Crystal of Souls_Fire Mage_Star Mage Novella

by Patricia Jones

  Crystal of Souls: Fire Mage

  STARMAGE NOVELLA

  Patricia Jones

  A.P. Gore

  To my lovely Family!

  Copyright @ Patricia Jones

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  Author’s Note

  Hi there, I hope you’ll have a blast reading this story, well, I’d writing this one for sure.

  This is a standalone story in the Srar Mage Universe and don’t require you to read the other books, but if you have read it already then it will enhance your experience. You can search them on Amazon by my name, book name combination.

  - Patricia Jones

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Prologue

  2000 years ago, earth was stricken by an unknown phenomenon, freezing every last human alive. But humanity survived on Mars and expanded its reach to the whole galaxy. One fine day, everything changed. A scientist discovered the existence of magic, and a way to initiate a human for its use. The era of mages dawned.

  Soon every human alive possessed one of the five magic elements: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Lightning. Humanity’s advance continued until they met the Dark Gods. A war erupted between the descendants of the Dark Gods and humans. At the end, humanity’s Mage Emperor placed a ward around the known human galaxy preventing unauthorized entries—or exits.

  Under the mage emperor’s protection, humanity thrived further, advancing to the next stages of power until they discovered the ancient magical set pieces and items. When combined, these set pieces gave the wielder a bonus that overshadowed other mages’ powers, and a race began between the adventurers to obtain the next set piece.

  Chapter 1

  A nice round ass always attracted Yerra's attention, even if it was the ass of a three-mouthed spider that was also twenty feet wide and fifteen feet tall.

  Fate was on his side today; he had a good chance of surviving the fire-shooting spider. His prize, the artifact of healing, was just one dead arachnoid away.

  Yerra jumped over a stone to avoid an incoming fireball. When the fireball vanished behind him, the darkness came crawling back, surrounding him in pitch black silence.

  Fuck this! He threw a small metal ball in the air and charged it with his magic. The ball floated above his head and shot a large beam of light around him, illuminating everything in a fifteen-meter radius. It was one of the sci-magic gadgets from his home world.

  The giant spider was almost on top of him again.

  Sneaky bastard!

  Yerra jumped back in time to dodge the spider’s leg slash. The spider followed up with a large fireball.

  Yerra applied a shield spell to deflect the fireball.

  He’d had enough. The fight had dragged on for longer than he’d expected.

  Level seven spell time!

  Yerra shot a fire nova—a level seven spell that shot hundreds of tiny fireballs in an arc. For the next thirty seconds, he became a fire-shooting cannon. “Eat this, you eight-legged-freak.” Yerra growled in pain as the spell reduced a quarter of his already diminished magic energy. The spider had proved to be tougher than Yerra’s expectations for a spirit beast of its level.

  The spider made a screeching sound as a barrage of fireballs hit it. Its skin shredded, and patches of green flesh hung out. It was covered in smoke by the time spell finished, but. now it was its turn. The giant creature conjured three giant fireballs out of its mouths and combined them into one super giant fireball. Moment by moment, the giant fireball expanded.

  No way! You can't do that fucking galon spider.

  Yerra didn’t know the exact level of the spell, but one thing was clear: it was fucking powerful enough to burn everything in the cave to ashes, and he had to break it to survive.

  Yerra shot a disintegrate spell to break the spider’s spell. But the spider had conjured a strong shield that deflected Yerra’s spell harmlessly, as if it were no more than a drop of water in the ocean.

  Yerra examined the cave, unblinking. He needed to hide behind something to save his ass; the giant fireball would be too much for his shield alone to handle. With every passing second, he moved closer to a certain fiery burning fucking death.

  He found the solution overhead. There was a small man-sized hatch in the ceiling, right above the spider’s head. Yerra took a deep breath and jumped with all his might, but he didn’t even cross half the distance required, failing miserably.

  He jumped again, this time giving his legs a bit more speed with his movement spell. Yerra flew through the air and almost reached the hatch, but fell on the back of the spider's shield.

  The spider didn’t even notice Yerra. The spider was almost fifteen feet tall and maybe twenty feet wide, so why would it notice an insignificant creature like Yerra on its stone strong shield?

  Yerra got an idea. He jumped again, this time from atop the spider's shield, and reached the hatch.

  Now who's the boss! Yerra smirked.

  That make sense, stepping on the danger to save your own ass. That's me, the danger eating monster.

  Yerra chuckled at his own cleverness until he saw the grease spread inside the hatch.

  Damn! You fucker. It’s a fucking trap.

  Yerra’s mind screamed. Putting a hatch there to save a raider’s ass wasn’t a fault in the design. Someone had actually put it there to fool the raider. Who was laughing now?

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  Yerra slid back down to drop back into the cave. But he was too late, and the fireball was coming right for him.

