would take a long time to kill him like that. I think it’s time to try combining our spells.”
Amelia’s Cold tattoo glowed bright as she prepared her Mana to cast an ice spear. Then I lifted my left hand and readied a fireball.
“Now!” I shouted.
We both cast our spells, and the fireball met the ice spear at the exact instant that they both crashed into the giant’s abdomen. With a blinding flash and a boom, they exploded into gouts of flame, freezing fog, and boiling steam.
The giant leaned back and let out a furious roar of pain and anger. He raised both fists in the air and brought them crashing to the ground with so much force that the ground shook, and the steeple of the nearby tavern rocked back and forth. The bell clanged with great force, letting off a sound that shook my very bones. Amelia and I were knocked off our feet. We dropped and rolled, getting up again in time to see Veronica raising her sword to cast another lightning bolt.
The giant still crouched on the ground, both fists on the stone flags. The rain poured over him, little rivulets spouting from the cracks and crevices in his stone skin. The flagstones of the town square were awash with water.
Still holding my flaming sword in my right hand, I crouched, plunging my hand into the rainwater and feeding Mana through my Cold rune. Ice ran from my hand across the surface of the ground, freezing the fallen rain into an icy floor that would be as slippery as oil to walk upon. The ice ran in a thin line away from my hand, expanding outward as it came closer to the crouching giant. It ran up his feet and hands, freezing the water that kept landing on him, building the ice up thicker and thicker around his shoulders and chest.
With a roar, he staggered up, wrenching himself free from the ice sheet.
“Amelia, Veronica, combine your spells!” I shouted.
I felt my Mana depleting and leaped back as the two women combined Ice and Lightning in a devastating blast that struck the giant’s stone-armored ribcage. There was a boom and a sound like stones cracking, and I saw chunks of rock fall from the giant’s chest.
He stumbled back, encumbered by the weight of the ice which stuck to his upper body. Waving his arms, he tried to clear it from himself but could not. He bellowed like an enraged bull, and the stones under my feet shook with the sound.
Now was my chance. He was weakened and dazed, reeling from the impact of our last attack.
I lifted my Elemental sword, and it blazed up with fire as I poured some more Mana into it.
“Once more!” I yelled, sending every last drop of Mana into a huge fireball.
I raised it up, ready to throw. At the same time, Amelia conjured an ice spear, and a blast of lightning crackled around the tip of Veronica’s vector sword. I was about to cast my fireball when something else happened. Green light shone up from between the stones around the giant’s feet.
Was Arcanist Maximillian casting some new, more powerful spell?
Suddenly, the stones beneath his feet cracked and were thrust aside as green tendrils of thick creeping vines burst through the dirt. They flowed up to entangle his huge stone legs. A glance back at the tavern showed me the source of the magic: Mistress Blossom stood tall, her arms stretched out toward us and her new tattoo shining bright.
“Now!” I roared and hurled my massive fireball at the already damaged point in the giant’s chest. Amelia’s spear and Veronica’s lightning bolt streaked through the air beside it, and as Mistress Blossom’s green-lit creeping plants reached the spot, the four elemental spells combined.
A blaze of light washed out over the square, and the thunderous boom of the combined spells was deafening. The giant stumbled to its knees, as chunks of ice, stone, and earth fell off his legs, his chest, and his sides. I ran forward, my blazing sword at my side.
This might be my only chance.
I leaped high into the air, landing on the giant’s shoulders as he vainly tried to haul himself back up. His head was as big as my whole upper body, and his eyes were small and blazed like emerald gemstones deep in his rocky face. A gaping mouth snapped vainly at me as I grabbed the edge of one eye socket and plunged my flaming sword into his eye.
The sword sank into the emerald eye up to the hilt, and the eye went dark. The giant howled in pain, and I did it again, this time into the second eye. He spasmed, bucking like an angry ox, and I yanked my sword out of his eye and leaped backward as bits of stone and earth began to peel off him and crash to the ground. His bellowing dulled as, piece by piece, he lost his shape and became a formless pile of stone and dirt.
I lay on the ground, looking up at the collapse of the monster. His great head was the last to go, exploding into a million fragments with a bang like a stone breaking in a fire.
As I staggered to my feet, the vines reached up and gathered the great pile of stone and dirt together, then dragged it down into the bosom of the earth. The flagstones shuffled back into place. Green light shone brightly from between them for a moment, then went out.
I looked around. The rain lessened and stopped as Mistress Blossom, Jacques, Amelia, and Veronica walked toward me, smiling. My head was spinning with the amount of Mana I had consumed, but that would pass in a moment.
The clouds parted, and a shaft of sunlight blazed down, illuminating the rain-washed battlefield as the townsfolk began to reappear from the tavern and the sidestreets.
Brightwater and Governor Arnold had been saved from the wrath of the Arcanist.
We had won.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The sunlight gleamed on the rain-washed courtyard, and I stood still, feeling my Mana regenerate. When my head started feeling normal again, I looked at my companions and drew the Mana back from my Elemental blade, transforming it back into a humble tattooing dagger.
Amelia and Veronica embraced me.
“Thank you, both of you,” I said as they pressed their cheeks against mine and held me tight. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
Mistress Blossom looked a bit unsteady, but she also claimed a hug.
“That was impressive work at the end of the battle!” I said to her.
“I’m just glad I was able to help,” she replied. “We saved the people of Brightwater because of you.”
We hadn’t saved them yet. I was sure retribution would be coming because of what had happened here today, but we could talk about that later.
“Where’s my hug?” Jacques asked. He was covered in dirt and blood, his arms wide and a grin on his face. He had a long cut on his forehead which was leaking blood.
