By: Acolyte
A planeswalker exploring magic in the multiverse. Mostly post canon and or my favourite fan fiction worlds
Status: ongoing
Published: 2022-06-01
Updated: 2023-02-06
Words: 59309
Chapters: 21
Original source: threads/1018027
Exported with the assistance of
Chapter 1I am walking down the street, eating chips and playing one of those auto clicker games. It was a quiet night the buzz of mosquitoes was absent as the chill of winter had driven them away. The streetlights are flickering, poorly maintained electronics struggling to illuminate the dark street that is adjacent to the park. The park is sparsely populated, most families have left well before the darkness of the evening hours.
I am distracted from games and chips by a screech of brakes failing to stop a truck. A child crossing the street looks up and is frozen in fear, unable to move before a truck barreling down towards him. My body moves before I give it the command, sprinting across the 10 meters that separates me from the frozen kid.
I am too late in the best way, a teenager jumps in before even I can, pushing the child away from the path of the runaway vehicle. I don't stop, the teenager was mid and could change direction, so he couldn't get out of the way in time. I barely make it and the teenager is surprised, my substantial figure blurring as I rush to push the teenager away.
I think I shouldn't have done that to myself when the truck hits. There is an explosion of pain as my bones are shattered and my sinews torn. I try to move my body, to get up from the pavement where the hit has thrown me but I can't move, the best I do is twitch as warm blood flows from veins into the cold earth.
I desperately want to me and in that manic strength of dying man, something clicks and the world around me disappears. My battered body floats in the middle of an infinite expanse of destructive energy dotted with bubbles of stability. I instinctively know those are worlds, planes with different rules and systems. New knowledge blossoms in my unconscious, I know somehow that I can't stay in this liminal non-existence for long and that I must go to a plane.
I didn't know what I am doing, so I just do what worked before, I will be somewhere that could heal me and protect me. It doesn't work, So I randomly pick a plane and will my new power to go there. The next moment I am dropped in the middle of a bustling square, I don't have the time to take in the surroundings before a bunch of people teleport around me. A little girl dressed in armour with silver hair, a similarly silvered hair man with an aura of power around him and a smile on his lips, a knight in dark metallic armour with a green blazing sword, a raven-haired woman with a nimbus of colours surrounding her hands.
The next moment there is almost a glitch in the world as the people are in different locations than they were in the previous second, the square is empty, the knight is standing near my head as my battered body is lying on the floor, his blade ready to leap into action. The silver-haired man waves his hand and a golden glow suffices my body and I feel my wounds close and my bones knit themselves together.
I don't move, my mind unable to handle the shock the last 30 seconds and I pass out, my mind retreating into a state where the world is a distant worry so I can piece together a functioning psyche after these events.
I wake up completely refreshed, the bed is soft, the sheet made of silk. It was a pleasant surprise, waking up like this I wasn't used to these luxurious beds, the sleep I had on them was divine. I thought about getting one and then I realised I couldn't afford that at a college student's income. The thought brought me up short, the last day's memories came to me in a flood of sensations and confusion.
I open my eyes to get a view of where I was, those fantasy-esque that had teleported in are probably going to be there when I open them.
My prediction turn out to be incorrect, In front of me stands a steel winged angelic beauty with a bow that oozed with a magical aura. Her feathers are streaked with a dull red like dried blood and she is the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. In fact, I usually wasn't a creep that objectified women so this reaction was a bit uncharacteristic.
"You are awake, I will inform the healer and the emperor." the angel says and vanishes in a burst of light and a smell of brimstone.
I get up and look out the window that was beside my bed. The city outside was breathtaking, white marble buildings adorned with statues and splashes of colours, the style was neoclassical but with touches of different styles that I can't place. The city is laid out in a geometric shape, It appears to be properly planned which was unusual but I imagine it was an empire's capital, indicated from the reference to an emperor.
The tech level was bizarre with a bunch of flying ships and a giant flying whale that is on fire. But there were no vehicles in the city, the people were dressed in early modern styles at best and the myriad of soldiers and troopers are carrying blades and other archaic weapons, but there is an odd amount of fully plate armoured soldiers, which was surprising since plate armour is expensive. The people looked happy and content but I was careful not to be too impressed maybe they have slavery here or it was built on oppressed outer provinces' backs. Empires were seldom benevolent so I had to be careful not to buy into the hype of a single great city.
Although a thought occurred to me, I don't know if I can do the leaving existence thing again, It was instinctive the first time but I was too scared to try, the nonexistence had been scary, it wasn't empty space or anything like that, it was an active non existence of things. Concepts like distance and space didn't exist there. So I am feeling anxious, What if I am stuck here?!
Before I can spiral into anxiety fuelled panic attack, there is a knock on my door before the silvered haired man from before entering, flanked by the black armoured knight and the steel winged angel.
He wears an extremely ostentatious golden cloak and a blade is tied to his hip. He is also the most attractive man I have ever seen, every step he takes oozes grace and poise, his face the perfectly symmetrical unsymmtery that made him feel human yet perfect at the same time. He exuded confidence and a surety that was reassuring without being annoying and he had an affable smile almost designed to disarm someone socially.
This was most likely the emperor, the golden cloak and the sheer raw charisma of the man was indicator enough, If he wasn't the emperor then I feared for my sanity if the king was even more charismatic.
"Hello, I am glad that you woke up. We had feared that the magic had reacted badly to you but it was just exhaustion according to the best healers in the imperium. I would have waited by your bedside for you to wake but alas the call of paperwork drives even the emperor." The silver-haired man says, then almost as If reading my mind he continues "Oh, how rude of me, my name is Viserys Targaryen, with a thousand titles that I am sure don't mean anything to you. The important thing that you need to know is that I am the leader of the people that have built this city. So I welcome you to my domain."
The man finishes with a flourish, slightly nodding as to punctuate his words in the end. I consider what I want to say for a second before I reply.
"I want to thank you for healing me, I had the most atrocious day ever, So learning that magic is real and it can heal people is not the weirdest thing I say that day. But I must say that I admire your response time, you and your retinue were there in seconds." I really was curious about that, and it was a distraction to consider whether I wanted to give my real name to a wizard, if magic was real then I had to be careful about the old superstition regarding names and the power they Hold over people. The knowing look in the man's eyes indicated he knew I was playing a gambit and that he was happy to play along for now.
"It was all thanks to the divination department and the prophecy that you would arrive on that exact date, but we are unable to locate where you would insert so that group you saw is a quick reaction force that was ready to find you." The man said with relative mirth but I don't miss the implication of the competence of this emperor and his force.
"Well, A prophecy eh. That's a bit surprising, It usually denotes heroes or villains or demigods. So I am a bit surprised that there is a prophecy about me and that it was deemed important enough that you personally saved me, thanks again for that by the way, can I know what the prophecy was about." That last bit had more tremble in my voice than I would have liked but the trepidation I was feeling was genuine, prophecies rarely had happy endings from what I know about the myths.
"Nothing ominous like that. We have regularly scheduled divination passes from the house of mirrors and it isn't something ominous. It only said there would be a traveller exiled for their world. We thought we should be helping someone that was going through something like that." His words brought down my anxiety and I relaxed a bit but then the exiled bit wormed its way in my head and a yawning pit opened to swallow my good mood.
Viserys must have noticed because he smiles and asks "So, tell me about yourself and how you got here.
So I tell him my story, average college student, truck accident, accidental plane hoping. Then I explain the concept of a college to him and the kind of things that are taught there, then I explain what trucks are and how the modern logistical network works and how it feeds into globalisation and the economic dependency and specialisation. The talk goes on for quite a few hours and my 4 years of business and economics degree knowledge is being tested, Viserys asks questions that show his deeply insightful he is. Like as a modern person I know exactly the benefits of a standardized shipping crate but for an early renaissance monarch who has never even seen a modern port is very impressive.
Viserys has to leave after a few hours, his schedule too busy to spend the entire day talking to someone. But it was refreshing and gave me the time to harden my resolve, I won't give in to despair so easily. It is important to live and learn if I wanted to get back because magic was real and apparently anyone can learn it.
So, Before I jumped myself out of the universe, I was going to learn some magic so I don't accidentally land in a random plane and die from starvation or something stupid like that. I recalled that there wasn't anything that Identified a plane to be different from other ones, So it very well could be that it takes a while for me to get back home.
A shout out to DragonParadox for giving his permission to use his wonder-full quest as a starting off point for the story. Thank you for creating a great world.
Chapter 2Turns out that they had a magical school I could go to learn magic. I even talked to Viserys and his sister Dany and Lya the empress and they all recommended that I practice some magical skills so I can navigate my way home.
The problem was that training mages were expensive, it took a lot of imperial marks, the local currency, to take the unformed clay of a muggle and shape it into the magical artillery that is the battle mages or the magewrights.
Viserys offered to waive it for me, the perks of being a guest of the emperor but I decided to decline that offer, I didn't want to depend on the generosity of a stranger for my future. I mean he was a nice guy but I have only known him for a few days so I had to figure out a way of making money.
So I am going out into the city to see if I can find some gainful employment. I leave my chambers in the palace and ask the servants to guide me to the market so I can see if I could spot an opportunity. The servants here were proud of their jobs, proud to be working for their liberator and secure in knowing that every Imperial subject was guaranteed their rights. It was a surprising amount of equity for a society of this level, but then again, real life didn't have a tech tree. Societies could independently invent complex social concepts that may not have happened in my world at this level of tech development.
I had been studying the history of the empire last night, and it was, by and large, a nice story of slave liberations and feudal lords' order being shuffled and a lot more equity being introduced.
But one thing didn't seem right to me still, The imperium had legal blood magics from the depth of the most paranoid preacher's fears. It was regulated and I found that there were some pretty strict requirements, you had to essentially be declared an enemy of humanity, someone whose action would harm the stability of humanity on this plane. But I am still wary, that's exactly the kind of justification that most fascist regimes used to brand the enemies of the state. There was also the matter of a confirmed, if battered and broken, afterlife system existing. The sacrificed soul did go to a better place than normal. That was a horrible realization, that heaven was real and it was broken by an extra-dimensional horror and the only thing fighting them back was the literal devil and his horde of evil creatures.
That was another painful revelation, the angel guarding me when I had awoken had been an Erinyes, a fallen angel and a former devil that had defected to the imperium. Speaking of the devil, I had walked to the market lost in my thoughts and one of the Erinyes was haggling with a vendor that was selling chickens. That is a bit of a one-sided argument, the devil had millennia of on the vendor but credit to the man he isn't being cowed.
"That chicken could barely feed a mice let alone the god snake, be thankful that I am buying it from you, I should report you to an Inspector for selling diseased chickens." She says to the vendor with passive cruelty that only comes from a lifetime's worth of sadism.
"I assure you that my chickens are in perfect health. Hundreds of people take these to the Holy Yss every day, and none have had a single instance of divination being refused. I would never in my faith cheat the god with a defective chicken." The man has a jade amulet shaped like a coiled snake on his neck and from the context appears to be faithful to the serpent god.
I am going to ignore it, for now, it's likely a regular occurrence. None of the people browsing appear to be all that alarmed.
The market square is bustling, sapient monkeys clamber over rooftops as bull people carry heavy loads, and the plant people are as varied as the amazon rainforest. I was moved by the multiculturalism shown here, there was no hate or fear in any of these people's eyes. It was somewhat amazing even from a modern world, especially knowing that half of these species hadn't even existed 10 years ago. It was a vindication of my belief in the inherent goodness of people.
Then something strange happens, there is a yearning in my soul, the same space where I felt a spark when I jumped worlds. It was like my soul is parched, lacking something it needed to be healthy. And that yearning was reacting to my strong emotional outburst and a phantom limb reaches out from my spark and plunges into the ground, it takes a second for me to realise that I did it on instinct. Then the Land responds, a burst of mana slams into my soul and it laps it up like a parched desert accepting rain.
Motes of white and green energy nestle in my soul, ready to be used and fuel magic. I finally let out a metaphorical breath that I have been holding ever since I came to this world, this even confirmed that I could do magic; it was validation that I have agency in deciding my own fate. That made me really happy.
I decide to forgo looking for revenue sources later, I was too excited about being a wizard.
Chapter 3It was an exhilarating feeling, the magical energy nestled in my soul. As I walk back to the palace, there is a new sense that I notice as I look at the giant tree in the middle of the capital.
According to the history book I was given, the tree was a part of the old gods of the north, a collection of the gods that inhabited the bone-white trees with blood-red leaves. I am not that clear on the exact theology so maybe the tree were gods or were they only the vessels but they are intrinsically linked so the argument is academic at best.
But my new sense is weird, it's part sight, part imagination and part hallucination. Everything appears to be wreathed in five colours. But calling them colour is a misnomer, they are more like an aura of conceptual association and mystical polarity. It was only my limited human understanding that was forcing me to describe them as colours, we haven't invented a language mystically complex enough to describe what they are.
The tree bleeds white and black, divinity and sacrifice weaved together in an intricate matrix that propagated enhancements across the entire capital city, no one was negatively affected by their old age as long as they lived in the city and more. It is the culmination of a massive ritual and it has revied the worship of the old gods after millennia of prosecution. It shows the faith that the gods have in Viserys while at the same it was an immense gesture of goodwill towards the old gods in a way that was massively visible to the general populace.
I walk back to the fallen angel guarding me and say to her.
"I need to talk to Viserys, I may have figured out something important."
She gives me an unimpressed look and flies away, the palace being warded against teleportation.
I pass the time till Viserys comes by examining what I can do with the energy. I can feel the bond with the market was still there, a part of my metaphysical makeup. It has been strengthening again, the strain it has taken when I had pulled energy thought it was repairing. I can feel that I can pull on the energy again in about an hour. The green and white motes in my soul were vibrant, balls of potential that can do anything.
I coax out the white mote and then I realize I have no idea what I want to do with it. The mote was held in between my hands, a ball of white light, a mini sun in my hand. I don't know how I am controlling the energy, the same instinct that has guided me so far allows me to have a modicum of control but it isn't offering any spells or something like that. So, that's the limit of my instinct, it is going to show me how to do the bare minimum that I need to survive, like a baby that knows how to breathe and blink. But a bay couldn't give a PhD dissertation and my instincts can't help me become an archmage.
So I pull the energy back into my soul, the white light disintegrating and flowing into my body and through it, into my soul.
It takes about 4 hours for Viserys to come, I do realize that he is an emperor with a busy schedule as I wait for him, drawing in more mana from my bond. I play with the energy, trying to form it into shapes. If I can't cast spells I could at least gain some actual skill in manipulating mana instead of just relying on my instincts.
"I have to say, you have caught onto magic a lot quicker than I expected, it's been a day and you are already wielding and experimenting with magic," Viserys says from the door, he enters with a swish of his golden cloak and sits beside me, in the manner of an old friend, completely comfortable with the physical proximity, it was probably helped by the fact that he can turn into a gigantic dragon and sorcerer of the 9th valance.
"It's just instinct, not any skill. It's just something I can do with my eyes closed, but I can't do anything with it, magic is hard"
"I am sure the shadow tower can teach you everything you need. But I wanted to talk about how you awakened your magic. It usually takes a lot more practice and danger to awaken magic."
"I just went for a walk and saw the market square, it was pretty inspiring seeing the diverse people working together and I don't know what I did, but my soul reached out and linked to the land and I can draw power from the land and use it."
Viserys mouth is a thin line now, the first sign of any negative emotions I have seen on him. It paradoxically makes me like him more, he was human enough to feel perturbed.
He makes a hand gesture, golden-red light tracing a rune of power in the air and my new senses scream at me. I instinctively jump away from the plane, the amount of mana that answered his call almost blinding my mana sight.
I am hanging in that not space again, an infinite amount of planes just a flicker of my will away. But something is different this time, the bond I made with that imperial market stays strong, letting me trace my way back to the plane that I was just on.
This improved navigation allows me to take a closer look at the plane I am jumping toward and what I see terrifies me, almost making me consider just jumping away and severing my bond.
The metaphysical plane that I have just jumped from is a complex cluster of infinitely large planes aligned with different colours of mana and philosophical concepts arranged around a similarly infinitely large universe made up of a balanced proportion of mana and concepts.
But that would be the planes in an ideal form, the different planes are rent with rifts and wounds that leak energy into each other and one of the "good" white planes is almost inundated with black and white mana mixed with "evil" realm. The overall structure of the planes feels unbalanced, the interrelational rifts pulling them from their natural place into unnatural and unsustainable orbits. Metaphysically, of course, there was no space to be located in and everything was a single point.
There is a massive entity of completely colourless mana that is trying to invade the plane, a sort of portion of the not-space animating itself and battering against the planar barrier that separates the universes from non-existence.
I look back at the place where I have jumped from, and notice that not a lot of time has passed, it seems time is weird in non-existence.
A massive reservoir of power, a mix of all types of mana, reaches across the planar barrier and connects to Visery's crown. I jumped back to the room before more than a second passed.
His crown wards protect him from the massive amount of power that had crossed the planar barrier from the quasi plane that bordered the prime material. It was like a second skin layer adjacent to the prime material.
He closes his eye for a second and then he opens them and I realize that there is more than just Viserys behind those eyes.
"Ah, I see. The leylines in the area have reported no disruption and there isn't any loss of energy from the the-tech infrastructure. So, you aren't pulling magic from the ground or the location. This calls for some testing, I wouldn't want you to siphon off power allocated for projects. Lya is going to love this."
I pull the energy through the bond, the motes of mana settling in an orbit inside my soul, ready to be used.
I have been doing this all day so my reserves are sitting at a pretty healthy 20 mana of green and white. I wave my hand and a mote of white mana leaves and twists in arcane sigil before dissipating into a white mist and cleansing me of the sweat I have worked up in my magical training. Presdigation was an amazingly useful spell and some of the first ones that an imperial mage is taught. It was fairly easy as well, a sorcerer can cast it by instinct from the first time they awakened their magic and a wizard could learn it in a day. It is just simple imprinting of your desire on the mana and using the arcane semantics to guide it.
It has taken me a day to learn the spell, enough time that the empress, Lya, had time to set up her experiments and find the time in their very very busy schedule. When I arrived here I didn't realise how big a deal viserys spending a few hours making me settle in is. The man was a machine working most of the day and night and teleported around the imperium to troubleshoot any problem that came up.
The empress, Lya, was also just as busy, she is the pioneer in the arcane and thaumaturgical sciences. She invented the modern imperial wizardry program and has designed and crafted some of the greatest arcane marvels of the imperium, like the planar nexus and the antigravity engines that powered their flying warships.
"I sense no fluctuation in the etheric currents, the dream and astral realms and there is no far realm with influence. The ley lines are stable and the fey wild is not crossing over. I am calculating if you are drawing in energy from some sort of celestial alignment or earthbound mana well but the preliminary test is negative. So, as far as my instruments and I can detect, you are pulling in mana from nowhere."
"It doesn't feel like it but maybe it's linked to my ability to jump outside reality. Because I can't think of any other place I can be drawing energy from. There is this principle in my world called Occam's razor, it posits that the explanation with the least variables is the most likely to be the correct one, so, deferring to your experience, of course, I think we should look it into the possibility that I am pulling in energy from the nothingness between the universe. But it isn't definitely the entity that is trying to destroy your reality, hopefully."
I really hope I am not a puppet for an omnicidal entity. But It was going to take more than a few tests to figure out my powers. But I have done something that was going to take care of all my funding needs. After casting mending on my broken cellphone and I sold it to the imperial university. They are apparently going to try to recreate the tech inside but It's probably going to take them a long time. Even fabrication magic couldn't match the accuracy of modern semiconductor productions and programming of the entire OS. But they understood the concept of the electromagnetic field well enough, their clearly supernatural intelligence inferring things that I only vaguely remember from school.
But it was time for me to go to magic school now.
Chapter 4"Focus your magic; force is the purest element there is; It will never fail you. Use the Asiri's first mandala to shape the magic into the spell." The instructor hovers over the batch of mages, his words bringing the arcane symbol into my mind's eye. It took me days to memorise the thing, but it is worth it.
The mote of white mana fills in the magical diagram, and a blowing armour made from planes of silvery force forms on my body. My mage armour spell is just another oddity I have noticed ever since I started learning magic. I am learning much quicker than the others, my instincts helping me learn magic faster than most people.
"Your cohort is lucky; we have Sir Richard, who has made some time for cross-training with some pretorians. His personnel students, in fact. So, we will have a little exercise here today, and you can see how well you have learned your lessons in Battle Magic." The instructor says with a clear case of hero-worship.
It was well deserved; the King's sworn sword was probably the most popular companion of the emperor, tied with Ser Waymar Royce. The tales of his exploits were things you heard about in legends, fighting gods and slaying devils.
"Well, let's see how the emperor's coin is being used. Today your opponents are the mailed fists of the emperor, the pretorians. You are the future battle mages that will fight with them to protect the imperium. So, we are here to learn to work together and learn to cover each other's weaknesses." The Knights' voice was low but rang with the quiet confidence that came with being the deadliest thing in the room.
" Luckily for you guys, we have the perfect training exercise. A group of wyld fae, specifically red caps, will attack a small village in the western imperial provinces. The house of mirrors has divined that they will attack in a day, in a group of about 10. Usually, the legion assigned to the area will deal with it, but we have kept them in reserve and given you a chance to deal with the threat to the innocent villagers."
I blanched at the prospect of fighting fae monsters; I didn't know a lot of spells; my repertoire was only five spells, mage armour being the latest. The magic missile was useful, but I don't know if it can punch through the flesh of a potent magical murderer.
"You guys won't be in life-threatening danger, the legion detachment will be nearby, and I will be fighting beside you. But that's not to say there is no danger. Their blades will be sharp, and they will thirst to dip their caps in your blood." He pauses a bit and looks around at all of us, looking each of us in the eyes. I feel his gaze on me, and I feel myself stand straighter. "We will deploy in a mixed unit; I will leave you to get acquainted with your fellow imperials before you get some time to prepare."
He leaves, and everyone in the room relaxes; they start mingling with each other, the giant slabs of muscles that are the pretorians standing out like islands in the sea of mages that swarm around them. The first generation of pretorians have made a lot of stories about them, leading the charge into mind flayer bases and genie fortress, so it was fair that the mages would be interested in talking to new ones.
I walk up to one that is closest to me, a minotaur with fur shaded white as snow. His fur was streaked with red stripes, a clear mark of the old god's favour. His tunic is decorated with his clan symbol, the main unit of society that the minotaurs organised themselves. The pretorians are relaxed, shedding their armour and weapons properly to be more approachable.
"Hey, I am glad to meet you. It's nice to know who we will be fighting alongside."
He turns to me and gives me a warrior's handshake.
"It is indeed important to be familiar with your allies. It is how the emperor was able to form our empire, and that's how we will defend it." He rumbles invoice like a stampede trying to stay quiet.
He is way more intense than I expected, but I guess it makes sense, the pretorians were the most loyal followers of Viserys, and it fostered a particular intensity of personality.
"So, can you tell me about the foe we are going to be facing tomorrow, I have read about them in stories and books of lore, but fae has never been my focus," I ask, hoping his experience could enlighten me to the hobs.
"Redcaps are first and foremost treacherous creatures, fae cunning turned to the purpose of murder and carnage. They like to strike from the shadows, but this band will be overconfident, hoping their numbers and surprise let them slake their bloodlust. But they will find the fist of the emperor waiting for them, and that should unbalance them; that is the optimal time to strike."
I spent the rest of the day talking to various people in the class who had fought faes and learned their moves.