  He closed his eyes and braced for death, but the long forgotten sensation of teleportation took over him. Someone had summoned him back to Asura.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Who the fuck dares to…” Yerra’s words trailed off when he noticed it was his mother, Terra, who had summoned him to the summoning room. Terra, Queen of the fourth Eugenio world. Every member of Asura's royal family was attuned with a special graft on his or her spine, a magical symbol that allowed them a one-way teleport to their home world. The only cost was the summoner's energy and the requirement of an ancient artifact. The Watch of the Ancients.

  Yerra bowed deeply. “Apologies, Queen. But I don’t understand what need arises to call me in the middle of the night.” Dark shadows lurked inside the summoning chamber. The reflection of a white moon beamed across the water ring surrounding the palace.

  “Rise, my first born,” the queen said.

  “Thank you, Mother, and if we’re done with the dramatics can you tell me the real reason for this?” He wasn't supposed to be here.

  His mother’s face lit up with a broad smile that would have healed anyone’s sad mood, but it didn’t ease Yerra’s heart that day. He knew the protocol. If someone summoned him in the middle of night, that meant grave danger for someone, somewhere.

  His mother stepped forward, brushing dust off his shoulder. “Why are you covered in dirt? Were you fighting someone?”

  “Yes, a spirit beast. The three-mouthed spider.” The spirit beasts guarded the artifact locations. If anyone dared to rank all the spirit animals, spirit beasts would come in the middle of the ranking.

  She grinned. “Ah,
so you were after the healing shard. If you wanted it that badly, why didn’t you come to me? I could have given you a healing potion. Why flirt with death when you could have the prize for free?” she said with ease, but Yerra knew she wouldn't be handing out healing potions willy-nilly. They were only used in the event of war, and only then on the Queen or the heir to the throne. Being neither, Yerra was unworthy of such a privilege.

  “I wanted something I could pass on to someone else. Your healing potion would have served me one time, but I need something long lasting.” Lately his friends, especially Visaka, were getting in a lot of trouble, and he wanted something that would provide her some sort of self-healing magic.

  A dark shadow passed through the queen’s eyes. She had black bags under her eyes. Something was amiss. His mother had never been like this. Was she getting old? Or was she under duress?

  Is someone dead?

  He had seen her like this only once, when he brought back the tattered, dead body of his sister from the Temple of Hephaestus. He shoved that thought away as quickly he could. If he lingered on that thought more than required, the nightmares would return.

  Yerra’s stomach dropped with dread at the thought of those nightmares.

  “Something for a friend.” She paused, looking at him. “You are a noble soul, and you keep proving it to me. But I’m afraid I'll have to ask you to enter a dangerous place. The situation demands it.”

  The queen continued, “Your sister Talia has vanished inside the temple of Hephaestus. We received her distress beacon signal this morning, and attempts to open the seal on the door failed. Only you can open the seal.”

  Yerra’s fingers clenched in a fist. The dread inside his stomach reached his heart and choked his lungs. Fate had put the same boulder on his shoulder ten years ago.

  Chapter 2

  Ten years ago

  Y erra stood in front of the temple door with an undefeated warrior’s attitude, to conquer his level seven trial. This was the final trial, and once he conquered it he would emerge as a level seven war mage—a feat not so easy for any soul, and only a few hundred of the millions of residents of Asura had ever achieved it.

  Yerra inserted the Eye of Hephaestus—the legendary gemstone that had powered the queen's tiara for centuries in the temple door hatch. The temple of trials operated in two ways, with two types of keys. One was a shard of the Eye given by the queen when any warrior reached level six. The second was the Eye of Hephaestus itself. The Eye opened the trials with the toughest challenges, and chances of better loot and progression towards the next level. Yerra had always dreamed of choosing the toughest way possible. There was no slow or easy way for the Prince Yerra.

  When Yerra had reached level six, the queen awarded him a shard and told him the story of the Eye of Hephaestus. She even showed him the Eye in her tiara. From that day, Yerra started forming a plan to get his hands on that stone, but it had been harder than he’d expected. He’d used all his money to create a fake crystal that resembled the Eye, then planted it in the queen's crown when she was visiting another planet. All the trouble would pay off this day.

  Standing in front of the temple door, Yerra cleared his mind. Once he emerged as a level seven mage, he would apologize to his mother and return the Eye. At least that was the plan.

  The temple door opened, and a rush of air pushed him back. He held on to the stone door until the phantom wind died down. The air smelled of salty water. But there was no sea or a river nearby. Where was the smell coming from? From some room of the trials?

  Yerra cleared his mind once more and stepped into the first room of judgment—the room of tiny spiders as mentioned in the old parchment he had researched.

  The book was correct. There were definitely spiders, but it had said “a bunch of tiny spiders.” That was underselling it a bit.

  Tiny fingernail length spiders poured down all the walls and skittered toward him. Yerra did the one thing he was good at: he lit the fuckers. He pulled out a level five fire spell: disintegrate—a beam of fire that obliterated whatever it touched. He moved the beam in an arc, clearing out the spider population one chunk at a time. Yerra chuckled when the last of spider vanished into ashes. The extermination only took a couple of minutes.

