Auger & Augment

by Wilson A Bateman

  I watched as she finished with the one sheet of paper and then moved to hang it up beside others that had already been completed and were hanging as if to dry, back to back. I was confused. What did this have to do with enchanting?

  “In order for mana to move within an object, you have to define the pathways for it to do so," she explained, reaching for yet another sheet of tracing paper. “These spellforms will do just that.” I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud, but her answer only stoked my curiosity.

  “Can’t you just carve them directly into the item?”

  She looked at me blankly, as if I had just asked why the sky couldn’t be green. “To do that you would have to be able to control mana itself, and since I am not the Great Sage…” She trailed off as she began applying the brush to paper yet again, and I stayed quiet, feeling foolish and watching her work. Page after page she completed, looking often at the other completed pages for reference before returning to her brushwork. Slowly, the number of hanging pages grew, until there must have been thirty of them.

  At last, one by one, she began unclipping the hanging pages and stacking them studiously atop each other, taking care to overlay them just so. Once she’d lain the final sheet, she placed the entire stack inside a heavy, metal binder and tapped a symbol on its surface. Light flashed inside, and the air was filled with the smell of popcorn, of all things.

  On opening the binder, I saw that the paper itself had vanished, leaving only the waxy substance behind. Phintin daintily lifted the shape from the table and held it up for me to see.

  “This,” she announced triumphantly, “is a spellform.” With a gentle pressure, she tugged the sides and it accordioned outward, forming into a beautiful lattice. It reminded me of the skeleton of a sponge that had been on display in the biology lab of my high school, delicate recurring patterns spun out of white thread. And yet, in the patterns, I saw something familiar. Whorls and arcs I’d seen multiple times while using Ether.

  “It’s beautiful!” I breathed.

  Phintin smiled ecstatically. “Isn’t it though? That’s always my favorite part—excepting this next one, of course.”

  She settled the spellform back onto the table and picked up a pair of forceps, grasping a trailing bit of the form. With her other hand, she opened a drawer beside her and drew out a large, clear crystal that threw refracted light all around the workbench. The jeweler’s work had caught my attention, but this one gem dazzled me.

  “What is that?” I asked breathlessly.

  “That,” Phintin responded, similarly enraptured, “is a mana crystal. I’m not seedborn, so I can’t feed the spellform myself. Doing so is terribly dangerous anyway.”

  “And this,” she continued, nodding toward the auger, “is even more so. Now, hold very still!”

  I did so as she moved the spellform over my hand and lightly touched the mana crystal to another of the trailing ends. Like a straw, the spellform drank from the crystal, gaining a similar iridescence and becoming translucent.

  With the crystal still touching the form, Phintin lowered the entire matrix toward my hand. Initially it seemed far too large, but as the spellform neared the glove, it shrank, steadily moving toward the size of the auger. With steady hands, the enchanter snugged the spellform—which had become insubstantial as well as translucent—between auger and augment. Eyes intent through her lenses, she began to make minute adjustments, positioning the spellform over the course of minutes. Then, at last, she gave a sharp twist of her wrist and snapped the thread still held by the forceps clean away.

  With a flash and a hollow thump, the lattice disappeared, and so did the crystal in Phintin’s hand.

  She flexed her hand as if surprised to find it empty, and then leaned close to the item to observe. As she did so, I leaned in too.

  Luctus' Agglomerate — 1200/1200

  The right-hand tool of the Great Sage Luctus. The Agglomerate is an insatiable store of magical energy, utilizing the wearer’s Mana Regeneration to replenish itself. Whenever Ether is active, the agglomerate will consume and store any mana gained.

  Mana stored: 4922/∞

  Ondure snorted loudly and started awake at the noise, before sleepily stumbling toward the workbench. He leaned in beside me and I could smell his sleep breath, though I had no right to complain. “Well I’ll be," he murmured. “Truly a relic of the Mad Prophet.”

  “I believe so," Phintin confirmed. “We must show this to the king.”

