by Dakota Krout
I complained softly. I saw it. I saw a change! Ha! I had simply gotten here too early! The ritual just hadn’t reached this point yet! At a microscopic level no human eye could see, a Rune was being Inscribed into the rock. The rune finished, and another was drawn next to it. They slowly created a perfect, unbroken ring around the smooth surface of the hole. When that finished, I needed to extend a bit of Essence to see into the stone behind each of the runes. The Runes were so small that there were well over a hundred Runes in the initial ring. Behind each of them another Rune was being created. That one finished and then another and another.
I screeched in excitement.
“That’s great!” Bob yelled, all of them hugging or shaking each other’s hands at the good news. “How are you going to activate the Runes?”
I pondered this for a moment.
“Expand? How so?” Bob shrewdly questioned me. He hadn’t been able to check the full effect of the ritual after all.
Bob nodded along sagely. “This could have interesting effects on the world at large, if they last a long enough time. Essence will naturally be drawn to these lines, and where they cross and expand, there will be more Essence than is readily absorbable by the lines. I wonder if that will lead to people settling in locations that contain them? Will that help cities spring up? Make centers of learning? Currently, power in the world is chaotic, unevenly spread. I look forward to seeing what will happen…”
I cut him off happily.
~ Chapter Thirty ~
Dale walked out of the church into dead silence. He made a face at the impropriety of that thought. At least it felt inappropriate. After sharpening his ears with a thin thread of Essence, the ambient noise jumped into an audible range. Dale heard the crackle of fires, thankfully small due to the vast majority of buildings being made of stone. Screams in the distance, not of horror, but just normal screams of pain. Dale grimaced when he realized that he thought screams of pain sounded normal. He perked up when he heard some tired voices; he recognized that tone!
Dale hurried over to a small group of people who were quietly talking, but slowed when they drew weapons. Father Richard looked around and was the first to speak. “Dale! You survived!” He looked around at the weary faces around him. “Ah. Weapons away, we all know Dale.”
There was a man in the group that took Dale a moment to place. He snapped his fingers after a short silence. “You are Kere Nolsen, then? Did we have that correct last night?”
The man seemed to be startled that he was recognized. “Yes, I am High Inquisitor Nolsen. I am also going to need to re-think my exploits if just anyone from such a remote village can recognize me.”
Dale had a sly thought, remembering an old conversation with Hans. “Well, Sir, it is all because of the song! The ‘Ballad of the Slayer of Shades’ is quite popular around here. We have a bard from the capitol that recently came to live here. Everyone can recognize you now!”
Kere looked mortified, his face draining of color. “Please… please tell me you are joking.”
In response, Dale burst into song, “The man puts up a dome of white, purifies the evil with his holy might. The ladies swoon as Kere stares at the moon…” Kere seemed to deflate, his knees buckling.
“No… no!” The S-ranked man was pulling at his hair, almost collapsing to the ground.
Father Richard shot a look at Dale, a cross between amusement and annoyance. “Dale is joking. That song doesn’t exist.”
“It’s true. I just needed to inject some humor into this situation.” Dale chuckled as the man looked at him with hopeful eyes. “Is having a song made about you so terrible?”
Frank nodded gravely. “Well, lad, you made that song up on the fly, correct? Let me put it like this: that was better than the majority of songs minstrels actually put into circulation. For instance, you’ve heard the song ‘Killer of Her Loneliness’?”
Dale nodded in the affirmative. It was a popular tune in the tavern, as it had a catchy tune. Unfortunately the lyrics were as bad as the title.
“Well,” Frank smiled under his bushy mustache, “maybe you ask your old friend Hans how that song came around?”
“No!”
“Oh, yes.” Frank grinned deviously.
“I should think that we have more important matters to discuss?” Madame Chandra interjected impatiently. “We have over two hundred people unaccounted for, at least a hundred dead, and dozens wounded. Also, the clerics are nowhere to be found, so the wounded are getting substandard treatment. Buildings are destroyed–bodies and trash are everywhere.”