The mass cursing thing Viserys has done doesn't sit right with me, but it was in the past, and they had been at war, I couldn't judge without more information that was classified at higher than my level.
Before the fight, I prepare one last spell before turning in for the night. My hands make a wiggling motion, and the mandala shifts and a burst of energy knocks me on my ass.
This was the third time I had failed to cast the summon monster spell. It is a classic spell that has been refined over millennia, and I am doing everything right. I worked with the conjuring department to make sure I was casting the spell correctly, but it wasn't working.
It is a simple enough concept, draw upon a dream copy of the creature you wish to summon and create a magical shell so it can fight for you.
I couldn't figure out how to connect to the dreamlands to draw the creatures' facsimile. Lya has theorised that since my world didn't have dream dimensions, I don't have an innate connection that most beings have.
So, my next step is to adapt the spell if they were drawing on a dream copy of a creature. My dreams exist, they aren't superimposed in a different direction, but they do exist. So I try to target that, a memory from a long time ago.
The mandala spins up, the golden and green circle filled with arcane symbols shaped with my motes of mana, a complex array of quantifiers that will guide my magic to form the creature I am summoning.
The two motes of green mana flow from my soul into the spell form and into the world. A grizzly bear takes form, a figment of my memory, dredged up from a long-ago memory.
When I was a little boy, I wandered off a camping trick with my school and encountered a grizzly bear. It had terrified my little brain; the visible sheer size and power had made me paralysed in fear. The park rangers with the group had made it in time and chased away the animal. But that bear has etched itself in my psyche; I have had nightmares for years and a primal fascination with the bears.
So when the bear is standing in front of me, it is a bit disconcerting, I shrink back in fear a bit, but the bear just shuffles like it's waiting for some command, which I suppose was accurate given the spell.
I walk up to it and pet it on its head. The bear leans into my but and makes a chuffing noise that shakes my entire body. It seems exposure therapy can't cure my fear that easily but I persist. It was just something I summoned; it wouldn't hurt me. I take a deep breath and start giving the bear commands. The tests reveal that the bear is about as smart as your average one and mostly autonomous, but it was possible to make it do things that a normal bear wouldn't do, like letting a human ride it; what can I say? I am going to keep trying till I overcome my fear.
The Fae's target was a small hamlet hidden in the foothills of the vale. The enemies we faced were good at hiding, hidden hunters of men that could slip between the fae wilds and the material plane. So the legion has dispatched some leshy support for us.
Leshys are plant people forged in the flesh forges of the empire; old nature spirits have given physical forms crafted to channel their natural abilities. They were natural druids, the nature spirits and fragments of green seers of the old gods showing an aptitude for dealing with the fae, in both senses of the word.
We were hidden in a copse of trees that were on the village's border, hidden behind the druidic magic of the leshy's, plants curling around us, hiding any traces of our presence.
The redcaps arrive like the first wind of a dark winter. A bone-chilling wind is blowing in from wicked places.
They appear just as night falls, using the period of dusk to hide their approach. This side of the hamlet was being approached by six redcaps.
I wait for the signal to engage, drawing the mandala in my mind, ready to push mana into it and make the spell a reality.
The pretorians around me ready their launchers and lob their explosive payload at the hobgoblins. There is a flash of light and a booming explosion. Two redcaps lie dead, and the others rush towards our location.
The leshy raises its petals, and bramble grows around their feet, hindering their movements.
I finish the spell in the split second it has taken for the actions to start. The summoning spell blooms into reality in front of the redcaps, and the grizzly charges them, the bear mauling its face and dragging it to the ground.
The last remaining redcap raises a hunting horn and a shrill call echoes across the hamlet. The hollering mob of red caps chitters, and I feel the planar fabric bend; my hand lashes out, and a ray of light fueled by my white mana burns the offending fae's head off, but the spell is cast.
Something massive lumbers in from the fae wilds, the walls of reality shuddering as massive figure steps through the fae wilds. It was the size of a large house, with ten heads and fifty hands, a grotesque human body suffused with the energies of the fae power. It swings a dozen hands, and the pretorians jump back from the flails made of bramble thorns that rip troughs in the ground where they strike.
The pretorians turn on a dime and blast it with their launchers; the Danava walks through the explosions with a blazing aura of healing energy billowing out around him, healing his wounds.
This is happening in a single split second, I am trying to cast a spell, but the creature is deceptively quicker than anything its size should.
My spell matric forms, and a beam of green energy shoots and strikes the giant; the beam washes off his skin, the innately magical nature of the creature shrugging off my acid spray without a thought.
I begin casting a second summoning spell as the grizzly rushes the foe and is pasted by an errant passing swing of the dozens of flails.
But the next moment reassures me as the knight of skulls teleports in, his sword gleaming as he carves into the giant's supernaturally tough body. The blade slashes and swings, parrying dozens of attacks and scoring hundreds of hits as both combatants move as blurs.
I change my second spell to a buff, my white mana mage armour draping over Sir Richard, the ghostly white armour deflecting the glancing blows that have been hitting him.
The fight continues for a few more seconds before the giant's head is cleaved in twain from an overhead strike from Sir Richard.
Then there is only defining silence and the cooling bodies of monsters. I feel the same click as in the market square; this village is the site of my first fight, the fire life I have taken. I feel the meaning of the land settle in my mind, and I throw up. The shock is wearing off, and the adrenaline is wearing off. My hands are shaking, and I sit down just to gain a semblance of balance. A pretorian sits down next to me, claps me on the back, and starts laughing.
That's the first time I realise the imperium might not be the best fit for me.
The village gives me green and black mana, letting me practice the imperium's more dark blood and necromantic magic. The constructs were figures of solid black mana to my mage sight despite having no soul, so it is pretty clear I can learn it given enough time.
But I am not in a good space after that fight; the terror and chaos of the battlefield, even minimised, really made me aware of my mortality. So I have made a decision. I will live my best life so I can't be bound by a single empire, not when a potentially infinite number of universes are available to me. It has also dawned on me that the imperium, for all its progressiveness, was a nation built around war, maybe for a good reason, but I want more from life, so I am going to learn all they can teach me and explore the multiverse, but it wasn't like I am going to never be back, but it just can't be my home.
So, that's my plan for the future, learn everything I need to explore possibly hostile planes and find my way back to earth, or maybe a new home if that's not an option.
In a blur, the next few months pass by, my magical training increasing by leaps and bounds. Once the basics of magic and spellcraft became known to me, I advanced much faster than most people. I focused on conjuration, clerical and druidic magic and necromancy. It was the magics most suited for my mana types, so I focused on getting better at what I needed to explore. Learning planar theory and advanced spellcraft was the most significant effort I made; it will let me make my own spell and adapt to any situation.
Now I just have to say goodbye.
Chapter 5"So this is it, huh? It is too much to ask someone not to look for a home they have lost. But I want to thank you, the ideas for commercial organisation and the technology from your cellphone will continue to inspire my people; we have figured out how to receive and send radio waves last week." Viserys says as the gathered companions were here for sending me off.
"I am glad that I can help improve people's lives. I must thank you and your imperium for the hospitality you guys have shown me. But I can't stay; I love this place, and I will always have fond memories, but it isn't home." I say as I give everyone there a hug. I haven't gotten that close to most of them, but it was still stung a bit to leave behind whatever acquaintances I have made.
"Let's see if I learned the spell properly." I saw while casting the first in the array of spells that I have prepared to allow me to overcome most likely things that I and Lya had theorised.
I cast, and the spell circle appears beneath my feet for a second before the azure energy coats my form. Then the next spell with a golden array and then the next. By the end of the session, half a dozen spells protect me. I had tried to cover every base, from the spell of planar adaption to prevent different physical laws from killing me to a life bubble to save me if I appeared in the middle of an ocean. I also had my mind blank up, just in case there were any more abominations like the void trying to eat this universe. It would suck if an abomination mind controlled me and doomed countless universes. So I am preparing for all contingencies.
I had my soulbond bag of holding ready, it being the only thing that I could take into the void without getting destroyed. It was full of tomes of spellcraft and teachings, the basics of runic wards, and many healing potions and scrolls for a few useful spells I haven't learned yet.
Before I initiate the jump, I feel one last bond form with this grove of the old gods that I was using as my launching point, a bond with green and blue, the colour of the connections I had made and the sense of exploration I was feeling. It was great to get a new colour, but I will practice its spells later. Now was the time to go out into the world.
The jump is just like the first one, the unreality and nonexistence ripping at my soul, and I am looking desperately around for a new world to go.
I think that one looks good and jumps to a randomly chosen world. It is completely and absolutely empty where I landed, floating in empty space. My spell of planar adaptation is screaming at me. The laws of physics in this universe are not conducive to matter existing, so before my spell is unravelled by the force of physics, I jump back to unreality.
Then I choose a new world and jump there. This universe is filled absolutely to the brim with stars; I can see with just my eyes a thousand suns rotating around a single massive superstar that should have become a black hole by what my simple measuring spell is saying. This was clearly artificial, and I don't want to deal with whatever is capable of doing it with the rules of physics that are the same as my universe. So I jump away again and choose a new world.
Before I can even think as I appear in the new world, It is filled with a bunch of giant koi fishes that float through a giant water current floating in space. The Koi radiate enough magic to drown worlds, and I don't want to mess with a universe where the creatures could crush me like a bug.
So I jump back into a new world. This one is too hot; the next one is too cold; the one after that is a plant dimension where psychic plants tried to pry open my mind blank spell before I jumped away. After that, the one I jump to looks like a world made of cheese and other dairy products.
I jump again and again and again until worlds start flowing into one another. Was it the 100th world with the cannibalistic mountains, or was it the 400th one that was just a little girl's dream? Now that one had been weird. About a 1000 jumps in, I find the first world that looks like it will be safe enough to live in and wasn't a mindfuck dimension.
Comparatively, the giant floating mountains and the glowing trees are much more normal. I cast a spell of mage armour to give myself some more martial protection and do a green spell to gather some food and water from the environment, the highlighted fruit turning out to be tasty and nutritious and full of juice that quenched my thirst. The spell that lya has designed that lets me detect if something is edible for me shows its worth; it is named in the classic scheme, detect food.
I could have just conjured some real food, but I wanted to test if this is a world I can survive on that doesn't completely rely on me having to use mana for every little thing. I had a few dozens of motes stored, but I have already gone through 10% of my stockpile. With a rate of 6 motes per hour total, it wasn't a very quick mana accumulation rate. I didn't want to run out into an unknown new world.
The fluorescent plants tower over me, their glowing leaves and massive trunks like a supercharged tropical jungle. The ecosystem was fascinating, where the smallest herbivores were the size of dogs, little Wyvern-Esque four-winged pests.
I cast my green invisibility and pass without trace spells, the green version of invisibility was much more naturalistic, letting me blend into nature like a super chameleon and hiding things like smells. It was hard to convert a spell from its natural colour; invisibility was a blue spell, but lya had worked hard on me, and we have developed the spell to a green mana spell. Its mechanism had changed, and so had its effectiveness, but I haven't learned the standard invisibility yet, so it is my best option.
Once my spells were set up, I set out to explore more of the ecosystem; there was no sign of civilisation to explore yet, so I am just going to study the wildlife to see if it was dangerous in a more subtle way, unlike the previous worlds which were overtly dangerous.
I climb over the massive roots of the trees and come upon a clearing, an area occupied by 12 foot tall purple coned plants. As I approach them, the plants shrink and retreat into the ground with the sound of a vacuum firing.
It was delightful and I start popping them like bubble wrap. It's delightful and helps me take the edge of the stress built up from jumping to hundreds of different worlds. But I get a rude shock when an arrow lands in front of me, burying itself in the ground. Calling it an arrow was an understatement; it was the size of a javelin, and it looked to have been buried a few feet into the ground. The strength of the bow that launched that shot must be insane. Then a voice in an unknown language.
"Hey, be careful; you don't want to piss off the herd." A giant blue person says as he is sneaking along the boughs of the massive trees, his catlike tread utterly silent.
First, I check that my invisibility is still up, so he must have tracked me by the pattern of retreating flowers. Then I take a second, more considerate look at the blue person. He looked to be male, at least had human male proportions, although on the lanky side. His skin was a bright blue that blended in nicely with the fluorescent purples and blues of the tree leaves. He was about 10 feet tall and muscled from a lifetime of hunting. His ears ended in tapered points like a cat, and the patterns on his face and eyes conveyed the same impression.
I immediately cast a green and white spell; the modified tongues spell will allow me to speak their language. It drew upon the communal nature of green and white mana and used white to give the language structure in my mind. I need to practice blue; it will be so much easier to cast these kinds of divinatory and mind magic spells. It was the colour of knowledge, so It makes sense it has the easiest time casting these spells; it says a lot about me that I didn't get it till the very last moment.
The hunter creeps closers to me and says, "You need to come with me; you can't be here."
"What?"
He looks around and focuses on my voice.
"Whatever you are, I need you to leave, the thantor is hunting the titanthropes and a stampede is nigh." He whistles and a six-legged horse-like creature rushes to the hunter; he offers me his hand. "Get on.".
I shut off my invisibility, and the hunter's eyes widen, and his nostrils flare. But he doesn't withdraw his hand; I grab it and feel him pull me behind him just as the ground rumbles and a stampede of gigantic creatures run behind us.
I can probably stop them with a few spells, but it will take most of my green mana to calm so many and such large creatures; they were the size of small houses. So I grab onto the dire horse with my legs and cast a green spell that pushes the horse's speed to manifold heights. The trees blur as the hunter guides us through them without missing a beat.
I look behind as a hammerhead titanthorpe falls to a gigantic lizard tiger thing and shudder; now that was an apex predator.
I end up in prison at the end of the ride with the hunter, the honeycombed structure in the massive home tree was much more heavily built than the other houses I can see. The three blue people guarding me are wary but not tense, so they don't significantly fear me but are cautious enough that I don't try anything funny.
These guys were better equipped than the hunter; a radio is strapped to their shoulder, and they carried spears designed more for war than used for hunting. These javelins are serrated and poisoned to take down any foe they manage to nick.
I am kept in prison for a few hours, and I am working on translating the spells that I have kludged together from other mana types to blue mana. I have changed back true strike spell, and I was working through the dimension door spell, so I have the option to escape. But my work is interrupted by the arrival of blue people and what's clearly their leader and war chief.
He has more elaborate jewellery, and his markings are more colourful. There is honour guards with him that are carrying massive guns; belt-fed machineguns carried like a human carrying assault rifles.
It was a bit odd seeing the divergent level of tech these people are displaying, but I can explore that later. Now I have to deal with the chief coming to interrogate me. Hopefully, they aren't of the stupid school of thought that believes torture is useful for information extraction.
I was redying to recast the Tongues spell, but to my surprise, the chief speaks English, his accent a very stereotypical American accent completely at odds with the alien environment and species.
"Who are you? How are you here on pandora?" His tone was curious, and his expression was wary, his tail swaying agitatedly. The tongues spell helps interpret the physical cues that are part of the language for the aliens.
"It's a funny story and a bit unbelievable, but I am a multiversal traveller that got lost and is looking for my home universe. By your words, you have a history with humans; I am not from this universe's version of them." I say with complete sincerity.
"Oh good, our prisoner is a terrible liar or insane." The chief throws up his hands in a very human gesture.
"I can prove it; by my mana sight's reckoning, this world doesn't have magic, so doing something impossible should be proof enough right," I say and begin casting a spell; I briefly consider what spell to cast and decide that summoning will be the easiest and the least non-destructive.
I form the spell matrix for the spell of summoning and focus on one of my patterns, that of a druid leshy. The leshy I had copied it off was called spring, an imperial healer and legion attache. It was a generic lotus leshy druid; copying exact people was much harder than getting the general idea of a person and randomising the particular traits possible in that space. So every summon will have different colours and patterns befitting the wide variety of Leshys. But they were all part of the same pattern, something I can summon many copies but the same generic thing.
I had tested it out, and all of them were fully sapient people, as far as I can tell, with the caveat that they lacked any sort of aversion to dangerous or tedious tasks as when they got unsummoned or destroyed, their knowledge went back to my pattern, and they can incarnate themselves again along with being able to access the memories of any other summons. It was staggering in its philosophical implication. I can create real permanent sapient creatures, just as real as any person born and just as permanent as my mana was at least as stable as matter and energy are, so my summons bodies were real with identifiable biological processes and such and even DNA, but just made with mana instead of matter.
The leshy appears in a burst of green mist, and the flower person waves at my captors, the petal covered hand hiding razor-sharp thorns. It takes a lot for me to summon a full spellcaster; the need to give them the ontological weight to use magic is expensive at the start; a single druid leshy costs a dozen motes of green mana, most of my stockpile.
The Navi's, thanks to tongues, the reaction is remarkably quick. The honour guards push the chief back and point their guns at the leshy. The chief's eyes widen in a split second, and he says.
"Don't shoot" He pushes down the lead machine gun and continues "We secured the prison; there are no tunnels or mirrors there, no hologram projectors have been installed. We can't afford to do something rash if what he says is true; the enormity of that discovery would be immense, and, more importantly, it may be the key to securing our home."
A Navi woman in traditional garb but with a lab coat over it approaches from an angle that I couldn't have observed here.
"You can't be seriously entertaining this absurd notion; a multiverse wizard is what we believe now." Her tail swishes with the indignity of that thought, her face a clear belief.
"Grace, we have to look at things as they are; you taught me that."
I also chime in, hopefully, not get executed for being a spy.
"I have other proof as well; let me show you. I am still working on making the spell work, but it should be sufficient. Please don't shoot me." I say and flash cast dimension door with blue mana, the spell is inefficient, costing me all my blue mana, but it should become cheaper as I migrate it properly. There is a flash of light, and I am standing next to the honour guards who have already pivoted to face me, their reaction much faster than a human.
"I am sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for it." The scientist Navi says, and I laughed; you had to admire her stubbornness.
"So after sending all of the company workers home, you took over the base for the RDA and are using their manufacturing stuff to keep your equipment maintained," I say through the mouthful of the incredibly tasty fruit marinated meat I was devouring.
I have learned that the atmosphere of Pandora is toxic, so the life bubble is staying up indefinitely. It was really easy to make the spell last longer. The white green spell form was invisible as it hung in my expansive aura, the soul's expression that interacted with spells and the world on metaphysical levels. My aura was expansive, and it has only gotten stronger and deeper the more I have jumped, the adverse unreality acting as a stress band for my soul, making it grow stronger and denser. It had become obvious after my dozenth jump looking for a suitable plane. A soul could handle only so much magic before the aura was filled. Most people can only maintain one or two of these aura spells, but I had some thoughts on how I could expand that, but that was for later testing.
"It is mostly for the radios; the single is only good for a kilometre or two before the ambient interference scrambles the signal, so we have set up a few hundred repeaters to communicate with the other clans. The guns are just an easy project for training the few interested people in learning how to use the machining tools. God, if those RDA assholes hadn't massacred those children going to school, we could have well-trained engineers by now. The Navi know how to listen to their elders a lot more than humans, at least." Grace yells. It is her third mug of mead, but Navi's mead is hard. I have taken a single sip, but I am getting woozy just from that.
The casual reminders of the RDA's atrocities don't endear them to me; those fuckers were lucky that I haven't learned greater teleport cause if I knew it, those board members would get what's coming to them. I am seriously considering raising this Quaritch guy, but I don't want to break the ethics of necromancy I have learned on the first chance I get; no eternal torture chambers here. Also, his soul will most likely not answer the call.
Anyway, the feast lasts well into the night, and then the topic of magic comes up and the beginning of my journey.
"So there I am, clearly able to do magic in a way that an entire empire of magic users isn't able to do, but rather than dissecting me like a typical god-king will, the dragon emperor is smart enough to teach me and explore the limits of my magic. They haven't figured out how to do magic as I do, but my spells are templates that allow their own magic research to improve much more quickly, just from knowing what things are possible."
Sully nods at this, takes a swig from his drink, and says.
"So this magic, you said, is teachable. I have realised if even minor ritual magic, as you call it, is so helpful to civilians; I think Navi as a people can benefit a lot from it. So, will you teach us? By now, it's fairly obvious that anything we do can't contain you from just going to a different universe. So it's your choice.".
I consider it for a moment and weigh my options. But the threat of the cultural and real genocide that hangs over the Navi people moves me, and there is only one possible answer.
"Alright, let's get hammered tonight and tomorrow; the lessons start."
Chapter 6I bring the knife up, the obsidian like material glints in the sun, and then I bring it down. The point digs into the soft flesh, and a spurt of blood covers the shield floating in front of my face.
I feel the life force of the struumbeast leave its body and into the etched in the rock around its sacrifice sight.
The mandala glows a bright red, and the energy coalesces into a blessing, the energy imbuing the ten warriors of the Navi that stand in the outer circle of the spell form. They remain physically the same, but an unending vitality floods their form. They are stronger and tougher and can heal wounds that would kill them in hours.
I cast quick prestidigitation to clean myself and walk out of the circle. The alchemist-shaman walks into the circle alongside his assistants. The other students draw away the struumbeasts corpse to butcher it and prepare it for the feast. They trace the symbols I etched into the home tree's bark.
It was the final ritual before they will be considered learned enough to start doing magic on their own. It has taken me a month to rebuild ritual blood magic from what scraps of knowledge my training in necromancy with Qyburn has given me. It was a bit difficult due to my ethical concern about magic, but it was necessary if I wanted to protect them from the predation of an interstellar megacorp.
The warriors enchanted with magic fan out, going to the testing arena that grace has had built to test the enhancement. The first warrior starts by lifting a rock the size of me and then using it as a free weight. Another one of them does a standing high jump 25 feet high.
I was leery of blood magic, but it was undoubtedly effective for people who didn't have innate magic. That was the first difficulty that I realised when I had promised to teach them magic. The Navi, in specific, and the planet, in general, could not use magic. They had souls, and as such, they had the capability to interact with magic, but they lacked the metaphysical organs to access the nature magic that inundated the world.
Neither could their goddess, and that was a pleasant surprise.
I had to use leshy druids as intermediaries; the giant plant mind that covered the planet wasn't used to talking to tiny specks on its surface. But the Leshy's have conversed with it over the months it has taken me to figure out blood magic and showed it the magic. The nature magic of the druids is perfect for demonstration; the plant mind can feel its trees moving in a way that its mastery of biology knows is impossible. So, we have agreed to awaken the planet's ability to do magic. I have wracked my brain over it, and I had an inkling of what to do, but it was a long term thing; it has to start with teaching the Navi magic, so blood magic for now.
So, my next challenge is establishing an ethical culture to regulate that magic is being used ethically. Luckily for me, the Navi is already in tune with their very real and viscous nature. As such, it isn't taking much to establish the druidic blood magic.
So my next step is to create a way to help these people actually touch magic on their own.
I have a solution for that, but I want to test it first. It's an experimental bit of magic I want to try. It's based on the pretorians of visery's Imperium. They have manufactured law spirits blended into their souls and that gives them myriad benefits. I haven't scanned pretorians due to being a state secret, but lea has taught me the theory in the months I spent learning under her. Spirits were essentially masses of aspected energy given a mind and will. It's absurdly complex to create them in practice and I haven't even started on the project.
But there is another type of spirit that I was intimately familiar with, the spirits of the wild. Everything from mighty faes to magical beasts spontaneously created by wild magic. This world is drenched in wild magic, its abundant and terrifying ecosystem a veritable sun in comparison to an ordinary world. It should have been awash with spirits, but the magic was latent, unable to express itself due to the lack of any ontological framework for it to channel itself through.