  “Just so, just so," Ondure agreed, yawning and rubbing sleep from his bleary eyes. “But tomorrow.” He gestured to me expectantly. “Alright, boy, let’s have it.”

  There really was nothing I could do. It was what we had risked on bringing the items. Beyond my wildest hopes, they had been repaired, but now they were going to be gone for good. Maybe it’s for the best, I thought. The extra rank of Ether had been nice, but the auger had taken away any advantage to it. Now that it was restored though…

  I unbuckled the glove and handed it to Ondure.

  Warning! Luctus' Agglomerate can only be safely wielded by one with access to the Ether spell. Without the Ether spell, the wielder will be drained of mana and destroyed.

  The frumpy man, made frumpier by sleep, snatched his hand back. “What is this damned Ether spell?!” he cried. “Show it to me, boy!”

  Still bereft of options, I obeyed, and after reading the description himself, Ondure bade me show it to Phintin.

  “I’ve never seen such a thing!” she exclaimed. “With this a mage could… But then it doesn’t matter, does it? This boy is stuck with the glove, for now, although it does nothing more than make him a storehouse for mana! Perhaps it was of great use to The Sage, but for this boy…”

  She turned back to her desk and drew out another spellform, this one premade.

  “Let us at least see whether my spent mana can be recovered.” Using the forceps, she touched the trailing thread to what had once been the auger.

  Iridescence filled the form in an instant, and Phintin waved the lattice like a lit match until it dissipated, and then she clapped her hands together in delight. “Ondure, this could save us a fortune in mana crystals! I should hope so, since the repair consumed an entire Simple.”

  Ondure contemplated, looking me and the agglomerate up and down through bushy grey brows. Minutes passed as he mulled the options.

  “Very well!” he announced, clapping his hands together cheerfully, as if the decision he’d just made weren’t enormous. “We’ll stick it to those elves, Phintin! Young man, I assume Garinold has made it perfectly clear what might happen should you attempt to use this item for nefarious purposes? Good, now let me expound. From now on, I will be checking in on you here and there while you’re in the dungeons. You will not know I’m there, but I will be able to see and hear you at will. Such are the merits of my position as dungeon master.

  “Should you lose this precious item, destroy it, misplace it, and so on, I will personally move you to one of my dungeons that has the loveliest of magma flows. There, I will string you up and slowly lower you in, feet-first. Then I will do it again. And again.” He clapped his hands in delight. “Oh, immortality opens up so many fascinating opportunities! I have dungeons that crush you over hours with ice, dungeons with burrowing worms, dungeons with flies that lay their eggs just around the edges of your eyelids…” He trailed off rapturously, having threatened me with just as much enthusiasm as he had welcomed the new dungeon heart.

  His pleasant demeanor had led me to begin liking the man, but as the threats mounted, I realized he would certainly do all those things, only cheerfully. Phintin remained silent as the dungeon master brainstormed.

  “I won’t take it off," I assured them, and indeed I had no intention of doing so. Our escape plan had to work, because I was sure being lowered into lava would feel every bit as unpleasant in the game as in real life.

  “Good, good. Make sure to use this Ether spell whenever possible as well," Ondure crooned. “Phintin, for
now just grab him whenever you need to feed an enchantment!”

  The enchanter nodded, and he bid her a good night, then bustled us into the street. The night was pitch black. There wasn’t a single source of light to be seen, except for the most brilliant array of stars imaginable. I heard Ondure rummaging in his pouch, muttering to himself. Then he was grabbing my hand and pulling me along. I simply staggered along through the dark after him, mind dull from lack of sleep.

  We burst into light minutes later, both of us blinking furiously as our eyes adjusted. Ondure pulled off a pair of glasses that must have enabled him to see in the dark. “Got a prisoner for you. One of the new ones!” he announced to the well-guarded room. “See to it he’s trained as a mage. Full Intellect. Also, have a guard assigned to make sure he doesn’t remove this glove. Pain of death, you know!”