“I have the clerics in a safe location,” Dale responded quickly. “Thanks to Inquisitor Kere, I was also able to complete a rescue mission. There was a large group settled into Tyler’s shop, and we collected them and returned them to the dungeon.”
“The dungeon? You brought non-combatants into the dungeon?” Frank glared at him. “How far in are they? After the second floor, the place becomes D-rank and above only!”
“This is a special place,” Dale attempted to calm the Guild Leader. “There are no monsters and no traps that we have been able to find. It doesn’t even seem to be a part of the main dungeon.”
“Let’s go collect them and get to cleaning this place up,” Chandra loudly broke up the quiet huddle. “If we leave them to rot, we are opening the area to disease and-” Everyone snapped to an alert status as a whiff of Essence passed over them. “What in the…?”
Dale looked around, marveling at what he saw. All of the rubble, blood, and trash had been eradicated from the area. He looked at the few buildings that had a chimney with smoke coming from them, and noticed that the smoke vanished mere inches after exiting. It had begun to snow, but the flakes weren’t collecting or even reaching the ground before vanishing. The ever-present smells of a town diminished and were slowly being replaced with a faint hint of minty goodness. There were neatly stacked crates of building materials wherever a building had been damaged and pathways were neat and clean.
“Who in the what now?” Dale managed to spit out a garbled question.
“It looks like a painting!” Chandra exclaimed with a clap of her hands. “What a beautiful change! Even the bodies are gone! Well, job’s done. I am going to take a nap.”
The group dispersed, walking around to look at the changes. Dale shook his head and walked off to collect the people in the dungeon. Seeing as he had the only key, it was his responsibility to let everyone-
The portal was open and people were freely moving in and out of the crafting floor. Tyler was standing nearby it, holding his new pendant toward the portal to keep it open. “Danger is over, and it looks like the dungeon even cleaned up the town for us! Hop to it! Move, move, move! Who knows when my arm will get tired?”
Dale shrugged and was about to leave when an oddity occurred. High Magous Amber was waiting to enter the portal, but when she walked through she bounced off the church wall. “Ow!” she cried out. She was obviously not in actual pain, but simply quite surprised. Old habits die hard. “What? Why can’t I go through the portal?” She tried again, but there was no change.
“That’s odd…” Dale looked at the portal, looked around at the cle
an area and decided to try talking to the dungeon. “Why can’t Amber get into the crafting area?”
As a confirmation that the dungeon now had access to the surface, he heard a voice in his head.
Dale tried to ask more questions, but silence was his only answer. “High Magous…” Dale quickly had her undivided attention. “I think that the portal will not allow Mages through.”
“What? No! There are so many things I want to make! I heard that there is a pile of aluminum in there!” Amber was getting dangerously worked up. “Do you know what I could do with a mithril portal frame? I could triple the range of our portals! Triple, Dale! I could put a portal on the moon with that range!”
Dale heard in his head.
“How about you find a talented Inscriber that isn’t a Mage and have them build it?” Dale offered hurriedly, trying to stop her from giving ideas to the dungeon. “Why don’t we focus on the plans for the academy? Then you will have your pick of talented trainees!”
Amber shook her head, groaning. “No one wants to be an Inscriber without being a Mage! The training can take over a decade, and the creation of each Rune can take years depending on the complexity! Have you ever seen the books spotters have? The complete listing of all known Runes? It’s huge! Massive! Not possible for non-Mages to memorize!”
Dale dropped to his knees from the force of the scream, prompting Amber to grab him in an attempt to steady him.
“Apparently,” Dale responded through gritted teeth. He wiped away blood that was dripping from his nose.
Dale’s first thought was to deny this request out of hand… but the offer was tempting. Dale frowned, why was he always fighting the dungeon? It had never done anything to him beyond letting the Mobs attack and had made him rich and long-lived beyond his wildest dreams. He slowly nodded. “Deal.”
Amber was looking at him like he had brain damage. Dale shrugged at her. Maybe he did.
~ Cal ~
I chuckled to Bob, who had seen the whole exchange.