No by creating spirits, no that would lead to war and displacement and just worldwide conflict. No, I am going to channel that magic through the existing animals, using their life force as a template to form the natural magic in pseudo spirits, ephemeral beings that lack a body to affect the world. This will be the first part of the ritual, the second part will be binding these spirits to the soul of the Navi that hunted the creature, using the mythic resonance of the dance of hunter and prey to form a bridge between the spirit and the body and melding them. It will let Navi access nature magic and improve their already massively superhuman physique.
"They found it" The Navi brave brings me the news is huffing, clearly rushing here on his dire horse from where they spotted their target.
"It's time then. Bring the apprentices." I say with a flick of my wrist, summoning leshy to gather my apprentices. While that's happening, I strip myself and cast quick prestidigitation. Then I cast a tree stride spell and teleport through the hometrees' roots to the ritual site that I have been preparing for a few months now.
My apprentices came in quickly in small clumps, it was a healthy cross-section of Navi society, everyone from old to the young, those that want to learn magic and those who have goals that magic will help them achieve.
The ritual circle is pristine, days of apprentices' time spent carving sigils in the wood of the tree. It looked to be an organic pattern, a Fibonacci spiral flecked with drawings representing the planet's animals. At the centre of the spiral was the totem made of obsidian, carved into the shape of a thanator, the physical representation of the creature that is supposed to be the target of the hunt.
The apprentices paint swirling diagrams on my body, in magical pain made from blood, to act as a channel for the energy of the hunted creature. Then comes the ritual, a slash from a knife, and I hold my bloody palm above the thanator totem, forming a bond.
Then I start laying on the buff spells, from giant strength to barkskin to mage armour to stone skin to entropic shield to surge of fortune. Almost half a dozen spells gird my flesh and I feel energy surge through my body and a white armour made of force covers my rack hard skin. A shimmering shield of probability manipulation shimmers outward, and a floating shield of force protects my blind spots. It's almost unfair to hunt a creature with this much magical protection, but a thanator is a super predator able to rend stone with its claws; I can't have too much protection.
Then with a simple teleport, I am beside the hunting party stalking the thanator, their beacon letting me locate them with basic divination. The magic muffles my tread, my forming blending into invisibility.
"Mage, the thanator has hunted a struumbeast. A pack of viperwolf tried to surround it but we chased them off before it got disturbed.
"Great work Satu, this is a great moment for the Navi, if this works, you might be looking at the first spirit born on this planet." I say and then jump into the dense copse of trees that was the hunting ground for the thanator.
I spot it immediately; its massive tawny from a precise death machine. Its glistening black flesh is tough enough to bounce .50 cal bullets. Its claws were razor-sharp, able to rend the hide of the toughest prey and mechs alike.
I sneak up on it, a spear of light manifesting in my hand. A simple conjuration spell but pumped full of white mana, it is humming with the deadly energy-enhancing it.
With a yell, I leap onto the beast. It turns like liquid lightning given form, its spiked tail flicking towards my face; it deflects off my force shield, the floating pane of force shattering from the power of the blow. Then its front pair of claws rip towards me, one of them missing my head by a single hair's breadth, the wind rippling on my face. The entropic shield makes the superhuman dexterity of the beast miss. The second claw rips through my side, claws ripping through stone-hard magic skin, the only reason I am not disembowelled being the false life spell filling my body with artificial vitality.
Then I am beneath the creature's range, its second front pair steadying its stance. My spear rips through its breast, striking its twin heart, and the energy is discharged, scouring holy power and smiting the thanator.
It falls on me, its heart blood flowing freely and splashing into my mouth. I gulped it down; it was part of the ritual. I feel a growing knot of energy pooling in my stomach and from their spread through my body. A green aura surrounds me, the nature magic coalescing into spirit flesh. The aura forms into a thanator made from green mana, my reserve is flowing into the spirit that I can feel connected to me now, a lot like my summons but much more intimate. The spirit manifests as a gigantic specimen of its species. I feel the connection with the spirit, the wild nature of the creature tempered by my sapience.
I pet it, it was a bit hard since it was taller than even on my tiptoes, but after a bit, the thanator kneels a bit and then I pet it, it was a giant cat after all.
I had gained a pattern for summoning a thanator now, bonding with its spirit enough to give the intimate knowledge needed to summon something.
The tree of the soul is pulsing, great flashes of lightning racing down bioluminescent trees, from the half a dozen shamans of the different tribes linked with their hairs. Their Spirit companions pacing around them, channelling the nature magic through the shamans' bodies into the tree of souls.
It's one of half a dozen rituals going on around the planet, the Navi I have trained conducting massive rituals of rebirth and renewal. Eywa has made her preference clear, as old beasts travel thousands of miles to die at the foot of the trees of souls, their lives perfect sacrifices to fuel the birth of eywa. Thousands and thousands of sacrifices over a month of rituals, enough power to burn down countries or, in this case, awaken the magic of a goddess.
It is my third year on the planet. My apprentices trained enough that they have spread and trained disciples of their own.
I am acting as the lynchpin of the ritual, months of green and blue and black and white mana gathered just for this situation. I am chanting naked, covered in ritual tattoos designed to resonate with ewya as my leshys form a root connection at all ritual spots to push my magic through them into all major ritual spots. My spirit companion guards my form as I get lost in the wild power of magic flowing through me.
The wild planet feels like a massive single system, from the smallest arthropod and to the largest sea whales. I could each of them connect to the plants and the whole planet holding their breath in anticipation.
Just as the planets align, I channel the gathered mana and signal the shamans to finish their rituals. The energy rushes through the roots of the entire planet, green mana leading the others to fill the spots dictated by the ritual.
In an eternal moment, there is a heartbeat that everything on the planet feels before an aura of power covers the entire planet, and everything goes back to normal. Still, now everything can feel the mother goddess in the back of their heads, no need for the crude matter to serve as conduits of her will.
Thousands of wood sprites gather in front of, me and there is a twist of magic and a being of immense stands. It was 30 feet tall, it was bipedal, its legs that of a thanator, It has four arms and the head of a titanthrope. The hammerhead was crested with the colourful crest of a banshee. Its wings spanned 50 feet and were that a toruk.
Its voice rings in my head, a manifest goddess brushing aside the simple protection spells I have active.
"Hail son of terra, Our bargain stands complete. Name the boon you will ask of me. It is as we agreed." it shifts a bit. "It will take a while to learn to wield this power and get used to my ned form, but I will abide by our bargain."
"My desire is simple, I have come to admire the beauty of your creations, Navi are the perfect society to exist in balance with nature, your animals can be the envy of many a world and your microbiology has cured every viral disease. I wish to have the skill and vast repository of knowledge that made it be available to me in future worlds."
It purrs at the well-deserved compliments on its skills and says, "It is something well within my grasp. But how will you take this gift with you? It is knowledge I have gained over billions of years, you can't carry it in your head, and as you have told me, you cannot carry anything across the void of non-existence."
I think I have spent time considering my request for a minute, but I haven't thought of a solution. I have an idea, but I haven't done it before; I could try it, it should work in theory, but I hope it wouldn't hurt to try.
"One of your tree of souls. They are the repository minds of Navi and nodes for your mind. I request that I be allowed to copy it, and the knowledge contained within. It will be beneficial for both of us, as it will ensure at least a version of you will exist across the multiverse, and I will have something that can act as a magical infrastructure. I haven't figured out how to make machines do magic yet, but I have enough knowledge of life-shaping and necromancy and druidic magic that I should be able to use your tree of souls as giant magical conductors and repositories. The unobtanium laced neurotransmitters are perfect for channelling magical energy. Not to mention the bootleg afterlife if I need to protect the souls of some people I meet in the future, just like the Old gods I told you about."
Ewya considers it for a few minutes and then replies "Then it is agreed, for the boon of awakening my magic, you shall copy a tree of souls and carry it around, along with the copies with souls of the best of Navi People that I have in my possession, along with copies of your friend grace. She shall be the conduit you can access my knowledge."
I was surprised by the generosity, getting my pick of the souls is not something I expected to happen but I imagine it must be grateful for being able to use magic.
But her next words shocked me.
"Now, once you are done with that, I wish for you to leave my world, I am a newborn goddess, I will not abide a pretender, no matter your intention, to my claims. The Navi are my people and I have seen the reverent looks the shamans give you. You will not be defied here, it is not your world. So let us part as friends."
It was a blow, I had so many more things I wanted to do here, I am so close to figuring out the greater teleport spell, as a ritual admittedly, but I guess I don't have the time to go to earth and copy a few engineers to steal earth's knowledge. But It will not be a problem, I have just bonded with the ritual site, and I can come to this universe whenever I want to, stealthily of course.
So I started finishing up my business, scanning the tree took quite a bit of mana, but I have my reserves building up again.
Then after saying goodbye to the Navi friends, I jump into a new universe. Then a new one and then a new one. That continues for a bit as most of them are voids, aside from the ones that are flesh dimensions and the ones that are empty because their physical constants are different.
Then I land in a survival one, a barren desert meeting towering mountains, each tall enough to have clouds on its slopes.
Closer to hand, I hear a war cry as a bunch of ramshackle green-skinned creatures are charging a caravan of armoured dwarves.
"WAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH" Shout the orcs.
"Dreng them" shout the dwarves.
Chapter 7The charging orcs were each a hulking mass of muscle and armour hanging on by threads. Cunning and cruel goblins ran underfoot, brandishing poisoned blades and a slavering expression on their faces as they hungered for dwarven blood.
The dwarfs stand resolute; their wagons are moving with remarkable alacrity to form a defensive barricade. The wagons interlock together, their construction flawless and sturdy, forming a wall of wood and banded steel between the dwarfs. The entire caravans up in arms, each armoured in steel with an axe and shield in hand. Some hooded dwarfs stand on specifically prepared platforms that rise from the wagon fort, crossbows spooling and shooting quickly, scything down the lead orcs and snarling the charge, the precision of their counterattack indicating that they have endured these before, their response polished and practised.
I activate my mage site and see the magic flowing into the charging orcs. It was a fascinating structure, the gathered mass of orcs generating energy and it is channelling into a magic caster in the back, a bone topped staff giving it away. It channels the energy back into them, a more "structured" form boosting their toughness in exchange for looser control but it doesn't seem like that's a problem for the orcs.
I stop gawking around and cast my first spell, a white spell forming its mandala in front of my hand before a single incandescent beam of light lances out and vaporises the orc shaman's head, the surprise attack not letting it react, and the 5 motes of mana I put into the spell letting it burn through the green shield that surged up to protect it. Its magic goes out of control, the green energy twisting and inverting in a stomach-turning manner before in a surge of random magic the orcs are strengthened and bolstered, the spell burning their biology in a magical suicide charge. They will be dead in about ten minutes, but I doubt it's a solace to the dwarfs whose crossbow bolts are barely sinking into orc flesh.
I push mana into my familiar spirit and the thanator appears next to me, it rushes towards the orc and crashes into their front line, it's a massive rhino sized bulk knocking over half a dozen orcs while it's twin pair of claws slice through 4 more orcs. Its tail takes off the head of a goblin, and the orcs look astounded by their charge being stymied.
The orc charge is halting, the ones still running halting as they see their compatriots turn to face the giant apex predator in the middle of their tribe. The dwarfs take the opportunity as more bolts launch out. Then in a surprising move, a ballista has been assembled in the 2 minutes it takes for the attack, it bites into the orc's formation and skewers through 4 of them, and it is already being reloaded.
I cast my next spells in that interval as my thanator slaughters another half a dozen orcs. The spells of enlarge and giant's strength intertwine as they flow through my bond with the familiar and it flows into my familiar. A rush of green mana suffuses its body and it surges in size, quickly becoming the size of a house. The dwarfs are startled enough that some of the younger ones shoot the thanator but the bolts ping off the rock hard hide. Its claw strikes are now raking the Warband, killing dozens in a single strike and just like that, after a minute of rampage the hundreds-strong orc band lies dead. I dismiss the familiar and the mana construct that is its body flows back into my body.
A dwarf in a green and yellow hood walks out from the wagon fort and slowly ambles over to me and hails me in an unknown language. I quickly cast the tongues to spell and greet him back.
"You saved our beards there Umgi. Many precious dawi lives would have been lost. Pardon me, I won't invite you to travel with us, chaos has tricked many young dawi with their staged attacks. But here, I will showcase our gratitude in a way that you can appreciate more."
I reply, unconcerned with the slight distrust and insult. It was a new world and I don't want to start any fights if I don't need to.
The Dwarf draws a hand into his cloak and takes out some coin pouch and throws them at me. I catch the pouch with surprise, it was solid gold, and heavy too. I don't check it inside, aside from a subtle break curse spell, just in case.
"Thank you. I am lost, my caravan just ambushed like yours but I wasn't able to save them. Can you point me towards the nearest major port? So I can find some news from my homeland."
The dwarf makes a surprised face.
"You speak Khazalid. The nearest city is Myrmidens. The biggest city on the border princess." The dwarf was more distrustful than ever, but I don't push, it is a tense encounter, so I let it go.
"Thank you for that information, I will make my way there at the earliest. I can't keep fighting orc bands, they never end."
The dwarf makes a commiserating noise.
"The grobi never end."
I am flying across the ocean, to the direction the dwarfs indicated the city is. I am sheathed in protective and concealing spells. I wanted to stop and rest but this world is pretty hostile, or at least the area I am in is hostile. Unless you hunt the massive boars that roamed the desert, there is no water or food. There is a disconcerting number of bones from dozens of species. Not to mention the thousands of orcs I have seen marauding and fighting each other.
I have no flying summons so I can't summon something to ride while resting on it but my flight spell didn't require any effort once cast. So it was more like floating through the sky on a bed.
I did get attacked by a wyvern on the way once, a hold monster spell had taken care of that, my experience with banshees let me dodge out of the way when it dived on me from the sunward angle.
I was a bit more worried about flying over the sea, it's filled with giant shadows and what has to be an unnatural number of sharks. My mage sight can even see masses of magic swimming in the deep ocean.
I wish I have some red mana right about now, haste would have been amazing. But I will refrain myself by casting gusts of winds to propel my flying speed.
It takes about an hour for me to cross the narrow bit of the sea that separates me from civilization. The city that shows itself to my divination and scrying spells is big,, it probably contains a few tens of thousands of people, its walls are well built and worn, and massive curtains of stone envelop the city from land-based attacks-a compulsory thing for a city that is often attacked by orcs.
Its harbour is teeming with trading ships in a dozen different styles, speaking a dozen different languages, even the tongues spell struggling to compensate before I pump more mana into the spell so it has more power to understand the people here.
The babble becomes coherent after a few seconds and it seems the news is good. The waagh of orcs that had been forming in the badlands(the desert) is defeated. Some brave dwarven king has retaken someplace called Karak 8 peaks and now the trade is flowing, long-hidden treasures pouring out of the dwarven kingdom as they secure their borders, an outflow of adventures going to the kingdom to help clear out remaining orc infestations.
That's an opportunity for the future but right now I fly in low and land invisibly in front of the nearest in. The clothes people wear in this world are very renaissance era Italian. Lots of fluffy shirts and colourful embellishments on fairly drab coloured clothes. I rummage around my bag of holding and draw a dark blue cloak, to obscure the weird clothes I am wearing by comparison. Blue jeans, another thing I sold Viserys, along with a simple white cotton shirt that I had made. The cloak covers from shoulder to floor and I quickly locate the shadier inn where a lot more people are wearing cloaks than the weather would suggest. I am sure I will just be another suspicious stranger passing through on a strange errand.
The inside is well lit, the open windows letting in streams of light and the food smelled quite good. I go up to the counter and order their best food for the entire inn. It is still not worth a single full gold coin, but the owner was more than happy to change trusty dwarven gold into the silver that most people in the city used.
I am a bit interested in what the city looked like, so I book myself a room, put magical wards against intrusion and set out to explore the city,
The crowd in the marketplace looks happy, money was flowing in as raw materials flowed out to the new kingdom. I actually buy a few things, Cathyan halberds coming from a new caravan, some indish cloth armour, a shield with a wolf head drawn on it from the empire and a Long Bow made in Bretonia. It was mostly so I got information chatting with the venus. These were some of the stronger human countries and I got a bit of information about them.
There is war brewing on the continent, an orc warlord is uniting the orcs into a massive waaagh. Some sort of corruptive religion called chaos has elected a chosen saviour and he is gathering his forces for war. It's a bit daunting but I do want to set up in a place and do some research. I have a few avenues of magic I want to explore.
Since my trial with binding spirits to the Navi to awaken their magic, I want to see if I can do the same thing to give people superhuman capabilities that will grow with them, instead of just loading them full of buff spells and letting them go hog wild. An individual sapients soul was flexible and as they become more, whether, through experience that enriched their soul or tribulation, their soul becomes stronger. That makes their magical aura denser and larger, letting me place more magical enhancements before their souls poped under the pressure. Incidentally, that is why my soul is much stronger than when I started, Travelling through the vid was harrowing and it makes my soul ballon in strength very quickly.
I am not perfect of course, that's just what I have figured out with my experiment on pandora, trying to see if the spirit binding thing will work. It showed how the spirits of the familiars reinforced the user and allowed them to channel more power and that in turn makes the spirit stronger.
So that's my plan for the future, set up a base of operation and learn more about the magic of this world and do my experiments. I need a defensible location and worthy allies, some on whom I can feel good about helping out and being helped in turn. Someone dependable and someone who is at least willing to accept some of my experimentation.
So I am going to learn more about the world before I make the decision. I duck into an alleyway to look for the best option.
I gather blue mana and cast divination, my eyes glow blue and a phantasmal eye appears on my forehead. The future in this world is chaotic and I immediately notice that there are multiple competing forces trying to read and manipulate the future. The future is fragmenting as the malevolence notices my magic and scrambles the future I can see.
I shut down the spell, dispelling my mana to leave no trace of my magic here. Then I grab green mana and cast weal and woe, a much shorter ranged divination spell. It only looked 30 minutes in the future and only answered whether the action is positive or negative. But since it's so simple that the manipulation of other seers has no effect on it. I wished I can figure out a way of casting divination through mind blank but that spell was too good at its job of preventing any future involving me being read.
The question I asked is simple, shall I go to the local library and look for information there. The answer was weal, so it is a positive action. Now I have to look for where a pre-renaissance town keeps their books?
But this hostile fate manipulation is concerning. This whole world is drenched in magic and even the lowest commoner was steeped in enough power that they can fight an orc almost twice their size with just a spear and some training. So this massive amount of magic meant that the energy required to have so many competing magic sights be a nightmare. Because even a petty hedge mage could look into the skeins of futures with a bit of knowledge. The malevolent attention I felt is concerned, the malice in that being is palpable. That's why I removed my magical signatures.
But I am not unprepared for such attacks, the world of the imperium used to be frequently involved in future sight wars before the advent of large scale theo-magical infrastructure made it too hard for mortal spell casters.
Additionally, my different mana types have different ways of doing divinations so it was even more variety to protect myself and attack my foes.
Blue mana can see potential futures and probabilities; it generally excels at gaining information both past and present. Green mana is all about dream visions and looking for patterns in nature to decipher the future. Black was necromancy of the old sort, raising beings beyond death to ask them about the future and death curses and prophecies. White is focused on making declarations about what the future will be, imposing order on the everchanging future. It was the most energy-intensive and it was fallible but it was great for getting other people's things done. It also has limitations like the things being possible however unlikely.
But I hope my variety of abilities and defence gives me enough time to raise my fortress and let me set up so I can do some actual research without being hounded by foes. It wasn't unreasonable to expect mind blank to hold up for a few months before it is breached.
The library is a temple to some goddess, my mage sight can see the subtle concentration that suffices the edifice. It is a white romanesque temple bedecked with symbols of their goddess, fighting a battle, hunting monsters, reading books and in a scene that showcase her being killed by treachery by some kind of ratfolk ninjas. That does surprise me a little, if ninjas exist in this world, and especially ninjas that kill what looks to be an avatar of a goddess, maybe I should be more care full. I recheck my contingency heal and restoration spells just in case, ninjas are known for being poison experts.
I walk into the temple, noticing the armoured and armed templars standing guard. The library was open to all in its capacity as a temple, but the atrium does not contain any books, a quick invisibility spell and a locate object spell let me locate that the books are hidden from the public. I am running a bit low on blue mana, it is the most utility-focused magic, other colours can imitate these spells but blue was the best and the most efficient per mote of mana.
The invisibility spell shields me as I sneak through the backrooms of the temple, there is more security than I expect. There were barred doors and patrolling guards, the tripwires and traps. It was a veritable fortress and it was not even the biggest temple to this goddess in the city. This world was paranoid but I imagine it becomes necessary if there are rat ninjas killing gods. It is a bit easier for me, because a spell-like knock and detect trap allow me to walk through the defences and an additional spell of silence let me invisibly sneak through the templars patrolling the temple. I am not a ninja myself but I have learned a thing or two about sneaking when hunting with the Navi braves, it's much more important to be silent when a super predator that can hear you from 100 meters away.
The library is well preserved, hidden alcoves lined with shelves holding books to almost bursting. It must have cost them a fortune to have this many books written, it didn't look like they have developed the printing press yet so it is expensive to have this many books. But the goddess is claiming the domain of knowledge so it makes sense that a lot of patrons will try to earn favours through donating books.
Now, I don't have a lot of time, the library was mostly empty besides the few acolytes tending to books and arranging and preserving them. I don't have the time to draw and read each book, it's too obvious since I am invincible and it will take too long. But fortunately, there is a spell for that, the spell of scholars' touch is amazing as it gives you a comprehensive jist of a book. But I don't want to use too many spells here, I don't know what sort of magic senses these people have, and while mage sight isn't showing any surveillance spells, I am not knowledgeable about these worlds' magic can do.
So I peruse through what section contains what book and quickly find the travels and bestiary section. Here I cast the spell and tap the spines of the thickest ones. The knowledge rushes into my head and I nod, this world has a lot of monsters and many of them are corrupted or abominations against nature.
Then I quickly scoot over to the atlas, and another tap gives me the information about the geography and political maps of the world.
In the last spell that I am willing to risk I cast on the book titled a world history. This gives me the information I need to know and puts the previous knowledge into proper context. Now I understand the war between the elves and dawi, the formation of the empires and countries of man, the blight of chaos on this world and even some information about lustria and the far east Cathay and Ind.
The information security in my head, I cast dimension door and teleport out of the library, appearing in my room by overcharging the spell with mana in a little ritual.
I ponder the knowledge and digest it for a few hours, the innkeeper sending my supper to my room. It is some hearty stew and piece of meat, along with fresh bread, nothing special to my palette but filling and hearty nonetheless.
There is no real choice except for the dwarves and the elves in the end. The dwarves were trustworthy and kept their words but their trust is hard to earn and they are a most contentious race.
Meanwhile, the ulthani elves were the magical powerhouse of the worlds that bleed every day to protect the world. Their problem was that earning their trust was just as hard and no one is allowed on ulthuan without that trust. So maybe I can ask one of their colonies and some for some land. But maybe the easiest way isn't to hitch me to a faction. I do have a third option, carve out a domain from the many wildlands in this world and make an alliance with those that will come. If nothing else I will kill a lot of nasty creatures and make the world more secure.
Yes, that seems to be the best option, form my own piece of land, which I won't rule of course I don't have that kind of time. Maybe I can put down a copy of the tree of souls and introduce the Navi to this world. It is a bit unethical to create a race just so I can have a safe and quiet lab space. But the Navi are all volunteers, to explore new worlds and take risks since they are essentially immortal. It's a bit dubious but I can just ask them once I summon them from their pattern, I can just unsummon them if need be.