  And with that, the plump man was gone.

  I staggered after a guard, who showed me up a flight of stairs and down an aisle through rows of sleeping players. When I was finally allowed to collapse on the straw mat with a blanket, I muttered a thankful prayer. That night I was too tired to be concerned as to which ones might be listening.

  Chapter 35

  A faint scratching sound woke me just as the sun was rising. It wouldn’t normally have been loud enough to pull me out of the dead sleep I was in, but because it was right next to my ear it had me jumping up and pulling my blanket away, then lifting the straw mat itself. Of course there would be mice. This was a prison, after all. Or maybe it was a cockroach—or whatever The Boundless’ version of a cockroach was.

  “Oh good, you’re back!” Mac’s voice called through a yawn. I spotted her across the aisle and a few bays down. “How’d the—” She cut off as she spotted the guard keeping watch on me.

  “Well, they fixed it," I told her. “Not that it’ll do me any good. The dungeon master made it clear that if I did anything to it, he’d torture me forever.”

  “Wait”—she smirked—“dungeon master?”

  “He manages all the dungeons for the king. Bigwig.”

  Outside, a horn sounded, and all around us players stirred, rising to make their way to the restrooms or to wait their turn for breakfast.

  “Should we go now?” Mac asked, clearly referring to more than just breakfast.

  “I’m looking forward to the dungeon today," I responded, choosing words carefully to avoid arousing suspicion. The soldier on guard was more alert than I’d ever been that early in the morning, and “Bigwig” was right if Ondure’s orders inspired such diligent execution. “Should be good XP. I’m hoping to reach Level 10.”

  Mac nodded her understanding. “We’ll see if the others are on board then.”

  The others were just past Mac, in various stages of waking. They’d all had a full night’s rest, whereas I was still going on fumes. Me'Almah looked at me apologetically, until Katz saw her and informed her that I deserved what I got for getting them into this mess. I couldn’t really argue. Katz was the most keen to get our grand escape underway, but the others reluctantly agreed that we should wait until it was necessary. There might be good XP in the day’s dungeon, after all, and that had been surprisingly hard to come by. Varba, too, was anxious to go, but the promise of spell training that morning had her interest piqued. She’d lost a day of casting practice on our way to our imprisonment, and she was eager to make up for lost time.

  Spell training turned out to be in keeping with Hen’Darl’s initial instruction. We were directed to arrange ourselves, seated, across a broad area of the canyon floor, though every so often someone would stand in order to cast a spell that required foot movement. A seedborn mage of each element walked the lines as casters practiced. No one thought to question whether we were all seedborn.

  While Varba and the rest meditated and cast spells, I maintained Ether. Without the extra mana available to me, I fed what I could to Varba, but my Wisdom was too low to be of much help. I contemplated using mana from the agglomerate, but Ondure and Phintin seemed to be of the belief that I didn’t have access to that mana, and I wasn’t going to play my hand with Flow and show them otherwise.

  Training and then lunch came and went, leaving us at the entrance to The Caves of Ulava. “When we get out of here I’m going to sleep for a week!” I announced. The soldier by the entry simply sneered. Little did she know.

  We had learned our lesson with my near-drowning the day before, and planned to take our time to read over the dungeon’s plaque and discuss strategies before entering. We didn’t get long though. Our discussion was cut short by a shrill claxon that rang through the entire canyon, followed by an equally pervasive announcement.

  PLAYERS HAVE FAILED TO REPORT! GUARDS TO YOUR STATIONS!

  PLAYERS HAVE FAILED TO REPORT! GUARDS TO YOUR STATIONS!

  My personal guard and the dungeon’s guard looked at each other.

  “Just get in!” mine barked at us as the other began running toward the gate. “Go!” He seemed ready to throw us in himself, so we did as he said. He must have figured this was the most secure place to keep us, and he might have been right, if we hadn’t had Hen’Darl.