“The power of a Mage versus a D-ranked human mind.” Bob raised his glass of juice in salute to me.
I laughed as I watched Dale go about his day to day business.
“My apologies, but I need to interrupt,” Bob interrupted apologetically. “It seems that the grand ritual has… faltered.”
I frowned discontentedly.
“I was just bringing it to your attention, Great Spirit,” Bob returned calmly. “I’m sorry to say I don’t know how to fix it for you.”
Much as I liked the term, I didn’t want to use it incorrectly in a sentence.
“Ah. A ‘grand’ ritual is one that has the potential to affect the world as a whole,” Bob answered me, before turning to his own line of questioning. “Why do you not have enough Mana?”
I trailed off. I didn’t have unlimited Essence, I was just inordinately efficient with my usage of it. This allowed me to accomplish projects with much less Essence than it would take from a less skilled individual. My hope had been that the ‘grand’ ritual would solve these issues for me. I wasn’t too upset. After all, as the common saying went, you needed to spend Essence to make Essence.
“There is no way to speed your Essence accumulation with your currently available assets?” Bob intelligently pried, keeping his eyes on his glass. A drop of juice was licked off the rim just before it could fall.
I looked at him, meditating deeply on his words.
He had the grace to look uncomfortable. “Ah… you remember how the berserkers came to be?”
I could see where this was going.
“Yes, well. We–the Bobs–felt that we should test the limits of our mind. Whichever of us is going to be Bob prime, the one that is our spokesperson, gets the memories of all the others. We have several of us reading at all times, studying, experimenting. When we combine the memories, we ensure that Bob prime doesn’t lose his sanity. Then he becomes the baseline for the next iteration of Bob,” Bob nervously explained to me.
I was seriously in awe of these Goblins.
“Yes, well. It has simply been a study on our mental capacity.” Bob coughed nervously into his hand. “Back to my point, is there no other way for you to gain additional Essence or Mana?”
I fell silent, prompting Bob to look around questioningly.
“Great Spirit?”
I ranted, mentally banging my head against a wall. Rant complete, I sent Bob to the hidden storage room that held Cores filled with Essences and corruption, items that were in the process of being made for the first time, and one small bag that held six Mages worth of Mana.
I cleared my nonexistent throat.
Bob followed my instructions, breaking into a nervous sweat as he passed the seven-meter-tall Manticore. It watched him hungrily but allowed him to pass after I asked nicely enough. Luckily, he was distracted by munching on an Elf that had been trying to get to my Core for guard duty.
“That thing is terrifying.” Bob shuddered as he stood next to the soothing presence of the Silverwood tree. “What is it?”
I jovially explained.
“Why is that?” Bob wondered.
I exclaimed proudly. I had been working to improve my naming schema.
Bob thought about that for a moment. “Wouldn’t it be a Mant-e-core then?”
I grumbled.
He shrugged and started to open the bag.
“Yes?” The Goblin tore his eyes away from the bag. He desperately wanted to learn its secrets.
I chuckled as his face paled. It made him look sickly, as his dark green skin turned a pale lime color.
Opening the bag, carefully pointing
it away from himself, the Goblin grunted as he struggled to retain his grip. There was a massive kickback from the bag as Mana blasted into the open air, finally granted a release from its imprisonment. Bob struggled to close the bag, and while he was eventually successful, it was a few seconds after he had been instructed to do so. There was a rumble as the air was charged with power. Various spacial distortions and mind-bending phenomena caused Bob to dive for cover. He glanced nervously at the area under the Silverwood tree, where the naked power was swiftly draining.
Several minutes passed. Bob was almost ready to give up hope when my voice reached him. All of this was stated in a calm tone.
Bob began kowtowing, “I’m so sorry! The bag got away from me, and I didn’t close it fast enough!”
I groaned softly.
“Manny?” Bob was caught off guard at the abrupt shift in conversation.
“Manny the Manticore? I thought you were trying to make better names for your creations, more… intelligent.” Bob coughed to cover a grin as he finished his statement.
I told him while trying to keep my tone serious.
“I… see,” Bob unconvincingly replied.