Now where to set up my base. Oh, I know where to do it, just have to talk to my neighbours.
Chapter 8I disembark from the barge as it docks along the stone piers carved into the mountainside of Barak Varr. It's one of the many, many secondary docking facilities of the busy port city.
The port is bustling with traffic, with hundreds of ships from around the world loading and unloading goods from across the world. The Karak is built into a mountain at the end of a natural harbour. But the dawi have shaped and carved the natural harbour into a perfect trading hub. GIgantic cannon batteries provide overlapping fields of fire from the bay's many redoubts. The hundreds of berths provide enough thorough put for even the busiest periods, and canny dwarven harbour masters ensure no one is cheated, the famed dawi honour and meticulousness enough insurance to make even the most shifty trader feel fairly treated.
Barak Varr is also the home of the main dwarven fleets, so it is constantly patrolled by ironclads and massive dreadnaughts. Ensuring no pirate can sail within hundreds of kilometres of the hold.
I wander into the open market, the main thoroughfare owned by Merchant's guilds. Each stall is perfectly measured and allocated to each merchant who paid the fees. Both humans and dwarfs are selling goods; I walk past the wafting aromas of wild spices and exotic foods. Well, exotic to this world, I can identify most of the spices due to having grown up in a modern world.
The dwarven tools on sale look precise, the inhuman skill of the dwarfs creating tools well outside this world's human capability. Rows and rows of engraved hammers and chisels.
I walk further into the hold and come up to the limit of traders allowed in the temple quarters. Massive carved temples to the Dawi gods form a defensive square, inward-facing entrance creating a mini citadel for the dwarfs to retreat to in case of any incursion.
The opulence of dwarven temples is astounding; each inch of rock is engraved with stories from tier mythology and embossed with gold and jewels. The stern faces of Grimnir, Grungi and Valaya overlook the intersection, judging each person as they walk by and invariably failing to live up to the Elders' standards.
I pay my request with a small deposit of dwarven gold, and my mana sight detects a small silver of the gods. Pay attention. It seems I am not unobserved as I walk the Dwarven realm.
As I leave, I feel the motherly presence of Valaya reach out to me, and I reach back to meet her halfway.
The dwarven matriarch towered over, her presence filling the feast hall I find myself in. There is no feasting going on; the Dawi paragons sitting around the round table are all massive, metaphorically speaking; each is armed and armoured in the finest magical artefacts I have ever seen. Runes glitter with golden light, and their white beards and braids denote their age.
"Well, come to the glittering realms. You are the first Umgi to have been graced with knowledge of this realm." Valaya says, handing me a hearty soup, grabbing her spear and laying it next to her seat at the head of the table.
"I am honoured by invitation. I must say I didn't expect to be invited to meet the Dawi ancestor while I was just paying respect while passing through," I say while biting into the divinely made bread soaked in the broth.
"It is no coincidence. We the gods have been watching you since you saved one of the children's caravan." She says while the other gods grumble, " a traveller from another plane can't go unnoticed for long, but we shielded your arrival."
She nods to the dwarf with even more runes than the others present.
"I thank you for shielding me, although my spells will protect me from any scrying," I say a bit defiantly; I don't want to be in debt to the gods; Dawi take it very seriously.]
"Your mere existence has shaken the very foundation of this world's fate; the ordained doom is broken, and with it is a chance to change the world. No matter how small the rock, it can bring down the toughest walls. Your arrival was hidden but not breaking the prophecy of the world's fall. Even now, the dark god's servants scour the world looking for who has snatched their fated victory from their grasp." She says before pausing for a drink of her beer stein.
"Hmm, that is concerning, I do not wish to be hunted for all of my existence in this world. Maybe I should leave it altogether." I consider that I have no attachments yet to this world and can just leave. It seems that I have already made the world a better place by merely entering it.
"We have a proposal for your consideration. After a lot of arguments and a few bashed heads. As the matriarch of this family, I offer you a deal." Valaya says, and the majesty of the warrior queen of the dwarves is on full display.
"Our children bleed every day just to keep going, mere babes of a hundred years thrust into the crucible of war that should by all rights be concerned for their elders. We left them because they needed to make their own paths, and they have made us proud for what they have become, for it has withstood calamity after calamity and remained unbowed. We wish to ensure that at least the Dawi and their culture exist somewhere out there, separate but sharing our children's spirit. So this is our pact with you, world walker. We will give you this pattern for every type of Dawi required for them and their culture to survive. In return for the promise of doing your best in never letting the dawi die out as long as you live. In return, We will shroud you from all scrying magic and other such malefic methods the dark ones use against you."
What could I say to that? The other gods glared at m, waiting for my answer; it was clear from their behaviours that none of them trusted me outside of Valaya, but she was the matriarch, and according to my information, any decision regarding the childcare is a mother's choice, and she is the mother of all dwarven kind. They could not gainsay her without going against tradition, and besides, she would kick their asses if they tried, for just as she is the mother figure, she is also Valaya the Valkyrie, the guardian of the hearth.
"I will ask for a boon if I agree to this deal." More grumbling from the dwarfs, and even Valaya frowns, "I have read the history of your people, and they will face trouble if I leave them in worlds well beyond their capabilities as they are now. The last world I was on had gunships the size of a dwarven hold that can lay waste to the entire armies in seconds. Their guns and technology are ahead of the dwarfs as they are ahead of the world. I do not wish to see your people be exploited and left behind. Please choose ones that can survive such immense paradigm shifts and choose those able to survive in foreign cultures and still maintain their own social norms. Maybe some of those imperial dwarfs, living in a human city must have made them adaptive by sheer necessity."
The gods grumble more at this and at this morgrim speaks, each of his words measured and precise.
"It has ever been my children that have been the most daring and innovative of all dwarven people. I shall choose some that would revel in the new technology in bringing safety and wealth to the dwarven nations."
In response, thungni speaks in a lyrical tone more befitting a dwarven skald than a runesmith.
"My children have become stagnant and fetid in their pursuit of old glories, finding the current generation unworthy but refusing to teach them so that they become worthy. It is a noxious idea that shall not hinder the new enkindling of the dwarven people."
After that, each of the gods mutter their approval, and the deal is struck. I grasp Valaya's hand in a warrior's handshake, and I feel the patterns carve onto my soul, adamant with a core of honour, pride, and duty. It is the encapsulation of dwarfs that makes me understand them on an instinctive level, with none of the human biases and thought processes leading me astray whenever I interact with dwarves. It also makes me a fluent speaker of khazalid, aside from my language spells. I shake off that feeling of anemoia and join the gods in drinking and feasting; they are reluctant at first but mellow out when the beer starts flowing.
When I get back to my body, I am surrounded by heavily armoured dwarfs. I look around and notice a veritable throng of warriors forming a cordon around me, and hundreds of dwarven laypeople are gathered around them. I look up at the glowing constellation of khazlid runes floating around my head, the name of each god radiating their presence, and the symbols persist for a second and then melt like summer snow as I try and look at them directly.
The Warriors open a path for a thane to walk up to me and give me a hand to stand up.
"We had to set up a cordon to prevent you from getting mobbed when the temple guardians called us that a human had passed out in Valaya's temple. When we tried to move you, the signs of the ancestors warded us off." the thane says as he leads me down the secret tunnels to avoid the thrumming crowd that was still standing outside the temple. He is leading me to see the king, the clear favour of the gods enough to bypass most of the security to lead to the chamber where the king of hold meets delegates.
"I am grateful for the help. The god's feast was rowdy. I will never try to out-drink a god again; how did grungi's body hold that much alcohol, but the food was very good, even the stone cakes." I give a companionable chuckle.
"You are lucky, Umgi. Dwarven kings would give the weight of a mammoth in oath gold to even sip the beer brewed by Valaya. But at least you had enough courage to challenge the Ancestor to a drinking contest, nothing more hubristic but admirable." The dwarf says with a jealous tinge that morphs into a bit of respect in the end.
We approach the chamber, and the banned door of ironwood opens, guarded by a pair of mythic Ironbreakers, the gromril-clad elite of the dwarfs. They glare at me as I pass them, clearly not pleased by the direct access I have given to the king.
The inside of the diplomatic chambers is lavishly decorated, the dwarven woven cushions lining comfortable divans, and the low chamber is lit with rune lights, the display of wealth of one of the richest dwarf holds.
"Welcome, It is an honour to meet one of the blessed of the gods in person. The first human to be so marked as well. I am King Byrrnoth Grundadrakk, the lord of this hold and its dominions."
I give a shallow bow; I am humble enough to give a king some face for their rank.
"Hail Great King, I am called the John Walker, a mage of some accomplishment. It is an honour to be granted this audience."
I decide that I don't want to spread my real name, so I change it a bit; I knew how dangerous sympathetic magic can be; its a risk. and I still don't know the limit of this world's magic. The gods implied that there are gods of sorceries out there, so I am not risking that.
"Hmm, no need to bow. You are blessed by the ancestors; the high priests have spoken how the blessings are authentic, not a trick of magic. It's a dark time, but the enemies of the dawi are canny foes. We have our rune priest check you over already, so you are an honoured friend now. I am curious, what did the gods wish of you? Are you going to be their priest among the Umgi? Are you to guide us on an expedition to recapture a hold. What do the gods demand.?"
There is manic energy in the king as he grabs me by the shoulders and sits me down to ask this question. It seems the dwarf's obsessive nature is shining through here.
"The deal is already done; I am entrusted with a duty that I cannot disclose lest the enemies hear them even from here. Rest assured, the Ancestor gods are well, and their mission is important. But I can tell you that I personally have several things I can do to aid you and your people."
So I told him my plan.
My Leshy Druid summons was crucial in magical up-teching and experimentation on pandora. I had to summon thousands of them to spread the knowledge across the planet and help with researching spirit magic and blood magic-based theotech rituals.
This has had an unforeseen effect that is a welcome one nonetheless.
My summons have grown in that time, honed their skills, learned new magics and communed with newborn spirits. Their minds go back to the pattern inside my soul when they are unsummoned, and while most of them stayed back on pandora to serve as guides and servants to the Newborn goddess, hundreds more came with me.
That has created their own patterns, new iterations of the same base creatures separated not by biology but by skill in magic and knowledge. They have split into the ArchDruids, Leshys that deepened their connection to magic and are casters of the 7th circle; the life shapers, druids who have learned from Ewya and the Fleshforges of the imperium to shape and create life using magic; this also makes them excellent shapeshifters and last but not the least into leshy shamans, they forged connections with spirits and dreams, making them the intercessors between spirits and mortals, they are also masters of theotech, for the imperial god crafting is based on their research in controlling the dream realms. The dream realms don't exist in most worlds I have visited, but they can use magic to compensate.
These new summons are more expensive than the basic druid leshy, but the increased metaphysical might required to wield their magic makes that almost inevitable. I have been thinking about ways to offload some of those costs, but that's a project for another day.
I am awakened from my musings when the wagon stops, my dwarven guards, knocking on my doors in a specific pattern to signal to me that it's okay to come out now.
I walk out and shade my eyes with the new classic wizard hat I got from the dwarves. It is pointy, and it covers the eyes. I just wanted something classic, but it has grown on me; maybe I will enchant it. Oh, that's a good thought. I should drape myself in magical items. It wasn't a school of magic I am proficient in, but I think I can make it work with a bit of research, but that's for later.
The forest of gloom looms before me, the camp only a few miles away from the forest's boundary and still well within goblin raiding range. That forest was home to hundreds of thousands of beastmen, goblins and spiders that have devastated a lot of the local area. It was home to the spider cult of the orkoids, and even the beastmen here were more cunning than normal. So it is an astoundingly dangerous location to be traipsing around in.
But for a location of a new base, it is ideal. It is located adjacent to the Blackfire pass and is a potential trading hub between Karaz a Karak, the empire, border princes and Barak Varr. The mountains at my back will allow me to have a safe location to raise my wizard's tower and do my experiments.
Now I only just need to clear an entire forest of the worst kind of griblies this world has to offer; it shouldn't be hard, at least unless they have some serious magical oomph.
I start summoning life shapers, the leshys appearing in bursts of green mana. They are even more different in looks than the average summons, each with a different size and type of plant making up their body.
The neat thing about life shapers is that they change the magical nature of their subject, which means that when they change into a creature can often simulate its magical properties. This isn't without limit, of course; some magic can be too powerful or too complex or require things like being a thousand years old that can't be replicated by these guys, but most simpler magical abilities can be copied.
This is pertinent because I send them a mental command and then a dozen of them shape shift into the creature I want. The flesh bubbles and grows before hardening into bark-flesh. They tower over me, their amber blood giving them warm-hued eyes and vines draped over their forms, acting as hair. These creatures are treants, tree men that serve nature as guardians and protectors.
They have a unique ability that the imperium was trying to develop more, the ability to animate plants and have them fight for you. My life shapers have been working on increasing the range and number of plants that can be animated, and they are successful; each treant can control plants for miles around them, with hundreds of trees controlled by each one.
There are similar beings in this world as well, called ancient treemen; they can purportedly awaken the spirit of plants in their magical forests and raise them to fight any invaders. I will look into them for a later while, but for now, it is cleaning time.
I order the advance, and thousands of trees groan as magic fills their trunks and they begin moving. The few scattered goblin bands in the vicinity notice the march of the trees and promptly run away, but that's all right. It's not like I expected it to be a surprise.
My summoned thanes and rangers follow as I mount my familiar and leap into the forest, a dozen spells of protection and warding girding me from any ambushes.
Chapter 9The dwarf summons move in a cordon around me. They are much different from my other summons, made of red and white creatures of passion and structure. I have bonded with the temple, finally netting me access to red mana. I am pretty happy about that; now, I can do the main evocative magics like a fireball, lightning bolt and haste. It's pretty impressive how much fun magic is red mana.
My dwarven retinue is made up of the elites of the dwarven race; thanes decked out in runed gromil gear and rune smiths to deal with hostile magic and buffing the thanes, letting them keep up with the galloping thanotor that is my familiar. I am excited about the possibilities they offer in the future, but they are just muscle for now.
The cordon was ringed by a further layer of life-shaped treants, forming the core of my army of animated trees. The trees on the edge of the forest are scraggly and weak, so the treants are replacing them with stronger plants as we march in deeper; it takes a few seconds to shift the magic between trees, but the rolling march of the trees is slow enough that it didn't delay us.
Our first sign of resistance came from a band of goblins rushing the tress from the undergrowth. These goblins are equipped in tattered clothes and wield stone tools. They jump onto the threes and hack at them, using their nimbleness to dodge the branches of the trees. The nearest trees scrape off the goblins.
The onslaught slows down as more and more goblins rush out, better-armed ones with axes and blades, thousands of the creatures swarming around my troops. The front lines buckle, hundreds of goblins pushing to hack away at the mobile trees as they swarm around the trees. Each blow is a minor wound, and the sheer bulk of the trees kills dozen but soon, the impacts start adding up, the magic animating them struggling and sputtering before failing entirely.
The grind continues for hours, the green skin's number just as unending as my trees. My life-shapers are getting worn down, animating more and more trees as attrition chips away at my numbers. The battle is going reasonably well, but I have realised. I am not good at war; my best idea is to gather troops and rush into entrenched enemy territory without any preparation. In hindsight, that's a fucking dumb move; why didn't I think it through? I have played enough strategy games to know that encirclement and logistics exist, yet I have been heedless of those things in my plans.
I order a fighting retreat to the edge of the forest and summon some archdruids to earth shape a fort for us. As the nature magic seeps into the earth and liquid stone flows into the massive walls of a single hill fort, I summon more troops to patrol and settle down for a bit of intro section.
I take up a crosslegged stance and begin to meditate, the simple technique to clear my mind and look into my mind for any discrepancies.
I think of my actions these past few months and realize something was wrong with me, I am not the scared boy from earth who was terrified of any danger and cried for his first kill. I have been callous and uncaring these past few months, ever since I left the imperium.
I cast a basic soul sight spell and look at myself in more detail than I have in a while and notice what the problem is immediately. It's honestly pretty simple, something that I should have expected knowing about how my magic works.
So, as I have travelled to different planes and strengthened myself, I got into the habit of keeping more and more mana stockpiled in my soul. Now, mana is not just free energy, each colour represents philosophical and emotional aspects of reality as well. White is the quiet need for control and order, green is for rampant growth and unchecked pursuit of goals, black is callousness yet obsession and blue is the cold detachment of a sociopath. These are the worst facets of each of those colours and I didn't realise that holding so much unbalanced mana inside my very soul will change my actions. It's only when I have gained access to red mana and its empathy and Joy-Di-Vivre that my mana is balanced and I can think properly.
In hindsight I have been acting like an idiot, I took the responsibility of ensuring an entire race's survival, that's insane I couldn't even cat fed just a few months ago. I am not some wizard saviour of all the multiverse and I have been acting like I can solve all problems with magic, I haven't been even using it long and already I am using it as a crutch instead of learning new things in an organic manner. If I had just stolen those bestiaries instead of using a spell, I would have probably been able to put together just how many goblins there are in this forsaken forest.
I need to get better, I can't just skate by on magic that I barely have explored and on my ability to run away from problems if things get hard. It is real people's lives that I am playing with and it's not good to be callous.
I have a new priority now, bond with some more red mana sources so that my mana levels remain balanced, I don't want to become an arrogant stupid mage again, it is deeply unpleasant losing who you are because your magic enhanced its chosen traits and turned me into a sociopath.
I come out of my meditative trance slowly, my newly regain sanity letting me know it's okay to relax and not rush to my next objective. I summon a cup of tea and walk up to one of my life-shaper leshys as they are resting between the waves of goblins that are still streaming in greater numbers to siege the crude hill fort I have made.
"Hey," I say casually and take a sip of my sweetened tea "I just realised something, I haven't talked to you guys before."
While I have exchanged words but it has always been curt and perfunctory.
"Well, what would you like to talk about summoner. It's a bit of a bad time for your epiphany. I am tired from puppeting hundreds of trees all day and the nasty little goblins aren't stopping to let me rest properly. So, I am hoping I can have my daily intake of water/mineral solution and bask in the few hours of sunlight we have left."
I am a bit taken aback, my leshys were always polite to me, but I assume that the first combat has a way of unsettling people and revealing new facets of their existence. I look into their pattern and realise, they have learned completely non-magical biochemistry and gene engineering from grace, maybe her brusque attitude has rubbed off on them.
It makes sense in a way, I can't rectify the mistakes of months of neglect in a single conversation. Hopefully, I don't fuck up again.
But I am tired today, the introspection consumed a lot of mental focus, I am going to sleep for the night.
I summon some shamans to have some spirits patrol the perimeter that is still being tested by goblin raiders riding horse-sized spiders.
The spirits that the shamans bind are called spites in the bestiary, minor nature spirits fond of preying on lost travellers.
Then I fall asleep, worried if I will wake up the same man as the one that went to sleep.
I am woken from my nightmares of green and blue and black and white by a massive surge of magic, my mage sight bleeding through to my sleeping mind.
It's likely the following explosions that shake our redoubt would have awoken me anyway but I am not complaining about a chance to brace myself.
I fly over to the bastions where my dawi rune smiths are manning the wall. I see the runes on their talisman glow as incoming bolts of green magic are dispelled before they can bowl into the front line of animate trees. But it's not enough, dozens of shamans are gathered at a hill opposite our fort and there are hundreds of thousands of goblins fueling their magics, so they are launching constant magical bombardments, fanatical zeal making sure they disregard all risk of death or miscasts. Even as I look a gigantic green moon forms over the concentration of trees and rips them apart, the pale reflection of the malevolent moon downing dozens of trees before it vanishes into the ether.
The front line is buckling under the onslaught of grobi, as they bring up their gigantic spiders from deep inside the forest to scythe through the trees, as dozens' of foot-tall spiders tower over them and bowl them over.
Upon the hills that the shamans have set up is the biggest spider specimen, it is to an archnarok spider what they are to normal giant spiders. It is the size of a small hill and hundreds of goblins clamber over the howdah they have placed upon it. In that howdah is a shrine that radiates the power of their strange spider god. The creature is blessed with the same touch of divinity as it bolsters its fellows with its mere presence and resists magic through the sheer metaphysical weight.
I am not going to lie, it is terrifying to watch an army of hundreds of thousands of creatures bear down on you. I can already see that my life shapers are struggling with so many trees, and the amount available in our area was being steadily cut down.
This is not a good situation, while I have figured out how to teleport away, I don't want to risk it in the immediate presence of a god's avatar, it could likely interdict my magic if it wanted, and I feel the palpable hate it has for me. I think someone told it my plan was to eradicate its followers and children and I don't think it approves. Besides I feel indignant at even having to run away from goblins of all things, the weakest species of their kind and a minor god at best.
My magic has birthed a stronger goddess and I have learned at the feet of people that have slain more than one major god. So I am going to take a stand and fight, to show to myself that I am not a coward and that all this power and knowledge I have been blessed with is not just a fluke of fate but something I am worthy of using. I want to make the world a better place and if a goblin army stands in my way, well fuck em, either they die today or I do.
Chapter 10I have to make a plan; all classical military theory predicates that strategy can overcome resources to an extent, and right now, they outnumber me., I don't know much about their abilities or psychology; I needed someone with the experience and whose society has fought these guys to know them like the back of their hands. So I beckon over one of the thanes that are manning the wall, and the biggest one walks up to me.
"I know you were based on some of the greatest dwarven thanes; I am in need of your aid and advice." I say to him when he reaches me.
"Aye, I was wondering if you were going to ask for our aid. No offence, umgi, but your plan is the shoddy human work that shames any commander." He brushes his beard with his hand " I owe some of the others some ale now. But let's get down to the forging of a plan."
He paused after saying that and turned to the wall, he gestured for me to accompany him, and I do, walking demurely behind him, I know I am a neonate before his experience, and his skill deserved respect.
He points towards the slavering hordes of goblins and begins speaking.
"The grobi usually outnumber most foes, each grobi may not be worth much but they put ten fighters on the field for everyone that the enemy has fielded. That's what's happening to us right now. A bulk of the goblins in this forest have been driven by their Skaz god to fight us, and so they have come on a holy waaagh. The grobi will fight till death now unless your fear magic overtakes their shamans at least." He says and points out all the forces he has mentioned "So the usual strategy of headhunting their leadership is nonviable. So, what do you think we should do?"
"I see two ways to deal with them, well three if I just unsummon all of you and fly away nut that's a coward's way out" The dwarf nods with a bit more respect at that. "So, we have to either kill the chaff in the way before killing the god's avatar. Or I can use most of my stored mana and cast a massive ritual to burn everything on the field. I don't know the meteor shower spell, but I can compensate with a massive amount of mana to fill in the holes."
"I will be honest with you, Umgi, I was going to suggest you summon more arch druids until they can overcome the aura of the gods, and we can summon more troops. Your unique magic eventually allows us to overcome the enemy's numerical advantage eventually. But I have another plan, something more suited to your kind or maybe some rangers." He considers for a second and continues, "So, tell me you are adept at making creatures stronger and bigger and tougher. Also, tell me about these spells of greater invisibility. How big a thing can you hide."
There is a massive grin on his face as he says it.
I raise a resilient sphere just as the giant foot of gork crashes down on my location; the shockwave from the attack pulps the swarming goblins and the animated trees that were hedging them out. I dismiss the sphere, and a burst of acid erupts from my hand, a deluge of corrosive vitriol that gushes out like a river. The acid eats into the front line of the goblins for a dozen feet, and the whole push of their line is disrupted as hundreds of their fellows melt into a slurry. I wince a bit at the acid, but it has proved the most effective at dealing with the unarmoured goblins. I already threw up once I cast the spell for the first time, but my stomach is empty after hours of fighting, and I feel a bit numb.