  That was easy. I thought this was supposed to be a real challenge.

  Yerra moved on to the next door, failing to notice a bunch of kids entering the temple behind him.

  A few hours down the line, Yerra stood in a narrow subterranean hallway that led to a room with a large pond of water. The air in the hallway smelled like he stood in front of a sea shore. The pond water also looked salty and muddy. But where did the sea water come from? There was no sea around their city. He shrugged the thought off as unimportant to his mission.

  He had cleared five rooms so far and, as per the book on trials, most of the trials contained seven rooms at most. His gut told him that the prize was near, and he just had to go through the water, but how?

  Does the salty water have a clue?

  He bent near the water to touch it, but something moved beneath the murky surface. He pulled his hand back, not wanting to fight a water monster. There had to be some other solution to the puzzle.

  A giggle caught his attention. He pulled his sword of fire out and readied it, by supplying it fire magic, for an incoming attack. The sword had saved him multiple times by then. It was magically enhanced, and he could channel his magic through it to slice his opponent with a fiery slash. It was another of the Eugenie technological wonders—magic receptor weapons.

  His eyes widened as he spotted a small girl entering the room. The moment her eyes met his, she ran back into the hallway.

  “Sera, is that you?” Yerra ran after her. Sera was his little sister, a ten-year-old earth mage, the first to be born with earth magic in a thousand years. Nobody Yerra knew possessed earth magic, not even the queen.

  Yerra found her in the previous room he had beaten, along with three of her friends. Patrick, his cousin brother was one of them. Nela, Patrick’s real sister wasn’t going to be happy about Patrick coming there.

  Thank God I cleared all the lightning spiders before coming out of this room.

  Yerra frowned. “Patrick, Sera, what are you doing here?” The kids were not supposed to be there. “And how did you manage to get in here?”

  “We followed you, big brother,” Patrick answered. He was the eldest of his siblings, but still, he was just twelve years old. “We wanted to see the spirit beasts with our own eyes.”

  “What the...” Yerra bit his lip. Cursing wouldn't be good in front of a bunch of kids. But the thought of them roaming around during the trial of Hephaestus sparked a shiver. Muscles around his heart clenched as he envisioned the possibility of four kids facing a creature of death. Yes, the trials were dangerous, and monsters would eat the unworthy challengers. Any one of them could’ve been dead by now. “Are you nuts? God!” Yerra rubbed his face. “Do you even understand how dangerous is to roam inside the temple? What if you had faced one of the monsters?”

  Sera smiled, a smile that clearly said we-don’t-have-any-idea-what-we-are-doing. “We came prepared, brother. Come on, my team, show your magic,” she ordered.

  Patrick nodded and cast a fireball in his palms. The other two kids cast water and air spells in their own hands, and then Sara touched the ground to raise a hand of stone.

  “A level two spell,” Yerra said. Impressive for her age. “But do you know what level five magic can do? Hit me with all you’ve got.” He had to teach these kids a lesson: never, ever jump into an unknown place.

  The kids looked at each other in shock, but when Sera nodded, they fired their spells at Yerra. Yerra conjured a level three shield and deflected all of the spells. “That was just a level three shield. The monsters in this temple start at level six. What defense do you have against them?”

  The kids scraped the floor with their eyes.

  Patrick replied after a brief silence. “Sorry, big brother.�
��

  “We’re sorry, brother.” Sera chimed in too.

  That was the last thing Yerra heard from Patrick. A shadow hand swiped at him, and before Yerra could react, Patrick vanished into the depths of the darkness. Yerra ran after the monster. He even managed to hit it a couple of times, but he couldn't save Patrick. The monster disappeared, leaving Patrick’s battered body behind.

  His heart slumped inside a deep pit when he carried Patrick's corpse back. He wanted to chase and kill that monster, but he had three more kids to protect.

  The kids cried their eyes out when they saw Patrick. Yerra pulled them closer into his embrace. “Don't worry, I’ll protect you.”

  He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Yerra hurried everyone back to the room with the pond. It looked safe. Their way back was filled with monsters, so he couldn't send the kids back, and the next room would be the beasts’ room. The kids were nowhere ready to even enter that one. And there was still the question of how he was going to cross the bridge.

  Two choices floated in his mind. He could go back, but the guardian who managed the trial wouldn’t like that. He had heard stories of people facing immensely tough challenges when they turned back in the middle of the challenge. The trials were not made for the faint of heart. What if he couldn’t save them all if he decided to go back? His second choice was to go forward, defeat the beast, and make his way out. But that would mean he had to leave the children behind in the water room. The room seemed safe enough. There hadn’t been any attacks yet, and he’d been there for at least half an hour.

  What should I choose?

  Neither solution was ideal.

  “Brother, how are we getting out of here?” Sera asked, weeping. Her face was wet with tears, and her heart… He could feel it beating hard by the way she clung to his leg. Frustration mounted. He was helpless, failing to give hope to these small kids.