  “Dark Vision, please," Mac requested, and Slynx complied. We had been able to see by moonlight the previous afternoon, but this darkness was complete. I had been underground before, in caves local to my home, and I recognized the moist air and the muffling press of surrounding stone. The moments before Slynx managed to buff me were slightly panic-inducing. Once he’d finished, however, it wasn’t much better. The claustrophobia I’d experienced while spelunking in the past was so much worse then, with not knowing just how far below the ground we were or where the exit might be.

  “Fuck," Mac sighed. “How are we supposed to navigate down here?”

  Rock spanned over our heads in a roof that was low to me and crushing to Me’Almah, and I could count five total exits from our current room—three down and to either side, one ahead and to the right, and one behind us. Caves aren’t three-dimensional in the same way buildings are. Where most buildings have defined floors of uniform height, a cave obeys no such rules. A passage could lead in any direction and to any elevation, and remembering how to get back once you’ve reached a new cavern could be next to impossible. On top of that, we hadn’t even had time to figure out what our goal was.

  “Well, should we assume Almah will be able to make it through?” Slynx proposed. “Would they have sent an orc in here knowing she couldn’t make it to the end?”

  “Good call," Mac agreed. “Let’s go with that for now. Tank should be in front anyway. Almah, care to lead?” The massive orc nodded and began squeezing past the rest of us.

  At least it was a heuristic with which to work. Only two of the exits could accommodate the enormous woman, and one of those was behind us. Me’Almah headed for the opening down and to the right, crab-walking on the incline as she eased herself through the crevice.

  Spelunking is tight work in the best of circumstances, but spelunking with a battle-axe? Seemingly half our time was spent passing weaponry as we pressed our way from one cavern to the other, cramming first ourselves and then our weapons through too-small passages and around bends that didn’t want to accommodate.

  “This is not my favorite dungeon," Almah rumbled, taking time to stand upright while the ceiling allowed.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about," Katz announced, linking arms with Varba as he joined the group. “These caves are… well, commodious is the word that comes to mind. Don’t you think, Varb?”

  “Oh, indeed I do, good sir—indeed I do!” she agreed, affecting the snootiest accent she could muster.

  The two broke into gales of laughter at Me’Almah’s level expression, and she simply snorted and rolled her eyes.

  Minutes became hours as we worked our way deeper. Initially we tried to mark our path behind us by stacking loose rock or scratching arrows into the stone, but after coming upon several walls of impenetrable fog we realized the dungeon itself wasn’t goi
ng to let us stray too far off course. Slynx appeared to be right that dungeon entrances worked by simply creating the dungeon for each person that entered. There was no way this network of caves existed so close to the marsh we’d visited the day before.

  In keeping with the demands placed on me, I’d been maintaining Ether the entire day, watching as the mana contained in the agglomerate grew minute by minute, and regretting its inaccessibility. Ondure and Phintin would be able to tell if I’d taken any, and doing so might make them aware of my Flow spell—something I wanted to keep very private. I didn’t care to put Ondure’s threats to the test if our escape didn’t go as planned. I still funneled my base mana off to the others, but that was only a trickle due to my low Wisdom. The agglomerate, on the other hand, first swelled past ten and then twenty thousand mana. I calculated that within two days it might break one hundred thousand. I wasn’t able to use it, but I definitely began making plans. To think I had considered smashing the auger!

  One thing that worried us as we went was the lack of monsters. We kept expecting an attack, whether in the larger caverns or in the tight passageways, but none came. The lack of enemies was nerve-wracking, and the tension grew the longer we went. Would there be enemies? Traps? Anything aside from gray rock?

  There was something though.

  “Do you guys hear that?” I asked, after minutes of trying to confirm that I myself heard it.

  “Hear what?” Mac asked.

  “That… roar.”

  Slynx tightened his grip on his axe. “A monster?”

  “No, more like a waterfall.”

  “How much do you want to bet that’s where we’re headed?” Mac responded. “Anyone else hear it?”

  Everyone else shook their heads, even Varba, who heard everything.