I take a bit to breathe as more goblins rush into the gap in their lines to continue pushing us, but their feet start melting as well; the acid has made that section untraversable. A nearby dwarf orders a copse of trees forward, and they march through the acid; this cuts the goblin battleline in half, and the slavering horde starts getting pushed back.
I fly back to the fortress and rest before I have to sortie out again. My magic has been slowly turning the tide; the shamans are too busy duelling with my arch druids and rune smiths to dispel my magic, and the dwarven thanes have been guiding me where to strike for most effect. So far, my attacks have massively reduced the pressure on the front line, and my life shapers have gotten some time to rest more between deployments.
I turn to watch the duel that's taking place between the shamans from my vantage point. The sky overhead is darkening slowly, the nature magic of the druids slowly pushing through nature's wrath into the protective aura of the spider god. Javelins of magically enhanced wood infused with venom and balls of the lightning arc through the skies to crash into the shaman's strong point. The shamans respond by summoning more spiders from their gods' realm, wolf-sized spider swarms trying to climb over the trees as green magic suffuses them to unheard-of heights. Missiles of green magick fly towards us, their corkscrewing patterns reminiscent of fireworks filled with hate and a lust for battle. The rune priests brandish their talisman and rune staves to disrupt the goblin magic structure. Some of their colleagues eat that free-floating energy and redirect them into runic spells that harden the flesh of enchanted trees into iron-hard bark.
I want to interfere with the fight; the weight of my magic might be enough to tip over the balance of the fight, but I control myself; I got to stick to the plan; it can't work if they realise the strength of the magic they face. But it won't be long for now.
The wait is well worth it when the gigantic figure crashes into the spider avatar. A titanic Dawi in full runed armour, his az the size of a tree and his shield a bulwark of metal and wood the size of a castle wall.
The first strike is devastating, my magic propelling his strength to even more than his size would suggest. The blow cleaves the avatar's head in twain; its green ichor spills from the wound in surging rivulets, drawing the shamans underfoot. The magically enchanted axe swings as the remaining shamans turn in horror and let loose a barrage of magic into the dawi. His armour weathering the hits, runes flaring and damning magic and the metal ablating the damage.
The second attack takes down the nearest shamans, and then I am there, the scintillating energy of the dimensional door washing over my mage armour as I cast a scouring spell, white mana shaped into an imitation of a god's wrath. A pillar of castigating holy flames spilt from my hands to sear the goblins from existence.
I teleport us back to the fort as the archdruids bring their wrath, a thousand bolts of lightning crashing amidst their armies as the goblin's morale breaks, the death of their god's avatar driving what courage they had gained and turning it into soul-rending terror.
I cast waves of enchantments through the sympathetic link of life shapers into my armies of animated trees. The spells coil around them like corded muscles made of magic and armour forged from the force; they move faster and hit harder. The tide turns slowly, and then all at once, the goblins route; tens of thousands flee as even more of their comrades are crushed and pulped.
It's a victory for my forces.
So, why do I feel it's hollow. I look over the carnage I have wrought, and I don't think I have the stomach to do it again. Even battle-crazed fanatics like the goblins felt pain as I melted them with acid and crushed them. I can't grow used to this slaughter, or else I fear too many people will die. I will be smarter in the future, more surgical and precise. I could have scouted out the jungle, and it would have ensured the slaughter wasn't even needed.
I nod and make an oath to myself, with the dwarven gods as my witness. I will be better in the future and solve problems in ways that cause the least harm, but I will never shirk what needs to be done.
But I don't think I can deal with this world; the memories of slaughter and being an emotionless sociopath are too strong here. But this world needs help, so I can't leave it alone.
I need some advice, and it's good that I have some advisors now; I am honestly getting lonely.
So after hours of cleaning up and further strengthening the fortification, I am seated at a bed of sculpted moss and carved wood, courtesy of the life shapers after they rested from their marathon defence of the fort.
Their leader is sitting in front of me, the one who proved himself the strongest in the battle and supported his brothers the most. Chosen by a congress as they soaked under the sun in their leshy forms.
He is still wearing that form, a brilliant orchid-based leshy that was half my height, but its body was thrumming with nature magic, a testament to his growth throughout this fight.
He called himself The Flower Blooms in Adversity, but he is happy to be called Bloom for short.
Next, he sits the thane that had planned and executed the alpha strike that allowed us to win the battle. His armour is pockmarked with rents caused by hostile magic, but runesmiths stood ready just waiting for our meeting to finish to repair and enhance it. A guilds moot had elected him the King of Dwarves, which will serve under me, and I had to specifically summon representatives of all the guilds that I had the pattern for, and they had debated for a few hours before electing him for his very impressive dead of killing a demigod in a single blow, no matter how much magic he had been cloaked in.
He called himself Thror, First of his name and Clan, High-King of the Second Chance. That's what the dwarves decided to name their polity, for it was a second chance for the gods to prove themselves to their gods and the world.
The Other Leshys hadn't felt the need to elect a leader for now, for each archdruid and shaman is much more individualistic, for they prefered to wander the wilds and the dream realms by themselves.
"Leaving a foreign goddess right next to the Karak-a-Karaz, a goddess who is callous by your own stories, does not sit well with me. She may shape a new life and command nature, but chaos has corrupted and eaten many a god before her; how are you sure she will survive and be worth anything other than a threat." Thror says while he downs a mug of ale; the brewers came with a barrel when summoned, the beer just as much part of their pattern as the soul.
"I know I can't talk about thinking things through just after what I did, but even my addled self had a good idea. Ewya is a goddess who has ruled her people for millions of years and carries an afterlife with millions of followers. The fact that she is situated in the tree of souls instead of the warp should shield her from the majority of the demons and their god's attention. They will have to get to her the hard way, and we will leave her with plenty of defences when we leave. She carries within her a repository of life forms that can give the strongest beings of this world a run for their money; She should be fine." I say and pet the Thanator as it lay on the bed beside me with affection. It has protected me well, and its future brothers should have a grand old time hunting chaos.
"I remember interacting with her priests; she is not a nice goddess; she is the personification of the wild places. So even though she may be loyal to you due to the nature of her existence as your summon. She will still not value people's lives as you seem to do." Bloom comments as he sips water from a mug and munches on some honey.
"Look, I know it is risky. I know she is a bit untamed and unchallenged in her previous life. But this will be different here. She does not control the entire planet and has many competitors, which she will understand; as you said, she is nature and knows exactly how she could be out-competed." I argue back.
"Look, you asked for our advice, and we gave it to you. It's pretty clear we can't change your mind; at least let us help you minimize the risks." Thror harumphs in anger and slams his mug before continuing, "Make her understand the difficulties she will face now and the advantage of an alliance with the civilised races."
"I can see how that will help her bet better and not a scourge." I consider while I stroke the beard that I have just started growing out, I need to live up to a stereotypical image after all. "Yes, that seems wise; we will educate her in the ways of this world and only give her access to life shapers if she agrees to bind herself to the civilised races. The threat of having re-evolve her followers and creatures the slow way should work"
Last edited: Jul 22, 2022
Chapter 11The Power I hold between my hands is life-changing; it can bring life to entire regions, heal a plague from a city, summon an army, or slag a mountain. The glowing array of mana glows with the ethereal colours, all mana being a part of the pattern forming a complex mandala akin to the most complicated painting made by the greatest painters, or maybe a mathematical equation describing the great unified theory.
It takes all my concentration to maintain the spell as I channel more and more power into the matrix. It a been a chore to cast the summon spell because it requires hundreds of motes of mana shaped in a complex transplanar spell. The tree of souls is a complex creation. A gigantic geneforged tree, some of the best works of billions of years of directed evolution. Each of its cells is laced with a superconductor wonder metal, capable of channelling a shard of a goddess. The goddess is an even bigger challenge, copying the mix of concepts and worship and ephemeral potential that is a goddess. I have to bridge the gap and sublimate the concept from reality and emulate them with a meta-magical construct that dipped into half a dozen parallel realms and at least three different flavours of mana frequencies that I have to balance to make the mix of blood magic, nature magic and divine energy and tune my mana to copy them. Not to even start on the afterlife, whose entire ontological infrastructure I have to hand-make.
So, I have been spending days fueling and shaping this summoning spell, a veritable ritual as I can offload the nature magic calculations onto the archdruids and the divine energy portions of the spell to the shamans. I can do it on my own, but it will take me a week to shape all the mandala parts to perfection. So, I offload it onto my summons while other leshy archdruids pump us with restoration and sustaining spells so we can perform the ritual without interruption.
The spell locks into place with a final pulse, and the mandala bloom into reality for a second, a massive circle whose every inch is covered in runic matrices and metaphysical equations. The circle condenses in a glowing kaleidoscopic ball that blooms into the full tree.
There is a pulse of magic and a screech of rage as the veil between the warp and reality buckles from the rage of the chaos gods and their glee at a new toy. The shamans mass deploy dimensional anchors to ward away their attempts as I focus on the surge of mana as the roots of the tree of souls spread to the forest trees and connect to them, magic surges and they are transformed into more compliant forms, the nascent spirits like spites and nettles bonded before the overwhelming might of a goddess. The sporadic dryads cede willingly, their new bodies giving them more power and the patronage of a primal goddess.
It's a wave of magic that is slowly spreading throughout the forest as more and more area comes under Ewya's sway. It should be done in a single hour, the forest will belong to her, aside from the domains of the treemen ancients whose' personal glades she is leaving alone. They are demigods of nature and have enough magic to contest her if she pushes. She knows she will win them over eventually; she is patient if nothing else.
Her avatar manifests in front of me, her previous god form abandoned for something less taxing.
"I didn't expect you to assimilate the forest so quickly; it seems like a harsh and reckless action. Exactly what my advisors feared you would do. Tell me, was I wrong to trust you to be a decent goddess with empathy for mortal races." I tell her I am not worried for my safety; she is loyal by the very nature of her existence, but I am worried.
"I have a good reason for that; the beastmen are going to come for me. I can hear the whispers of chaos across the veil; they wish to show me who are the apex predators there. Already I can feel the cloven ones and their scouts nipping around at the edge of my forest; if I wait, they will use the remaining forest as a beachhead. Befoul my new home" She waves her hand, and dew coalesces into a screen where I can see black portals opening for split seconds, corrupted world roots according to the dryads, and dropping small cloven figures as they creep through the forests.
"Well, that does seem fair to me. You have to understand that I didn't part on the most amicable terms on your other form. But maybe I am wrong; I will happy if I am proven wrong. I don't think you owe anyone anything, but your actions will be a reflection on what I do; if you bring predition o dwarven caravans and human border princes, I will be considered a mad mage that unleashed an evil goddess. I am not asking you to be a cuddle bug and kowtow before mortals, but I will appreciate that you helo them if they are being preyed on by forces of evil and if another ever chosen shows up. I would love it if you kick his ass, or at least send some champions to do it." I take a deep breath, this is the order me, and thror and bloom have concocted. They both wanted more stringent and exact commands. I was firmly against those things, she is a sapient person, and I can't enslave her just to ensure she is good. Instead, we have compromised; I will offer broad guidelines that should shape her morals and actions without any oaths or bindings. Like what a parent would tell a child before letting them make their own way in the world.
"In return, I will allow you to access the Life-Shaper lesheys. They should allow you to quickly create the creatures that you can then task to defending yourself, along with the existing corp of enchanted thanators once they come back from their goblin hunts," I continue, the positive reinforcements that we hope will keep her on the straight or narrow and get back on the wagon if she ever fell off. Bloom choose the leshy's, specifically their moral fibre, and we think it should be enough. But I will come back to this world just to keep an eye out if she is doing something crazy like super plagues or mind-controlling myconids.
"I will let your words guide me; I am not the one on who you based this pattern. I know you can't summon two copies of the same creatures, so I am a unique person, and I won't let the actions of my predecessors taint me. I will prove that up-jumped warrior wrong, even if I have single handily kill every orc between here and Karak Zorn." She has fiery eyes as she makes this oath, literal green fire gushing from her eyes at the intensity of her belief.
"Well, that's good to hear", I mumble and then put my hands in my jeans and continue "So, goodbyes are awkward; I don't want to deal with that, don't worry, I will be back in a few years and come check on you. So try to stay alive and flourish."
Saying that, I step and walk into the void between realities as it continues to claw at my soul; it is getting easier to stay for a single timeless moment in this place; maybe at one point, I will have a soul strong enough to explore the lack of existence but today is not that day.
I choose a random dot of light and jump there and appear in the middle of interstellar conflicts as gigantic daggerships fought against flying golden pyramids. The red, green and orange bolts the size of houses crash and dissipate against shields. Each ship is firing thousands of such house-sized bolts, and I only have a single second to dimension door away as an explosion rocks the space where I was just floating. I step out of reality again and gather my thoughts before diving into a new world again in the middle of a fight where an ashen tattooed man just threw a mountain at a bunch of giant dragons. I step again and enter another world, one completely devoid of matter as different physical constants rip away at my planar bubble spells before I step away again and to a new world.
This new world looks promising; there is no immediate fighting, no non-compatible laws of physics and the most important thing of all. It appears to be a world that is further along the timeline as I can see skyscrapers in the distance and what looks to be weird trains just passing overhead on metro tracks. A gigantic tower so solidly enchanted as to be a second sun to my mage sight and the general magical signature draping every appliance I can see dash my hope that it's my world, but at least I can get some french fries or something, at least.
I walk around for a bit, and people give me a wide berth, not out of fear but in deference. I look around; while magical devices appear to be pervasive, active magical spell casting appears absent. So, I stand out a bit with my buff spells active; it isn't visible, but the force armour and planar bubble delineate an area where shimmering fields of force and enchanted skin are obvious to any observers.
The people are dressed in pre-modern clones, something from the transition period from Victorian England to post-war England. They have small devices reminiscent of mobile phones, but they are rare and only seem to make calls.
So, the tech level is a bit of a pastiche of my history, but it probably makes sense once you understand the historical trend that led to those innovations. I am not really interested in that right now.
These people are advanced in magic in ways I haven't even considered possible; they replicated devices with such intense infrastructure as train networks and mobile phones through spells I even recognised. The cellphone is pinging a message spell on the phone, the phone letting whatever is casting the spells home in on the target, like a beacon.
Maybe this is the world I can finally sit down and do some damn research.
Chapter 12My first challenge in this world is that I am flat-out broke, with not a single penny to my name. The gold coins and dwarven-steel blades I have don't exactly sell at the corner shops, not to mention I don't see anyone with weapons around at all, so a bunch of swords and axes might be regulated as well.
The local currency appears to be shards of crystals that are brimming with magic. They also seem to be what is fueling their magic; I learned it when the barista at the cafe put a new crystal into her machine, and to my mage sight, the mandala conjured the coffee without any casters input. I guess that's what you really need: power and direction for the magic, normally that is the soul and will of the caster, but there is no reason it can't be a crystal power the spell mandala to create a single fixed effect. It is how magical enchantments work, but this is like an evolved version of those; in the world of the imperium, magical items are something that takes extensive rituals and time to create, almost perpetual magical matrices that can do amazing things, but they are always going to be that expensive and will always take that much time.
But what this civilisation has done is, they have gone a completely different methodology for crafting magical devices. Instead of creating complex spells bound to objects and or arcane rituals. They decoupled the powering of the device from the equations and just focused on streamlining the enchantment process and designing ever better methods of crafting magical effects. So, because they have access to these mana crystals, they have been able to use it to fuel their exquisitely designed and awesomely efficient magical mandalas and spirit matrices to do anything that magic can do. Ofourcse the initial enchanting, the effect still requires an ensouled being, but that is much easier for a mage to imbue the magical formulae with the metaphysical capacity to perform magic when 90% of the work can be completed by an average if well-trained factory worker.
Honestly, the more is see that coffee maker, the more I want to praise the genius that designed it. Conjuration of the matter is one of the most difficult magical effects, energy-intensive as the universe hates entropy being reduced and fiendishly complex as without a certain affinity to those kinds of magic is just difficult to materialize. Its why the transmutation schools' higher-level spells are the ones I have the most difficulties with; the buff spells are simple enough, but if you ask me to do large-scale material conjurations al true creations or fabrication spell lines, the best I have so far, I have performed is Wall of Iron. Hell, some of my druids are better at that kind of magic than me. Its been one of my major weaknesses and the reason I haven't been able to artificially transmute Unobtanium outside of copying it from the pattern of the tree of souls.
I would love to play with a room-temperature superconductor that is also nearly perfect for enhancing and enchanting. That idea I had about creating gear for self isn't the worst, but Unpbtanium will make it so much more useful if I can have a few rune lords enchant to be nearly indestructible.
But I am rambling inside my head while staring at a cafe from across the street, especially as every normal human is staring at me as being weird. So I decide to move on quickly and figure out how am I going to get some money. Since they have magic already I doubt I can do things like cheat at a casino or heal someone rich for quick cash but there must be something I can do.
As I ponder that thought, I bump into someone, and unfortunately for the other person, I am buffed to the gills with spells, so they go sprawling on the floor. I look up from my musings and cringe a little; I had gotten so used to people just walking around me in a few hours that I have forgotten to pay attention and bumped into what appears to be a local wizard.
She is just as engrossed in her own thoughts as I am, dressed in a dress made of finer materials than the other people I have seen. She has a few more magical devices than others, a magical monocle that is displaying some sort of statistical analysis and a book in her other hand where she is making notes.
"Oh, I am so sorry, I was too distracted y something." I approach her and give her a hand; she takes it and stands up, brushing off the dust from her dress with a simple cantrip.
"I must say, sir; you must be more careful where you walk. You could have hurt someone with your gait. Decked out in buff spells like a war mage in a black zone." She frowns as she critiques me and then looks around. "I will admit, I might be a tad bit lost. Could you inform me where we are? I am running a bit late for an appointment at the shard, and I would like to make it in time."
"I can't help you there, I am afraid; I am quite new to this city, recently moved here. The spells are just there to make me comfortable; I am not used to this city." I dismiss most of my visible spells, so I don't stand out to the local magical users.
"Most peculiar, but I won't judge a frontier man his lack of manners yet. So, where are you from, hong kong, Sydney or somewhere out in the African colonies? You don't sound like a yank." She says, and I try to parse out the basic socio-political structure from her words. There is a frontier and core; frontiers are more dangerous, don't know how much. Same cities as my world, at least with the same names.
"Ah, I am from Sydney just moved here, was tired of fighting, so moved here for some peace and quiet."
"Ah, so you are a veteran of the pacification of Austalia. Admirable, it was a hard campaign; I fought a few battles on the mainland but nowhere as much fighting as in Sydney." She continues, and we start walking; she is leading me toward the gigantic tower as it looms over the city, its magical enchantments shining like the Northstar.
"Hmmm, Yeah, it was very intense. Anyway, so what has you so engrossed? I am a bit of a scholar myself." I am deflecting like crazy now, but hopefully, it works.
"So a soldier-scholar, an admirable quality. My research is about mitigating and harmonising the residual mana haze. It is becoming more prominent as more magical devices come into existence the waste mana is percolating in hidden spots and affecting things like visibility, and there are even reports of unconfirmed health effects." She starts gushing as the topic of her research comes up.
She talks the whole thirty minutes that it takes us to walk to the Shard, and it is honestly fascinating. She is conducting a cross-generational longitudinal study to study the effects of mana haze on humans and then combining disciplines like Chinese Feng Shui and Indian Vastu Shastra into a comprehensive proto-geomantic grid that will channel all the waste mana and then either expel it into the environment or be used for some magical workings that can take that mixture of chaotic elements that make mana haze unusable for normal uses.
She isn't in a hurry; her designs would take redesigning most of London streets, that is the city I am in, but slowly she hopes the principle can be accepted and incorporated into standard magi-architectural studies.
As she finishes her description and we reach the entrance of the Shard, she has a sheepish look on her face, and she turns to me and says.
"Pardon me, sir, I have been rambling on and on, and I even forgot to give even the most basic of courtesy." She holds out her hand and says, " Pleased to meet you, Emma Anson, Countess of Lichfield, at your service."
I freeze; I don't know the dynamics of nobles and commoners in this world. What if I touch her and am sentenced to death for it?
She sees my hesitation and misreads it.
"No need to worry; I am not like those other lords you have probably seen, I had to venture among the people of London, so I am easygoing." She reassures me.
Of course, I take her and introduce myself with a false name.
"Jack Donovan at your service, my lady, It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." My time in the imperium has helped me in dealing with nobles.
"Well, I am going to go to my meeting; it's nice meeting you. " She waves and leaves.
She inserts a card into the door, and the bulkhead opens, and she walks in.
Now that's a problem; the world seems to have pretty thorough magical IDs; how do I blend in? I need to find information. I can't deal with problems if I don't know about them.
I don't miss the magical crow that is following me as I walk away from the tower towards the commoner's part of the city.
Chapter 13The bird is following me around, and it's annoying. It's not even the same bird; it appears that an entire flock of magically altered birds that are used for surveillance. I guess even in an alternate universe, London can't help being a surveillance state.
I am now considering whether I should just shoot it out of the sky, but I hold my peace because I don't know how damaging what is certainly government property will have consequences. But I guess the birds are smarter than most people; just as they see me tap my mana, they fly away in a cloud of black feathers.
I quickly walk away as the non-mages on the streets are staring at the flock of crows; there is fear in their eyes, so maybe it was the right call not to exterminate them.
After a brisk walk through the sweltering summer heat of London, I get to my destination. A building that is decorated with icons of faith and conquest, one of the oldest libraries in the world. The guildhall library started as a repository of theological texts established by a clerk in the 15th century and later re-established by the London corporation. Its facade has subtly shifted over the centuries as the theology becomes a smaller part of the book collects, but its roots are evident in its flying spires and balustrades.
I can feel the energy gathered in its basements just standing at the door of the building, the private rooms containing ancient bibles and relics, accumulating the faith of the population passively to grow stronger. I guess that's one way of religion to be competitive with mages. The more people and the older your religion, the stronger your clerics will be, and most of the big religions are thousands of years old. So they have a lot of metaphysical weight to throw around.
But I am not here to figure out how to make my own holy relics yet. I shake my head to clear my vision and walk to the librarian, a young woman in professional clothes who appears to be engrossed in a book.
I walk by her, and she ignores my presence, so I guess the advice about it being a public library was true; I should thank that bun seller for telling me the way.
I grab a bunch of reliable history books like the encyclopedia Britannica and other such works that are good at giving short and concise information about all the nominal stuff in the world. 20 edition later, I have the information downloaded into my mind.
But I won't make the same mistake I did last time; the spells act as good sources of information, but I have to take the time to internalise them and turn it into knowledge. So I conjure myself some food and tea, take a seat on one of the recliners in a hidden alcove of the library and get to read whatever suits my fancy; the books were more to add depth to my knowledge and make me more conscious of what facts I do know.
I spend a few hours there learning the history of this world, and it's almost unnerving how similar yet utterly different it is. The broad strokes are the same as in my world, the same kings and kingdoms, the same cultures and religions and the same events have happened. Like a funhouse mirror of a beloved image.
But the details swerve wildly, magic and extraplanar factions making any one event drastically different. For example, the Mongol hordes are literally hordes of centaur people, while half of the Roman-Carthaginian wars were about acquiring access to networks of leylines that girded both territories.
The development of magic is a fascinating topic as well; the earliest recorded history showed mages of terrifying power, savants that invented new styles of magic and forged kingdoms and orders through sheer force of magic. But they are few and far between; the natural affinity that is needed for people to be good at magic without any formal teaching is immensely rare. So there has been a bare handful of such mages over the centuries. Most of humanity's civilisations have been founded by these great mages, but they have all died, mostly through violence. So when the wizard-kings die. The priestly orders rise. Mages that channel their people's faith and rudimentary magic that they learned from their wizard-kings. Groups like the pharos of Egypt and their priestly orders, the rajas and brahmins from India and other groups.
This world is a death world. Beings of massive power, like dragons, giants, and leviathans, control large fractions of the world. Hundreds of races like elves and trolls and elementals and merpeople, the fucking merpeople, ruled large swaths of lands and had their own civilisations.
Humanity evolved to grow dense, most of the NOMs, the local word for non-mages, living in cities with magical enforcers protecting farms and extracting resources before enough of the local magical beasties push them back.
That's how civilisation developed, grew, shrunk and grew again as cycles of newborn empires before some mythic class magical creature pushed them back to the cities.
Until the Spellcraft revolution, the codification and standardization of magic. It facilitates mass training of every single human with even a shred of magical talent and allows humanity to form empires on a massive scale, especially in a colonial sense.
Then came the rise of necromancy and the first world war against the necromancers, and then the awakening of the black dragon and the beast tide surge that burned a hundred cities and killed minions; humanity is still recovering, reclaiming every piece of land they have lost. Even now, humanity is fighting across a hundred fronts against the great shoals of merpeople. The massive vitality and elemental power lead to oceans where a single ocean can outnumber all of humanity. It's a massive war of survival, and the defeated get pushed to the surface, encroaching on human territory, hence the red coral sea war going on right now. But it's something I have to look at later. Now I am interested in the development of magic.
The spell craft has advanced and made humanity stronger. It leads to the invention of modern enchantment, which has led to the creation of the Towers, Resonance Barriers, ISTC and Message repeaters. The four cornerstones of modern magical civilisations. I want to learn all of them because it is the greatest piece of magical artifice I have ever heard of. It will allow me to set up infrastructure on a random world if I ever need to establish civilisation.
Resonance barriers use magical cores of exceptional sizes to project city-scale fields that cause pain to any magical creatures that try to enter a city. Perfect if I ever want to set up a base in the middle of a hostile environment.
The ISTC are massive arrays that allow continental scale teleportation on a massive scale, enough to make it a viable method of MassTransit if you have the magical energy to fuel it. The Message repeaters are basically magical cellphone towers, and I don't need to tell how revolutionary those are.
The towers are my greatest desire, the first time I have desired something so much that I briefly consider just going to war and capturing on for study.
Each tower is the nucleus of a modern city and humanity's only answer to a mythical class creature. A massive magical foci that can even turn the meanest magical missile into a barrage of hundreds of bolts and a single fireball into an artillery spell that can hit something on the horizon. They are floating magical fortresses that can unleash enough firepower to flatten cities and kill mythical dragons. Each tower also acts as the magical headquarters of the mages' flights with all the C&C capabilities and divination support that implies. They also house the mass fabricator engines and enchanter factories in their bowls to support extended campaigns.
It was my dream as a mage to make a difference, and I imagine a floating fortress will be great to help many worlds.
But the problem is how to get it; all knowledge was available to a sufficiently ranked mage and cost a significant sum of Contribution Credits, the formalised system for measuring the importance of a mage to the magocracy.
I can't access that magic discreetly, But I have just met a lady interested in mass magical architecture and of a sufficient rank. She will be my way of gaining this knowledge, my trojan horse for me to pilfer knowledge, and hopefully, I can help some more people along the way.
Chapter 14I spend hours pouring over tomes in the library, mostly military campaigns and geographic almanacs, to help me achieve step one of my plan to gain ultimate wizard digs. By the end, I am tired and thirsty but satisfied with the knowledge I have gained.
I leave the library just as the librarian was starting to look at the clock as closing time neared. I nod at her and smile, she gives me an impassive face, but there is a hint of a smile in her eyes. I don't have the time to satisfy my needs because, according to my research, tabloids admittedly, there is a market that is rumoured to be open tonight in a hidden location.
To understand my plan, I must first explain this world's political factions. Three main compacts inform government and ideologies. The Middle faction is the milquetoast centrists that include everyone that isn't part of the other factions; they push for a customised approach to demihuman factions. The Militants are the classic genocider warmongers, they advocate going full murder death kill on the demihuman factions, and any mercy is just a play to preserve forces. The grey faction is the more opportunist one, willing and happy to exploit mages for gains, to the point of selling mages in slavery to demihumans for resources.
Humanity has gained an economic position globally as the standard provider of currency for trade. Humans are the only civilisation that mines the mana crystals on a large scale to power their devices and as a medium of exchange. Because you can absorb a mana crystal to recharge your mana and for ritual magics, every demihuman accepts these for their own uses. This has given the grey faction a lot of leverage for acting as arbitrage for traders of different species.
To facilitate these transactions, they have hidden markets where demihumans and humans can trade and serve as points of informal diplomacy for the minor powers in humanities sphere of influence. It's rumoured you can buy anything there, so that's where I plan to get the resources needed to start my plan.
For that, I need to gather some goods to trade, and I have to adventure. That's new, should be fun.
It's a few hour's flight from London, under heavy anti-divination magics, to my destination. Well into the purple zone, an area of extreme danger, near the border of north wales. It's imaginatively called troll hill.
The lowest level of the magical ecosystem is made of minor elemental spirits that have taken form in the prime material plane. They are called different things worldwide: trogs, goblins and such. Minor spirits are nothing more than an annoyance for even a NOM one-on-one. They die by the thousands every day to feed all the minor predators. As a result, they have an explosive breeding rate, with a clutch of dozens for every female. Usually, it's not a problem because they are often hunted at a similar rate, but they are one of the more fascinating creatures. Of the millions of goblins that are formed every month, certain goblins are born mutated, changed and evolved into higher forms. Things like hobgoblins, ettins, ogres and trolls. The Troll-King Under The Mountain is a primaeval beast, a being that has lived for hundreds and endured against all comers, from human war mages to elven wyld hunts to draconic scions. It bleed rivers of blood and sent thousands of its kids to die, but it survived.
Its troll the size of a house, with wild magic tamed through age and an essence cultivated through eating stronger monsters. Its kingdom is under the mountain, caverns excavated over generations into halls worthy of a Wild King, decorated with the bones of human adventurers who try to plunder his halls in search of HDMs. In spring, he sends his sons out with their teeming hordes to pillage the countryside, clashing with humans whose nations surround his territory. He is not an easy target; his mountain has been soaked in enough troll and trog blood that his essence has seeped into the mountain, so it resists hostile magic, working as a stronghold where the hag witch daughters of the Troll King can work their blood magic.
He is also the weakest Wild King on the British Isles; everything else is either stronger or has the support of the stronger superpowers. But I am not doing it as I did with the Nightgoblins; this time, I have prepared. I have six shamans scrying the entire mountain and six more making weal and woe predictions for all the tactics that my thanes are suggesting. I have hidden our preparation with an upcasted private sanctum to prevent our spells from being backtraced and our approach being hidden. The light planar blurring allows us to displace the forward camp to be out of sync with the prime material and let us hide just at the foothills of the troll kings mountain without being spotted.
I was actually using his essence to cast a curse on him from just a handful of soil from his mountain, but it turns out that all essence has magical resistance and the stronger the creature is, the more resistant it will be. I am intrigued by this essence; I have read about it in my basic research. All old magical creatures have this power that seeps into their body and their lair, it passes on more power to their children, and it makes the creature stronger, tougher and better in all aspects of their species, becoming more of what their species are. The premier examples are dragons, of course, massively powerful magical reptiles whose lineages go back thousands of years and bestow astounding power to true dragons at birth, enough that all but the youngest true dragons are stronger than the greatest mortals mages.
If I can figure it out, it will be possible to add it to my summons, make them stronger and give them an ontological weight, which is imperative for many mystical reasons. But that's for later; I first need to take care of the current king; before I can plunder his knowledge, I need to plunder his vaults.
"We have a strike planned out. The recon spells have given us the information that we need, and the divination spells have punched through the interference to tell us this is the plan with the highest chance of success." Thror walks up to me from the war party that is preparing for the raid.
Its made up of a hundred members, 40 Dwarven thanes in gromril armour bedecked with runic armour and weapons. With 20 Rune Lords ready to dispel magic and rain wrath and ruin. The rest is an even split of archdruids, shamans and life shapers, here to be the magical muscle of the fight.
The teleportation circle crackles with eldritch lightning as the last of the last summon walks through it.
I turn to the screen of the divination spell locked on the arcane mark carried by Thror. Blossom elected not to go with them, so thror is the highest ranked summon. The floating screen shows the view like a drone floating overhead the formation, just as they emerge in the mouth of the cave at the top of the Troll Mountain, its yawning maw welcoming morsel to feed its unending hunger.
The formation is simple; the front line and the flanks are made up of thanes, with thror anchoring the line in the centre, dwarven rune lords and druids make up the centre, already layering defensive spells and powers to protect the entire formation. A dwarven rune is designed to enhance an entire unit of 120 dwarves so that a single rune can boost the entire Warband. Each rune lord casts unique runes, from runes of iron skin, runes of deflection and spell eating, runes of strength and vigour and oath of steel. Each warrior in the unit is pumped so full of magic they start glowing, magical runes manifesting as auric forcefields and iron-sheened skin. The Arch Druids provide different buffs, the ones not easily accessible by runic magic. Spells of Hastes, celestial healing, protection from acid, night vision and air walking. Alongside, Shamans use the spells to weave webs of psychic strings, linking everyone in the unit into a single whole, while webs of vitality link their lifeforce, letting them share all wounds and making the healing much more effortless.
By the time the Magical conflagration subsides, the residents of the mountains notice the arrival. Thousands of the Goblins and trogs charge out of the caves, and a quick cut down, ball lightning and runic explosions slaughter the chaff like a rolling artillery barrage. Spells scythe through the mobs like a farmer harvesting wheat. Druids raise walls of iron and stones, stopping the charge cold, before rune lords blow up the walls, letting shrapnel shred dozens and scores.
The bigger monsters charge out as the ground becomes mud with rivers of flowing blood. Ogres leading units of hobgoblins in crude armour, their blood-tinted metal channelling their vitality in their clubs and hammers. Trolls lumber after them, bigger and deadlier, their essence strong enough to repel the AOE spells, while any damage they do take is healing in front of my eyes.
The clumps of heavier troops actually reach the front line, crashing into the shield wall like barreling avalanche, and are stopped cold by the thane's formation.
The magic of runes makes the dwarves mass significantly more; each is like a stone pillar buried deep into the earth. A thane smashes the first charging ogre with his shield, throwing it back onto the charging troops, the axe smashes down its torso, blazing with magic and fire, and the ogre is cut in half like melted wax. The one next to him smashes the head of a troll that tries to capitalise on the momentary opportunity. Scenes like this repeat across the line dwarves cutting down the goblinoids like chaff.
RIvulets of blood stained the mountain, hundreds of dying beings bleeding their lifeblood onto the rocky soil of the mountain. I feel something thrum through the magical sensor, my mage sight blaring with blood red unlight before all the blood staining the ground is pulled from the ground and streams into a gigantic troll.
The Troll kings stride on the battlefield with an honour guard. Floating hag-witches rinding thrall trolls. Hulking brutes whose minds have been dominated but their frame reinforced with magic.
Runes smiths and archdruids launch spells at the troll king's posse and cut down the frontline, blowing up trolls and hags. But they rise back up again, the bloody earth fueling their regeneration to an unnatural level, the blood magic of the hags using the sacrifice of the fodder to fuel their magic, shooting back at the Warband with dark entropic bolts. The Spells splash against force walls raised by Shamans, the dark coruscating energy melting through layers and layers of shields but running out of energy before they get close. Their follow-up boneshaker curse is slapped aside by a rune lord.
The Honour guard charges as the troll king shout, "It's a feast tonight, kiddos, dwarf meats back on the menu".
His charge gathers momentum slowly but surely, like a great beast of burden enraged at a being poked. His essence-laden land fuels the charge, pulsing power flowing from the land into this warrior with each step; by the time they are halfway to the lines, they have a blood-red aura covering their charging forms.
Thror notices the charge just as it starts and shouts, "Direct Magic won't work, use CC spells, foul their charge. Thanes form up in double layer formation, rune lords runes of warding and slowing, druids turn nature against him. This is the final push, we win this, and we are clear victors over these foul beasts, so brave dawi and valiant leshy, hold for the summoner"
The shield wall shifts like a well-oiled machine, the runes inscribed on the shields glowing bright with magic. The runes of protection, of warding, drew upon the stoicism of the dwarven people and made manifest their collective bonds as magical shields springing up in front of their shield. The shield grows stronger the more Dawi bear into battle, and this formation is perhaps the greatest concentration of runic magics that the DAwi people have ever witnessed since the war of vengeance.
Leshy's don't waste time either; overlapping walls of fire, lave, plants, and iron spring up between charges. Many of them are dispelled before the spell can even cast by the hags riding the thrall sons of the troll king, their foul blood magic decaying the magic of nature wielded by the leshys, but there are a lot more magicians on my warbands side than there are on the trolls, so walls impeded their charge, slowly whittling down their essence armour as the honour guard barrels through walls of iron and stone. Other leshy's, the shamans, cast different spells, those of confusion, auras of fear, entropic shields, fate twisting magics and a dozen other spells, draw from the dreams of the leshy's, bringing them onto reality and ravaging the essence-loaded minds of the trolls further, even as their bodies regenerate from the harm.
But there is a reason the Magocracy hasn't dug out this foe yet because a primal magical creature is almost impossible to defeat in their lair, it is their locus of power, and the troll king proves that in this moment. With a roar that shakes the cavern they are fighting in, every single body of the dead troll rises again, the hundreds killed by Warband walking without a soul animating their body, but instead, the essence in their blood resonates with the anger of the troll king. They will kill their king's enemies even if they have to do it from beyond the grave.
The essence that has saturated the mountain for centuries is violently wrenched from the earth as every scrap of power is fed into the troll king. With a wave of his hand, a tidal wave of the earth is ripped from the mountain and flies towards the shield wall. The wave crashes into the runic shield magic, and runic magic barely holds, with a dozen rune lords reinforcing those shields. But the wave clears the field, and now the troll king is upon them, ready to bash in the heads of the people that disturbed his home.
Thror charges him back, and I put in a dozen prepared spells onto him. He glows with white and green mana as a dozen spells settle onto him, and he surges in size mid-swing. Troll king's stroke is stopped dead by the holy armor draped onto thror, who hits him with an uppercut, his blow glowing with burning flames.
The troll king glows with essence, and he moves with lightning-quick reflexes, an axe of bone-forming in his hand as his blade bites into thror's should. Blood splutters but the wound is healing and will close in a second.
The fight turns into a slugging match, blood being shed by the gallons, bones crunched, and flesh being burnt.
In the end, thror loses, his magic dispelled by the troll king's essence and his body broken by his strength.
But the war is won, and the Warband surrounds their battle, having pacified the trolls and hags. I teleport in and reviver thror, a few motes of white mana enough to return him to life.
Victory is mine as I overcharge a dominate monster spell and punch through his exhausted essence, and he kneels before me.
Chapter 15I walk into the parlour with a swagger in my step; the establishment is empty, and my contact booked the entire place so that we have privacy.
The Lord Protector is alone, an aura of power flowing from his form, his elemental aura flickering with Ice as one of the strongest mages of the magocracy sits before me, drinking a neat whisky more expensive than most minor lords' estates.
Lord Keith Wolingworth is the due lord protector of the realm and the velveted fist of the queen. The most important man in the British empire who isn't gods chosen, leader.
It was hard getting a meeting with him; the wards defending his message address were something that took me the entire day to dismantle. Then convincing him was even harder; he only believed me once the royal fusiliers went and confirmed that the troll under the mountain is dead and his kingdom burnt.
The truth is that anything my mundane sight sees isn't true; my mage sight and true seeing spell let me pierce the curtains of illusions that draped the parlour. The clowning mind magics crash against mind blank, and the illusions part before my sight like mist before the noonday sun.
The man in front of me isn't the lord protector at all; it is a fae-blooded officer of the first mage cabal, the premier infiltration officer of the Magocracy. The building isn't empty at all; an entire flight of war mages cling on top of the roof, draped in invisibility and SEP illusions.
I don't showcase any of this as I walk in; of course, I take the seat opposite the lord protector, without prompting, to play up the part of a reclusive archmage. The Cabal Mage and the Flight both miss as my troops move to their places to be ready to pounce on their entire force in case of hostility; even the golem artillery stationed 5 kilometres away isn't spared. Lifeshapers transformed into bloodlilys, a plant ambush predators with magic and skill that would hide them in plain sight of a mortal, covered by greater invisibility and mind blank and a dozen other obscuring spells, cast by me personally that the sight couldn't pierce the magics or fail in any way. Dwarven Engineers and Rangers are stationed to take out any mage that so much as twitches with their runed antimagic rifles.
"So, you are the Mysterious Raj," the pretender says, mispronouncing the name just like his subject would have " the man responsible for the disappearance of the Troll King Under The Mountain."
He pauses, and a wry smile graces the illusions face, the actor mimicking the lord protector's mannerisms to an unnatural degree.
"I would say that your method of contacting me was quite rude, but I guess I can overlook that in the light of the service that you provided." He continues after taking another drink of whisky; I see a spell breaking down the alcohol before he can become drunk, but I guess he was only playing the character; it wouldn't do to break the masquerade so easily.
"I am indeed the one who contacted you, it was a hassle, but I didn't really have any better options. I didn't want to teleport through the wards of Westminster; I imagine the knights would get prissy." That was the gamble I was going to play, pretend to be an archmage that has been learning magic over the past few centuries and has come back to a very different world, it would be hard to disprove, but I don't think I could ever shake the mistrust that I am some shapeshifted mythic being, but that was fine with my goals, I wanted the specs of those towers, and I am getting them one way or the other.
"So, I found the nearest nuisance and decided to dispose of it as a gift for you and your queen, a peace offering to start our relationship. I thought a minor legendary spirit would make for a good gift." I say that and wave my hand; the mandala blooms into existence for a second before disappearing, far more complex than the ones that these mages can cast, my instinctual grasp of magic letting me learn in a few years what would have taken other decades. As the spell does its thing and the Troll King is there in the parlour, bound by chains of mystic fire that doesn't burn and chains of psychic might that bind him harder still.
The agent pretending to be the lord protector startles, briefly showing his surprise before the stiff upper lip of the lord protector is re-established. His surprise made sense; after all, I put enough blue and white mana in that spell to punch through their wards and summon a being with hefty spell resistance.
"Well, It is a unique gift that much must be said. I will accept it in the spirit it is given on behalf of her majesty. But let's not be rude. We can't exactly start negotiations until proper introductions are made." He nods towards me and makes an 'after you' motion. The Agent is not as good a diplomat as the Lord's protector, but it is often the simplest manoeuvres that are the hardest to avoid; and besides, this is what I want to do in the first place.
I smile a beaming grin and nod in acquiescence.
"I am Raj, master of magic, planar explorer and slayer of dragons, maker of gods and chosen of pantheons, the DOOM of Grobi'drazh. I have been absent from this plane for a few centuries; I imagine some mythic or the other probably razed my fortress, I will have to scatter their essence for that, but that's for later. But what is relevant to you is that I am a human wizard; I have been exploring the other planes to grow my knowledge of magic and have recently returned. The World sure has changed in my absence." There is an art to lying; you have to fulfil two conditions. First, your lie shouldn't be disprovable, and secondly, your lie has to be believable. So that's what my plan is, a refuge in audacity. After all, no one can claim to be a plane-hopping archmage without it being true. It was even the truth, which is the best kind of lie.
"You wish to propose a treaty to the queen. Give me your proposal, and I will present it to her majesty on your behalf. If it pleases her, we may have a deal," The Imposter says, insinuating through body language that it may not just be her decision. As if he has the authority to influence it.
"The queen Will be the final arbiter of the treaty, but I have an inkling that your advice may sway her mind. So here is my proposal; I wish to learn the magics that humanity has developed in my absence; I have wandered far from home for too long and ignored the strength that humanity has gained. Well, I would like to rectify that; teach me everything that gives humanity strength, and I will kill any enemy that your wish. You wish for me to hunt a great wyrm for encroaching on Hindu kush or hunt down the yeti emperor and his raiding parties across the arctic, burn down the grove of the Manblight Dryads. Just say the word, and they will be gone; my plundered strength will finally be put to good use, bringing peace and planar stability to my land." I lay out my bait and a subtle threat; these were all mythic monsters encroaching on the magocracy territory, flexing my divinatory skills while also giving humanity the one thing they couldn't do without ruinous cost.
My spellwrought eloquence hits its mark half a country away, the hidden bunker of the lord protector not enough to guard him against that small kernel of hope light in his heart, a curse much worse than any I could cast. But fortunately for him, it was not going to be a vain hope; I will abide by this pact if he will.
A hidden beacon on the cabal agent's lapel transmits a telepathic message to him, and he speaks in response.
"I will convey your offer to the queen forthwith. I have a hunch she will be amenable to this offer.." The imposter hurries to escape from the establishment, his illusion appearing to walk calmly away while he rushes out and disappears in a cyan burst of teleportation.
I stay there a while, eating a very nice steak, and in about half an hour, a battalion of mages come with force cage generators and take away the Troll King, no doubt to pry his core from his insensate corpus.
Then I leave, opening a Gate to my new demi-plane, set up as my new base. I had recently started breaching into the 8th circle of spells, my soul growing in strength to cast more potent spells and my skills at shaping mana and calculating mandalas were finally good enough to do it.
1 Month Later
My demiplane is based on pandora; hundreds and hundreds of motes invested in the spell to make a self-sustaining ecology. During my months spent there, I have grown to love the harsh world and its animal inhabitants. Of course, I have dozens and dozens of life shapers recreating Pandoran creatures to make a whole web of life, but a rudimentary ecology has begun to flourish here.
My council and I sit in the canopy of the singular home tree of the demiplane. Things have changed since we conquered the troll king.
The biggest change is the new member that has joined us.
Nestor The Troll King. I had taken a few hours to make a summoning pattern of the Original before handing him over, and some of his daughters and sons were resurrected for this purpose as well. I let them go after that; their vows of vengeance hold no fear for me or mine.
Now I had patterns for Troll Champions, Troll Hag-Witches and Troll Kings. Nestor was their representative, and he is a kind, calm and curious leader. I don't know him well yet, I have only spent a few days with him since I created him, but the time I spent was pleasant, contemplating philosophical questions raised by magics and hunting food and cooking it in the wild.
Thror had grown more confident in himself and his people. They have decided to make this world and this demiplane their home, as the first outpost of the Second Chance. Now they were busy creating a mountain in the middle of the Demiplane, with conjured metals and stone being carefully arranged by mining guilds to make a natural mountain. I will probably have to spend thousands of motes of mana, so the demiplane is large enough to hold an entire nation of millions of dwarfs. Thror has spent all this time in furious planning, making sure that they wring enough out of me that they can survive on their own for a thousand years if I die out there exploring the planes.
So, I am running on a mana deficit for the first time. Now, normally, I tap my lands for mana every hour, instinctively. My number of connections nets me about a dozen mana of each colour every hour. So I usually am able to stockpile these motes. I have stored thousands of mana inside my soul at this point, in a balance after my misstep in the dwarf world almost cost me defeat. But I have been summoning thousands of dwarfs and expanding the size of the demiplane, so it is leading to a situation where I am low on mana, a few hundred motes at most. But it should stabilise in a few more months; Once I summon the full five hundred thousand dwarfs that Thror wants to start with.
Blossom has been the one to change the least, but even he has grown in power once they and their people took up the task of recreating the Pandoran ecology. I had asked Thror if that was dangerous for his people, but he had waved it off; his people needed the things to keep their warrior skills sharp and their larders full. Bloom was the first Archdruid to breach the 8th circle of Druidry, and soon, their people had followed, alongside the pattern evolving to mirror that inside my soul.
"The projections are looking to be on track; The first Hold will be up in 3 months, and with the help of my esteemed colleagues, it can probably be expedited even more." Thror, as he says
"My People have settled in as well; it is going to be a harrowing journey; building a culture is going to be hard, especially if we don't want to be cultural clones of the others, no offence." Nero says to the others " I want us to be more than brutes, more than disposable pawns of old monsters. But we are not like you; brutality is in our blood. It is pleasing to crush the bones of your foes underfoot and break their skulls. It is a conundrum how to build a peaceful culture that loves violence. I am trying a few solutions you guys suggested; the creator's suggestion of bloodsports is a suitable release valve. The Idea of Mercenary Bands, as suggested by Thror, will likely have to be put on hold until the witches learn how to do interplanar travel. The recreation drugs from bloom are appreciated."
I nod in understanding.
"I hope you figure it out, as per your request; I will not interfere with your development, but know that as long as I live, you can depend on me for any material help I can provide. It is an admirable path you have chosen for your people."
"I appreciate the thought; it's a hard decision, knowing that your people's culture is linked to a pattern in a random wizard's soul. Will they call me a troll president if we have a democracy, or will our children be the ones to change it to a troll botanist? But it is something we are still thankful for; I don't mean to sound unappreciated. We have a chance actually to learn and grow in a secure location with amicable neighbours and a bright future." It's a tricky question his word provoke, making me question Whether using summons is moral.
I shove the question away; I am already using them to an unreal scale; its no time to back out now. I will follow humanity's oldest instinct for me and double down.
The meeting continues like this for a while, more a bunch of friends hanging out and musing on the future than a ruling council, but it is a fun time; once the heavier questions have been dealt with, Blossom tells me about his hobby of growing bonsai trees while Thror tells about a batch of beer he is brewing, Nestor showcases the bodypaint work he is doing on some troll models.
I retire for the night with a sad realisation that I have lost most of my pre-walking hobbies; I don't read anymore or watch movies, and now most of my time is spent on magical skills and research. Don't get me wrong, I love the wonder of magic and discovering new things, but there are only so many hours you can spend tweaking the 3d mandalas for a spell that creates a demiplane and instead accidentally turns the space around you into a kaleidoscope. Maybe I will take up carving again; that's a good skill that I share with some of my master craftsmen; it would be fun to just work on this skill for a bit.
I try carving a small statuette of a thantor, my familiar serving as a very restless model, but I muddle through, it's unfinished, and it looks hideous besides, but it brings me a sense of contentment, so I am pretty happy with it.
Then I move on to what feels like my day job, magical experiments.
The biggest discovery is I figured out what Essence is and how it works. I had to scan quite a few troll kings to find common ground and notice the pattern in their metaphysical makeup. After a battery of divination and necromantic spells, I have a rough idea of how it works, especially after I copied some research that some Haitian mages are doing regarding their ancestor spirits and the loa and its interaction with the living that they ride.
Essence is a mixture of the cast-off shedding of the soul, mixing with potent life energy to make a fairly unique power source.
The soul is a Nigh-indestructible energy pattern that can persist against things like time, death, or myriad other forces. It's often subtly different across all the planes I have been to so far; for example, the Na'vi lacked the ontological organs that allow souls to naturally manipulate magic. But it shares enough similarities that I used the Soul Forging technique I learned from Qyburn and his works to graft those pieces on their souls, so it becomes a natural extension of their souls after the ritual.
The demihumans and monsters on this world are elemental spirits at their most fundamental; some have been adapted to this plane for so long that they are barely different from your average rabbit, but it means their souls are different from a mundane being of this plane. This includes the human; their entire magical tradition is their soul channelling elemental energy for their affinity planes and using that to enact magic. This means their souls are miniature portals to the elemental planes. This means that often there is leakage of energy the stronger you are and the stronger your magic is, as a higher level of magic requires more elemental mana and more power passing through their souls. This means their souls are constantly shedding power from their souls, slowly making the area more of their elemental preference.
The other part of the puzzle is the physical nature of the creatures. Life force is the magical vitality that all living creatures have; it's what allows a dragon to survive a fall from 1000 meters and allows it to be unaging. Every living being so far has had it on this plane. The Dwarf world had it as well; the Navi didn't. They were all chemical reactions supporting their body. It's a magical equivalent of your internal organs and bones; it makes you tougher, supports your life, and lets you do cool things like bench press a boulder. It is a very physical and personal force, I haven't heard anyone shoot life force bolts, but I am not omniscient so that they may exist. It basically lets you overcome the limits of hard biology.
What happens when this constant outpouring of energy from the soul interacts with the life energy of a living being? Nothing much at first; most beings' life forces and magic are too weak to have any meaningful full interaction. But once you become old enough and magical enough, like elder dragons, giant patriarchs, and titan apes, you begin generating essence. It is your soul's energy uplighting your life force and allowing a metaphysical weight and flexibility it normally lacks.
It lets you grow beyond your limits, letting you do things like soaking an entire mountain and making it a metaphysical part of yourself or letting you imbue it in your children so they become stronger passively.
Unfortunately, I can't use it; my soul is exceedingly efficient; once it gets hold of a mote of mana, it doesn't let it go. So I can't radiate energy like that, and if I modified myself to do that, I would bleed mana like a sieve. So it's out for me. But there is good news, I have isolated it and can add it as a soul-forged graft onto my summons, whether already summoned or ones I will summon in the future. That should make them all get stronger the more they age.
I asked a few of the dwarfs to act as volunteers to roll it out to the entire species, and they haven't shown any adverse effects, no violent decompression of the soul membrane, no cascade collapse of their auric ecosystem, no calcification of the life energy. That last one was the biggest concern I had for it. Dawi souls are metaphysically carved from rock, children of the elemental earth and that affinity could have easily led to the energy turning them into stone; that's what happens when a dwarf uses sorcery according to the lore keepers and their record of the chaos dwarf sorcerers. But so far, the grafts have melded in naturally, and there are no side effects, will probably wait a few months before declaring it a complete success.
I have spent most of my time doing that this past month, but I started two new pieces of research projects for my shaman and arch-druid assistants. These bands of nature spirits have been sent into the wider world to research natural phenomena that I think have merit. They have been diving and locating nodes of mana crystals, the same crystals that humanity processes into their currency and energy source.
They have been observing the natural currents of mana and geographic conditions that lead to the formation of these mana crystal nodes and the process that they undergo to crystalise environmental mana.
It's a major part of my plans to proliferate these towers to worlds under threat to act as hardpoints and centres of civilisation for terraforming new worlds. Gigatons of these Crystals are required to operate these towers annually, and they haven't appeared on any other plane I have been on. So I need to understand how they work so I can replicate or at least substitute them.
That's why the team is a group of shamans and arch-druids. The shamans are experts in binding ephemeral energies to physical actions and vice versa alongside manipulation of high-energy magical infrastructure. At the same time, the Arch-druids are experts in communing with nature and studying natural phenomena and are some of my best spell crafters.
They haven't found any results yet, but I expect the process to take months of observation, so I am not in a hurry.
Just as the leader of this research group finishes their operation reports, sending blooms in my ear, my wards letting it through after a bit of scrutiny. I smile as I backtrace the magic to the Lord Protector's Office. The message is simple but welcome.
"The Queen wishes to talk about your first target. The treaty will be signed there as well."
Chapter 16It's not the first time I am meeting the empress of a magical empire. But the characters of the two empresses couldn't be more different. Lya was a magical pioneer who created marvels and artefacts and reinvented magic from base principle.
Queen Victoria is the ruler of a centuries-old dynasty, a leader who has led them through war and peace and overseen grave social changes. An ardent social and political operator who is a deft hand at diplomacy. But she is merely a magister, far from the strongest mage in the commonwealth.
Its different political structure from my world, the tangible power and miracles of faith have kept the church of England a fairly important part of the social fabric of the Magocracy. As the chosen representative of the god on this earth, it has given a massive amount of power compared to my own world's monarchy.
So there are expectations of how you are supposed to act when meeting, protocols and traditions. Now, as an Archmage of considerable power, I am exempt from the bowing and scraping, I am not going to do it, and I will disintegrate anyone that suggests that.
So I teleport directly to the front of Buckingham Palace. It's a power play, spending an obscene amount of mana to bypass their wards. I am immediately surrounded by the guards, pointing their spellwands at me, prepared spells ready to be unleashed on me.
There is a crack of thunder, and half a dozen knights appear around me, riding purple griffons crackling with lightning.
"Hail Knight captain, I am not late for my appointment, am I?" I ask faux-innocently. Lightning crackles around the man's sword, the stalwart guardian of the queen knows he can't harm me yet, no matter my much my actions are a breach of the Standard Protocol.
"We were told to expect you, Mage Raj. Come, we shall lead you through the security cordon; we wouldn't want to have any accidents now." The is trying to powerplay me, calling me a mage, the lowest ranked magic user of the magocracy. He also wanted to insinuate their defences could harm me, which was only true as long as I didn't retaliate. He dismounts, and his squad give me an honour guard and leads me down the labyrinthine corridors of the palace; servants scuttle and make way for us and ahead of I hear a herald announce my arrival.
"Of course, we wouldn't want any accidents. Say, that griffon of yours, is it something I could conceivably get access to it? I wouldn't mind a second familiar, something smaller and more fluffy. My current familiar is kind of too deadly for playing with children and the like." I realised immediately after saying it that I had gone too far. A knight's mount is their closest companion, the brother that has carried them through the hardest battles. My goading remarks have hit too close to the mark. I see his knuckle crack as he grips his pommel in a vice grip. His gait has changed; he is walking on the balls of his feet, ready to swivel and dodge in any direction. I am not worried, but I do feel a bit bad; then I remember he has probably committed war crimes for the queen, so I am fine being a dick to him.
"I would challenge you to duel, sir, but I will put duty before honour. But know this, you have made an enemy of Sir Curtis Hughshire by dishonouring my partner."
I just smirk at him; I would love to do some light exercise after this.
Then I walk through the doors to the throne rooms.
The Throne room is an assault on the senses as soon as I step through the climate control and privacy wards. The sound of the gathered audience is like a shockwave filled with the tittering of the socialites and gruff voices of warrior nobles. The sight is what is noticeable; next, an obscenely opulent room festooned with decorations, magic and enough hunting trophies to depopulate a forest.
As I walk into the room, a pall of silence fills the room, the crowd turning to face me. It seemed the queen was one for subtle powerplays; I was not told about the gathering of nobles witnessing this audience.
I shrug; my plan here is pretty simple, and the more witnesses there are, the better it is for me.
Queen Victoria is seated on the throne; her vestments glow with incredible magic. Each crown jewel is the prized artefact of a conquered kingdom, and the gold filigree of her sceptre is mined from a dozen holy mountains.
"I present myself before your highness to ratify the treaty discussed with the Lord Protector," I say with a nod; I am not her subject; I dare to treat openly as an equal to the magocracy; to maintain that facade, I cannot show weakness, they will eat me up alive if I show a bit of deference. The act of the ancient archmage is risky, but I have to follow through on it.
"We have considered your proposal and the advice of our most loyal protector. We agree to this agreement between you and our empire. But we have some questions first." The queen's voice echoes in the hall, and the party quiets down.
"You have promised us much, and you have proved that you have some means of achieving your claims. But a troll king is a gnat before an elder wyrm, and we would be loath to lose an ally so soon." Her magic-enhanced voice rings through the hall, and I realise her play. She wants me to prove myself in front of the cloud. If I fail to deliver, it would be better to know before I fail and provoke a mythic being, but if I succeed, she gets the credit for getting a powerful ally, and no doubt her position is strengthened in front of the nobles milling in the halls.
I nod and grin, for this plays perfectly what I want to do as well; the big play meant to wow the snooty nobles.
I had dug down into the faintly remembered history of my world and chose my diplomatic tactics, and I remember a trivia about kings trying to one-up each other in diplomatic gifts to showcase their wealth and power.
"I will be happy to demonstrate for our gathered audience here and present my gifts to the throne in a single stroke of good fortune; her majesty is wise to give me the opportunity." I say blithely, indicating to her that I know her to play and am willing to play ball as it suits me. She nods her head imperceptibly; to the observers, it may seem like a signal to continue, but I know it to be an acknowledgement.
I grab my bag of holding and turn to face the crowd.
"In the grand tradition of gift giving established by the wise men themselves, I will present three gifts to her majesty and the magocracy."
I reach deep inside the bag and present my first gifts.
So, I worked on my gifts the entire month, spending mana like water to accelerate a slow process of making magical items and constructs. Seeing my actions, my council had decided to surprise me, or thror and blossom decided to surprise me; Nestor didn't want to participate.
So, my dwarves had spent the entire month secretly doing a cultural recovery project. Hundreds of summoned runelords brought their heads together to figure out how to make golems again. The Dawi used to field entire armies of golems, with masters like Snorri Klausson leading entire throngs to slay three separate Everchosen. But due to the war of vengeance, it had been a lost art, with each master targeted by elven assassins to further weakened the dawi. But with an unfathomable amount of ale and more cooperation than ever in history, recovering the Rune of Animation was something they did do.
"I know her majesty is a fan of hunting, but seeing how the prey in these lands is a bit out of range for the hounds, So I decided to gift you some more effective companions." I open the mouth of the bag, and half a dozen Dwarf Steel thanator golems walk out. Each is a perfect replica of the 10-foot tall predator lion-wolf things; even the whiskers move as if they were hair and not impossibly fine dwarven metalcraft.
I look at the animation matrix with my mage sight in appreciation. The Mater Rune of Animation is paired with the Runes of Grungi and Valaya, making the golems into the perfect regenerating killing machines.
They prowl around the room, sniffing at nobles and furniture; no one in front of them dares move, their primal hindbrain screaming at them to raise their mage shield and fight or flee, but decades of comportment training carry most of them through without embarrassing themselves, but one panicked noble accidentally unleash a fireball at the things as one of their tails swished too close to his face. The explosion leaves both of them alive, the mage shield of the mage and the raw strength and magical resistance of the Dwarf steel golems shrugging off the magic with ease. After that bit of a show, I introduce the gifts.
"I crafted these constructs to be completely loyal to your august presence, your majesty. They are based on my familiar, and I feel there is no bigger statement of trust a Mage can make. They are untiring machines of death and the greatest hunters on their plane. I hope they help you hunt down your prey just as they have helped me." I finish my speech and notice the Knight Captain has gone white with fear; my thanators are twice the size of his mount, and they would hunt them by the flock if meeting in the wild; I think he thought my comment about my familiar being too scary to be friendly with children was a joke, but now he realises the magnitude of his mistake.
The Constructs slink low and approach the queen like a cat looking to be petted. Now was my turn to put her on the spot; she could appear to be scared and not let them approach her, showing weakness in front of her nobles, or she could allow my death machines near her.
The Thanators approach and the Queen pats their head like kittens; it seems she has some steel in her spine, yet, good, I want to present all my gifts; I spent a lot of time making them.
"My next gift is a bit more utilitarian, more of a gift for the nation. A living and growing bulwark to protect the people of the empire." I do a bit of showmanship as I walk in front of the crowd, getting them excited. With a flick of my hand, a map of the world appears, with each human territory marked in gold, red and black concentric circles.
"We all know about the dangers of the Wilds and the black and red zones. We learned and adapted to them" I knew most nobles have only gone out in wilds without powerful escorts " But some marauding beings aren't content with that; they lead armies against our bastions, slaughter the NoMs and damage infrastructure. So I made a solution to solve that. No more shall our cities be threatened; no more will they cower in fear."
I pick up my gift, and it floats above my hand, a giant seed bursting with nature's magic.
"This is the seed of an Elder Treant, Guardians of Nature and Father of Forests. They are usually extremely against cities. But I have shaped this one myself. Anyone can bond with it as familiar before planting it, and then it will sprout into a fully-fledged being, a nature spirit incarnated in an arcane tree. It can control plants and animate them as armies to smite humanity's foes, from Mermen to Efreeti. It will bear fruits all year round, which will sprout into treants that can also be bound as familiars, and a few hundred of them in a city can raise armies of their own. Of course, they can't attack humans aside from in self-defence; I have hardcoded that into their essence; we wouldn't want a Mage oppressing his fellows due to this gift." I swish my hands, and the seed floats towards the queen, ending my dramatic yet verbose presentation.
It is actually a collaboration between the Lifeshapers and the Shamans. They were inspired by my descriptions of the Treemen Ancient of Dawi world, Demigod spirits of nature capable of resisting even god and serving as progenitors to cohorts of nature spirits. They decided to recreate that kind of being; this is the first working model.
The life shapers made its body a treant as a base and then improved to the point that they could fist fight dragons and bench press a galleon. They specifically crafted its Minds, so it isn't a person or can even think. It is to serve as a totem for a greater spirit of nature, which was the job of the Shamans. They drew deep into the natural magic and deep into the dream of the forests; there, they gathered the essence of the oldest trees and forged a great spirit of the forest.
They drew forth this spirit to embody it into the lifeshaper's master peace, and the first elder treant was born. I was brought in to graft the soul bits necessary to form essence for this primaeval guardian, and it was complete. I took a pattern for later summoning; you never know, I might have to go to a plane with no forest, and then I wouldn't want to lack access to this demigod of nature.
It stands a gargantuan 100 Meters once it is planted, and its girth is comparable to skyscrapers. Its body is based on the redwood trees, the only plants large and robust enough to house spirits of that power. It can animate trees for kilometres and generally control and grow plants without limits. Its foliage gathers the sunlight and stores it to release blasts of searing light magic to burn any foes.
I also have lied to the queen; it won't be a bond of master and familiar, but more of a symbiotic bond because no human soul could come close to bonding with a spirit of this power. The shamans have crafted the spirit to draw more on its mythos as a guardian, and the human partner will serve to make human cities something like its domain as well, expanding what it considers its remit.
Of course, human cities are going to become mini-forests, if for nothing else but the number of defences it will give them and the enhanced production of being in a treant's presence. It is a beacon of nature magic, and anything in its presence will grow much quicker. This will solve most food trouble of a city and, with magical plants, many other issues as well.
It's a treasure beyond reckoning, valuable beyond measure; A Mythic on the side of humanity that will eventually guard every city with its children. It is an unfathomable boon, and that's why it's a trap.
A treasure so valuable that kingdoms have been brought to their knees for less. The gift is so valuable that every frontier colony will beg for it to protect them from the mermen shoals slavering at their walls. Every noble will struggle and play to be granted the honour of bonding with the seed and making their line the guardians of the empire. The few Archmages that the magocracy has will covet it, and so will the mythics that will know such power is possible to obtain.
This will make it the only option she has is to bond it with someone of the royal family, probably herself and ensure she doesn't let a second power block form around the elder treant's mage. She can't avoid using it because the colonies are under attack, and the treants it will constantly spawn are free troops capable of turning entire fronts of the Coral War.
I have successfully forced her hand with a simple gift, shaping the nature of her empire forever more.
This isn't a power play for fun; I am playing to be an equal partner to the entire British empire. I have to show them I can hit hard and on a scale that will meaningfully hurt them. She will understand this gift to be a demonstration of power and cunning, the actions of an archmage I am pretending to be and am, in truth, if nearly not that old.
The crowd titters and murmurs at the gift and the Queen doesn't showcase any emotion as she accepts the gift and, very pointedly, keeps it in her own hand, despite the aids ready with cushions to hold it.
"My final gift is a bit more personal to me. I have personally handcrafted it, inspired by the most famous stories of your land." I put my hand into the bag of holding, and I feel the entire crowd focus on that, excited and perturbed to see what my next gift is going to be.
I draw forth the sword and hold it aloft in my hand. A Black Blade with a Golden Edge, three runes adorn it, and a visible aura of magic surrounds the blade. It is made in the style of an English broad sword, and it radiates power to the entire room, drawing attention and adoration for the prismatic aura of magic that anyone with sense magic could spend hours deciphering.
This is the gift I made personally; well, I had the dwarfs forge the actual blade from gromril. It's pretty easy; I just had to figure out how to summon the Gromril blades that my thanes wield without summoning the full person.
This is the first time I tried changing a pattern myself instead of it happening naturally, but it was fairly easy because it was a distinct item separate from the creatures. I still can't make any changes to the actual creatures, but I can change their loadouts, as it were, but only to an extent that they remain the same pattern; a thane with an axe or a rifle is fine, a thane with a runic staff is not.
I am pretty proud of the blade I have created; the enchantment on this is very strong, especially after half a dozen failures I had making its predecessors.
The blade is obviously a magical weapon of immense power, so it has the standard features, hitting hard, hitting better and being nigh unbreakable. But the real coup de grace is the spell I imbued onto the blade.
I based this blade on Excalibur, the sword of promised victory and the blade of the once and future king. So I wanted to be thematic with this blade. It took me weeks and weeks of crafting and enchanting alongside dozens of failures to craft it. But I had distilled the essence of Excalibur in this blade.
There is this nifty thing that clerics can cast, a spell or prayer called Divine Favour. It is what it says on the tin, a god's favour on their champion, subtly twisting fate to make them better at everything. The only downside was that it lasted only a little while, and it wasn't very strong at the end of the day, a minor advantage overall. Well, I decided to fix those flaws.
I broke down the spell into its basics and figured out how it interacts with fate, destiny, or probability. Then I isolated those elements and discovered that they only work because gods have a certain ontological weight to them. They let the spell channel a bit of that to enhance themselves; it's a luck transfer spell more than anything else.
Now, what I did to solve that was what is turning out to be my customary solution, throw an obscene amount of mana at it. I gathered hundreds of motes of White, blue and black mana motes and tried to craft a construct that could mimic a god's passive favour. It took a while, and a few mistakes, like when I inverted the spell matrix, and it became a bad luck curse or when the matrix fluctuated just so, and a pair of dwarves playing a dice game got just 1s for a week, and they couldn't stop playing.
But I have succeeded after weeks of work, and the spell is much better than before. It has a spell matrix embedded in the blade, dedicated to twisting fate to favour its wielder forever. The magnitude of the spell was also massively improved when I spent five hundred mana Motes into the spell matrix. It's powerful enough that a person can walk through a rainstorm and not get more than a single drop of rain or a dog winning chess against a grandmaster 99% of the time. It isn't absolute by any means; it can be countered if one plans enough or if one is much stronger than their foes; in my case, I know spells like twisted futures or alter fortune to change fate directly. I am not giving them a weapon that can kill me.
"It can't be wielded by anyone, of course; as I mentioned, it is inspired by the legends." I throw the sword in the air, and an unnaturally strong gust of wind blows it outside the throne room and out of the palace entirely. It lands on the sidewalk, blade first, digging deep into the ground among throngs of tourists hopping to catch sight of the queen. Later investigations would discover that somehow the climate control spells of the palace malfunctioned for a few seconds to produce that gust of wind " There it lies, ready to choose its champion, a person of noble heart, strong morals and sharp mind. A paragon of humanity and a champion of the good. I don't know who the blade will choose or how; it could be decades for all we know, but it will only be drawn by its chosen wielder."
The crowd goes wild; I see a few nobles rushing outside, trying to maintain decorum while competing to be the first ones to draw the blade.
I just smile and take a bow, that of a showman that doesn't have a hint of subservience in it. This is fun; I should play the out-of-touch archmage some more.
The queen looks like she is going to order my execution right there and then. It was the kind of gift that will undermine her legitimacy among the plebs as everyone knew the sword in the stone decided the throne of England, and it would be something that will cause strife among nobles and lure young nobles to be good, to qualify for the blade. The sword will prove its power over time, and any attempt to remove it will be thwarted by luck every time.
"I thank you a third time for your generous gifts; it is a good day for the empire to have made such a generous friend." The queen pronounces, "Now, let's stop dawdling and make merry."
The crowd cheers and hollers, the wine having clearly loosened some lips. I am surrounded by a throng of minor nobles, trying to chat me up and make me more favourable to them. I mostly chat absent-mindedly; I have been to enough university conferences to know how to talk to pompous buffons who have an overinflated sense of egos. I have an eye out for the major houses, the dukes and viscounts and princes as they maintain distance, looking for more information before they make a move. I enjoy the party; the food and drinks are rich.
After an hour or so of mingling, a staff member approached me and invited me to a more secluded meeting with the queen in the private garden.
"You aren't what we expected. An archmage is supposed to be demanding and imperious, not gregarious and flamboyant. You behave as though you want to show off your talent, but whit what we have seen you can make, you hardly need the noble's approval to get what you want. Or ours, for that matter." Victoria says as she pets a fiery corgi in her lap.
I pause and ponder what I want to say, I am not going to be chummy with an autocratic imperialist, but I guess I can be polite at least. It's no fun if you can't banter with foes; I feel like that's what I have been lacking in my adventures so far, a foe that hates me but is witty. Hmmm, thoughts for another time?
"I just like having fun; gazing at awed people's faces brings me gratification. Of course, I am imperious and ruthless for my foes. But I am between allies now, am I not?" I say while squatting down and petting the corgi.
"We are allies." She emphasises "But you have to understand, humanity hasn't created an archmage since Sir Issac newton discovered gravity magic. It would behove us to know what kind of man we have bound our empire with. What can we even teach you? Your artefacts and magics are stronger than any we can create, and you will probably slay a dragon soon, so you hardly need wealth."
There is an entreating air in her words; a peek behind the mask shows a woman that is struggling to deal with a complete unknown. The uncertainty gnaws at her adamant will, a dread building up in her gut despite all my assurances.
I feel a moment of sympathy for her, a sapient to another. Then I remember her armies are committing genocide against half a dozen countries of non-human sapients, and my feelings evaporate. I remember why I made my gifts; poisoned apples. It's a terrible institution made up of evil people that will plunder a nation to benefit their bottom line.
"Don't worry about it. Its mere academic curiosity drives me; I haven't been on this plane for centuries, and I am deeply interested in the development humanity has done for magic and artifice. I am particularly interested in the NoMs; I have been thinking of taking some more disciples, and lack of elemental affinity is no bar to me. Maybe I will raise a Monastry and Tower of my own; we shall see." I muse, lying through enchanted granted skills.
"Before you make any plans, the reason we invited you here in the garden. We will invoke our treaty, a threat to the holding of the empire in Oceana. The shoals of the sea kings assail our shores, and the colonies barely hold on; we wish you to push them back. In return, you will be given full access to the shards archives." Her voice is firm, a queen demanding her due.
I flippantly throw my head back and drink the wine In a single gulp to aggravate her further.
"Of course, It should be a good day's workout; I should be done by the day after tomorrow; tell your tower architects to expect me then. I will push back the mermen hoards." I proclaim and plane shift to my demiplane; it is exciting; I get to test out my Elder Treants In action so soon, and I can really let loose with my destructive magic; I haven't really let loose properly, now is the time to experiment and push my limits.
Chapter 17Mermen is a gross misnomer applied by humanity to their eternal foes. It is akin to calling every single thing living on the surface a human. But it is humanity's nature to deride and dehumanise any tribe opposed to them, so they feel no empathy for their foes.
Those called mermen by humanity are hundreds and thousands of species of aquatic sapient life, birthed and sustained by deep sea rifts to the plane of water, dumping biomass and energy into this world since time immemorial. From the mightiest Kraken and sea drakes to the meanest guppymen and shrimpeople, all are different creatures with completely alien existences to each other.
But one thing unites them all, the one thing that also unites humanity: power. The unbridled might of the undersea sovereigns brings entire ecologies to heel as those ancient monsters play fight wars against each other in wars where millions of creatures die daily. That is the other thing that connects all beings; they all swim with death as a constant companion, for there is always a bigger fish and a hungrier swarm ready to devour them for food and essence.
Since the recent world wars, times have been unusually fecund for the undersea principalities as more food has been available through planar rifts, and more eggs have survived to adulthood. Now, that is terrifying for the world because when there are too many beings for the local carrying capacity to maintain, great shoals are organised. Massive expeditionary groups composed of the young seek new fortunes and bring new territory into their domain. It solves the problem either way for the monarchs; either enough of them die that the food supply should be secure, or they conquer more territory that brings more food for the population. By that, I refer to civilians of other nations because cannibalism is a significant food source for the various kingdoms and clans that comprise an undersea monarch's domain.
Recently, the Oceania region has been beset by multiple such great shoals, laying siege to the territory of all landbound nations and making sea travel and trade perilous. Each shoal is led by planar royalty and dragon scions, vying to prove themselves superior to their siblings in front of their progenitors. They command millions of fodder and thousands of sea hags or elemental mages.
Now, I am being tasked to put an end to that threat. I am not going to say I am excited about killing that many creatures, even if they are invasive cannibals. The morality of committing what will essentially a genocide is unacceptable. So I have to solve things in a way that minimises the bloodshed and allows me to really let loose; I have been itching to try large-scale magic in combat, to know my spell formulas adjusted to use my mana work properly and; maybe I will admit I do want to see some explosions.
Now, there is a way of threading this needle; it's the standard move of killing their leaders and professional army and routing the cannon fodder. It is not a satisfying answer to me; first, it ignores the consequence of enemies death. Each general is also lord of these shoal's territory, and their death will incite a feeding frenzy, rivals both domestic and foreign, will kill and slaughter to conquer those territories and their food sources. It will indirectly lead to a slaughter that will be 10 times the size I would prevent by stopping them here. It's the trolley problem on a massive scale. Do I save the Oceana colonies and kill millions of mermen as a result, purely because they are human or do I let them continue and hundreds of thousands of humans die, and I break my treaty?
Well, I hate the fucking trolly problem; I am going to make a third path and change things, so I don't have to choose. I am going to need help; I am low on mana, and it's a massive area, so what else to do but call on my creations?
I spend the majority of my mana that night summoning 3 Elder Treants and 3 titans to stand against the leviathans of the sea. Each lumbering giant nods at me in respect and promptly goes to sleep. They are trees; they do not think on the scale of humans, a few years' naps are nothing to them, and millennia is but a year to their perception. If I don't prod them, they could just fall asleep in my pocket dimension and saturate it with their essence until spirits literally start sprouting from the earth. I don't want that, so I send a mental order for them to stay awake for a day or two before they go to sleep.
They shrug in response and open their eyes, the movement shaking their canopies and generating gale-force winds. I feel like this is going to be an annoyance to goad them into battle; I am super glad they have an innate loyalty to me. Otherwise, it is incredibly hard.
I rest for a few hours, spending it meditating on soul crafting, napping in my enchanted bed and gathering what mana I can. I have a light meal of a fruit salad and a hearty dwarf ale to prepare me for my mission. I could just remove my need for food, but it's honestly not worth it because I enjoy having a meal; I still have some rings of sustenance, but it's not something I'm eager to use daily.
I gather a dozen of my Arch druids and hold a meeting, assigning a quartet of Arch druids to each of the elder treants. They will serve as guards and support in case of any emergencies and serve to counteract the weather magics of the sea witches. They will also be tasked with transporting them, a test for their new variation of the Fey gates that allow them to enter and leave my demiplane.
The ArchDruids scramble up the 100-meter-tall forms of the elder treants and find perches in their boughs. I feel them synching their magic with the elders, the mastery of the archdruids helping the demigods shape their powers to an astounding degree, each one now capable of growing a single flower from seed or causing every tree in a forest to bloom. The Arch druids are, in turn, strengthened, tapping into the unlimited reactor of nature magic that is an elder treant, pumping more magic into their spells and invocations.
They prove this new benefit as I command their advance, and three circles of giant mushrooms sprout around our feet. The mushrooms harmonise in a single instant, and a surge of green and grey finds us in a completely different location on the material plane.
There is a city in the distance, a modern metropolis under siege, kilometres of suburbia flattened and burned by scaly invaders and families put to swords. In the distance, a looming tower flashes with scintillating beams of destruction and walls of force, an untouched fortress striking down any creature that dares approach the city's main districts. Hundreds of thousands of NoMs wield wands in defence of their homes, holding off the tide in desperate barrages from behind transmuted barricades and pillboxes. Fireballs and chain lightning flash out from fortified structures of the tower guards, heavier spell wands atop golem engines providing fire support to beleaguered defenders. Mage flights flitter through the air under the defensive umbrella of the tower airspace, returning from deep strikes against the enemies' fortifications and relief missions to outlining towns and outposts that still hold out through unyielding will and a stroke of copious good luck.
The enemy is just as horrid as described, guppy and sigh people swarming, while crab people form the core of the shoal; water is slowly being pushed into the city, allowing the sea knights and crocodilian monstrosities access to the fortification. Constant rain buffets the city, hampering the defenders and hydrating the mermen invaders. In the distance, illuminated by spell strikes from the tower, are the lurking leviathans, gigantic sea creatures acting as carriers and battering rams for the mermen, stressing and breaking the outlying resonance generators that protected the cities and toppling the out forts that line the Sydney bay.
I have to be honest; it's hard to stick to my resolution of treating the mermen as sapient beings worthy of respect. It's all good and fine when I was pontificating in my demesne, but it's a totally different ball game when I can see them butcher people in the street. I hold myself from going old testament on these creatures, but I finally calm myself by repeating my platitudes, it's not their fault; it's the forces of demographics, biology and politics pushing them to these actions. It rings hollow in my ears, but I can't lose myself to berserk anger and hate; that will never end well.
I order the Elder Treants to march towards the bulk of the shoal just as sunlight starts peaking behind us. The battering of the city subsides for the first time in days, and we usher in a spring morning in our wake.
The battle slows as the armies detect our approach, I feel a new spell being loaded in the tower to blast us, but I quickly send divination past their buffers. We come ins peace and all that.
I don't deter the shoal; their response is just as quick but different.
A surge of water and a tidal wave surges towards me and the treants, and atop the crest of the wave ride the knights of the depths, mermen ridding sea horses their barding and lances swirling with ice magic, an aura of abjuration emanating from their shields protect them.
The archdruids respond by halting the mini-tsunami in its track, the power of 3 demigods bent to halt millions of tons of water from crashing against the shins of the treants. The knights look flabbergasted as their charge is halted in such a way. I smile as I see sea witches clutch their heads as they crash against the adamant will and magic of the archdruids. Each of them is one of the strongest spell casters in this world, and they have the magical reserve of demigods at their disposal. Stopping some magical weather manipulation and a few tidal waves is well in their wheelhouse.
The treants stride through the wave, barely reaching up to their shins. The knights try to swarm around their legs, losing blasts of frost and blades of ice striking their legs and glancing at the iron-skinned bark. They realise too late as the displacement of water pulls them under, and the churn crushes their bodies, leaving a bloody trail for the marching titans.
I order them to stop and plant themselves.
This is the secret to their power. The lifeshapers have formed a body that metabolises the natural energies, sunlight, water and environmental mana and adds it to their own prodigious production.
The treants plant their feet, roots stretching kilometres in seconds, tapping into leylines and mana wells. Their canopies glow for a second before they turn crystalline, capturing and absorbing the energy of the sun.
In two minutes, they reach maximum saturation and start using that excess energy. Fruits bloom on their branches and ripen in seconds before dropping onto the ground. So concentrated with magic are they that they sprout into leshys, dryads and shambling mounds sprouting and charging into the forces of the shoal.
It starts like rain, with one or two creatures at first, but it picks up the pace like monsoon rain, with fruits falling fast and hard. Dozens and then hundreds of creatures are born and fight every second.
The elder treants can do this forever, as befitting their title. The fathers of forests march, and their children fight with them.
The clash intensified quickly, with troops from both sides streaming in to achieve victory. The mage tower deploys a pair of flights to investigate and pepper me with messages. I wave them off and send a condensed explanation via illusions; the flight swerves before they can be picked off by opportunists.
I cast a spell to amplify my sound and stun the greater leviathans streaming in towards the fight. The lions shout echoes for dozens of kilometres and shred the weaker inside of the bigger monsters.
I proclaim, "Come face me in honourable combat, dragon scion or forever be marked as a coward who ran away from a human. Know that even if you don't accept, all that will change is that you will die in your command post instead of on the battlefield. So come face me, dragonkin and face castigation."
No one answers; of course, the foes are not stupid enough to challenge the master of three demigods, but that, too, is according to my plan. I cast another spell, Locate Creature, and find the dragon-scion hiding out in the depths of the sea surrounded by its strongest minions. Typical bully, only strong until someone bigger comes along. Not like I can criticise though it's not like I wouldn't do the same thing if I were in his place.
I prepare a spell, something I want to try since forever for my evocation studies, but I never have the time. So I precast this spell, and one of my druid's dimensions doors me next to the princeling.
It's a tremendous creature; a saltwater crocodile the size of a passenger jet with stubby wings and scales of a half-dragon.
It turns swiftly, sensing my arrival in its domain, its body turning despite the water resistance, its magic more than sufficient to move at an impossible speed. Its honour guard of croc people charges me as well, ready to lay down their life for their liege and most likely father.
So I oblige them and cast my spell.
The spell of contagious flame is an ingenious design by Lya, a beam of fire magic that acts as the carrier wave for a second spell form that fires after the first ray has hit its target. Then the second spell matrix triggers and shoots another ray carrying its one spell form. It's incredibly good for clearing target-rich environments and especially so since I put 50 motes of red mana into this thing. Normally the spell can only jump 3 times, but in my hand, it can branch dozens of times.
So the ten beams of fire I launch at the lead guards, and they look dumbly at the hole punched in their chests; then the spell matrices triggers and another 10 die and then another 10 and soon the entire body of hundreds shatters, most dying and the survivors running away despite their father's essence commanding them, that's to do with the cloak of dragon fear I cloak my self in. most of the other chaff become too scared to approach me, and those who reach me are shredded by my defensive spells and my water adapted thantor.
My spells give time for the dragon-croc to respond, and it does so by lashing out with a magic-sheathed tail strike. My contingency spell actives, and I am teleported a hundred meters in its blind spot. I don't give it a chance to turn this time and lash out with duel black mana spells.
A polar ray and enervation lance out and strike the creature, punching through its hide and its spell resistance. When the spell hits the creature, its soul is desiccated and frozen; it slows tremendously as its agility is shattered, and its soul is ravaged to reduce it to an ember of its glory.
It tries to breathe a beam of acid at me, but I impose a wall of force to deflect it; the hit melts thousands of remaining shoals that had surrounded us.
I summon chains of light to bind its snout, and the spell anchors it to the sea floor; the croc is dragged down by the white mana constructs and lays there sullenly.
"Well, kill me then, archmage. Know that I will never submit to you. I will shatter my core if you try to bind my spirit. It was an honourable fight, and I demand an honourable death." His voice is muffled by the closed mouth, but it still echoes for miles.
"I am not here to kill you, idiot. I am here to solve your people's problems that lead to these periodic invasions. I am going to give you a gift, and you are going to say thank you and spread it to all your people and competitors. You can't hoard it; I have already cast the geas for that on you."
I summon the thing I had my life shapers make inside a time-altered demiplane while under permanent haste just so they could finish it last night; it took weeks worth of their effort and strained their souls, but there were successful in their tasks.
The shrimp floats in my hand, happily eating the plankton floating around.
"This is the most efficient mana-to-food converter you will find; if injected with a first circle's worth of mana, it will self replicate till it can serve as hundreds of kilograms of food. You can feed the entire shoal just with the output of your sea witches and your entire kingdom if only 5 per cent of people serve as mana sources. I am giving you one of these mana shrimps because you will serve as an early adaptor and spread it to the rest of the undersea kingdoms." I showcase that by putting a mote of mana into the shrimp, and it drinks it easily, quickly releasing eggs that grow into a full adult in a minute. Sadly due to the rushed nature, it will only work in this world for now, because it can use the ambient mana that is flooding this world to supplement the original spell. It will take a while to develop a universal version.
I also have doubts about this plan; I could easily see these things serving as fuel for huge populations and thus leading to more wars and invasions of the surface. I have tried to mitigate that but having it designed so that it works better the deeper they are, but I am sure it will eventually be used to fuel invasion, not to mention the risk to the ecology it could cause. But the undersea kingdoms are voracious; I doubt they will leave enough to overpopulate.
I haven't figured out how to prevent invasions completely, but it should reduce 90% of them as those are the desperate crusades of starving populations. I imagine humanity will just have to learn to treat them as hostile nations with possible invasions instead of certain enemies bent on eating each other.
Now, let's hope this doesn't go wrong.
Chapter 18I fell back onto my bed after plane shifting to my demiplane. The mission has turned out worse than all my expectations. I saved the city and its people, but everything else has gone wrong.
First of all, I didn't have fun blowing up the merknights. They were fairly weak, and I didn't even get to use some cooler spells like Circle of Death or Power Word Kill. Killing them felt like taking money from a baby; I could have just put them to sleep and won anyway or teleported them away, and they couldn't have done anything to stop me. It's no fun having power if you feel bad about using it later.
Second, The Elder Treants killed a lot of Merpeople before I finished my fight, so I now have the blood of tens of thousands of sort of innocents on my hands. Sure my ardour about their supposed innocence has cooled seeing all the rampage they have committed against civilians. Still, ethically, they are only partially responsible since they are, at best, drafted serfs or even slave soldiers. So, now I am deeply morose; I probably should talk to someone on Pandora Earth, an Ethics professor or a Therapist; I have been feeling ragged and run down recently.
But at least I have a piece of good news as well; I can study the damned towers now. I hope they are worth the effort I have put in to acquire them.
It was not worth it.
After a few days of relaxing, carving a few statues and doing some minor research, I finally visit the Shard. The Gigantic tower is still thrumming with power, its wards still stand, and it's still acting as a vast divination array. But the gleaming black shard has lost its lustre to me.
I am sitting in the repository of the tower, and all the mages here are giving me a wide berth. I am sure they have heard the stories by now; the end of the coral wars is all over the news right now. But I am not paying attention to any of them. I am looking at the most advanced system of the towers, and I am just dismayed.
The towers aren't amplifiers like I had hoped for; they are projectors. Still use full for me and is a lot more useful for any mages I create, but it's not what I wanted.
I have foolishly assumed that the spell arrays of the towers amplified the magic through metamagical recursion or fractal optimisation. So, for example, if put in 5 motes of mana in a fireball, the one fired using the tower should have been the size of a school bus and should have been able to hit targets over the horizon for the same mana costs. But that's how it works; instead of amplifying spells, it just projects their spells to a much larger extent. So to achieve my hypothetical artillery fireball, you have to pay the entire cost of such a spell; it just lets you supplement your natural mana with a store of mana crystals.
So the currently running tower, just in the mode of its passive operation, is burning literal tons of mana crystals to operate alongside a dedicated team of casters to cast the myriad spells. It's exactly what my archdruids figured out when powering themselves with the elder treant's mana fonts. Sure, it now increases their range or area of effects, but fundamentally, it's the same thing.
I will admit I am being overly harsh on the mages here. These are very impressive and sophisticated spell arrays here, very efficient. Humanity has built itself the artificial infrastructure to match mountain-sized dragons and krakens. The primordial soul draws an immense amount of mana, and the body endures channelling that power, which is the birthright of mythic beings and their bloodlines. Humanity has built those things with its own two hands, free for anyone that can gather the resources to build and run their towers.
But it's not what I wanted, and now I feel foolish wasting my time on seeing their designs instead of just developing my own. I already have the basis of how to make them in the form of metamagic rods.
So, metamagic works by creating secondary spell mandalas that fit into the spell mandalas and enhance particular aspects of spells. So intensify metamagic increases how strong your magic hits with a much less increase in the cost of the spell. The cost comes from the fact that additional spell mandalas are still being formed to enhance the spell. But metamagic rods remove even this limitation, the rob acts as a focusing array for that particular metamagic, and any spell that passes through them gets affected by the metamagic at no additional cost, as the mandala already exists.
It's still an immensely useful gain. I had fully designed battle towers; It already had designs like large-scale abjuration schema and multiphasic divination arrays. The development of magic from individual spells to multipurpose systems with flexibility and the ability to effect magic on a large scale. I won't have to develop individual divination spells. Instead, the system can be used to manipulate information in many forms. I also won't have to add the metamagic effects for increasing range, as they are bundled in all the spell circles of these towers.
It may be a fixer-upper, but I imagine I can make this into something great. The dream of battle towers still lives on.
During this daydreaming of fighting armies trying to tear down my towers, someone sits across me, and I am too distracted to notice until they cough politely to draw my attention.
"You know, I felt a bit betrayed once I learned who you really were, but I guess it's understandable. It's not every day you have to investigate a nearly alien society." It takes me a second to recognise Emma Anson, the countess of Lichfield. I stand up and shake her hand, a gesture she returns with grace.
"I do apologise for the deception. As you said, it's been a long time since I had interacted with humans; after dealing with fae beings and elemental djinns, I have become very paranoid in my interaction with other sapients. Let us start over; I am Ajax, Arch Mage, Explorer and Scholar." I wave my hand and conjure some refreshment to earth, tea and crackers as is tradition.
She smiles, stands and gives me a small courtesy.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Milord. I will be delighted to make the acquaintance of the Single-Man Empire."
I raise my eyebrow at the sobriquet.
"The Single-Man Empire? I don't remember that being my title. Is it something the tabloids came up with?" I inquire
"Yes, it's the name of the man who negotiated as a peer with the crown and apparently has mythic beings at your command. Of course, it's a tad boorish, but the tabloids do like to make up fanciful tales. But I do admit; I wish I had a title like that; the glory of your name being written in the history books is a heady thing." She says, her coquettish town slowly morphing into a wistfulness of those who desire something they know they can't have.
It gives me a bad idea; I know it's a bad idea. But I am sorely tempted, fuck it, what's the point of life if you don't take risks.
"Well, I can't give you a boorish title, but I can offer you immortality of a different sort; well, I can give you half a dozen forms of immortality, actually. I can do it right now if you want, just for a small price." I try not to sound like a devil asking for a person's soul, but human stories have made this difficult; it's really hard not to sound sinister.
She predictably looks sharply at me and asks with narrowed eyes.
"What kind of price are you talking about? If it were anyone else, I would doubt them, but with your deeds, I believe you despite myself. So what will the price for this be, eh Ajax?"
"Nothing you would miss, and I don't mean your soul or anything like that. So, I summon my 'mythic' creatures by making a template of them and using mana to make it a reality. I can do this to humans as well; I wanted to see if I can get your pattern to summon human mages. They won't be your copies or anything like that. They can range from all elements, genders, magical schools and even souls; they are completely distinct beings." I warble out a word vomit by trying to reassure her now that I have proposed the idea, I don't want to look like a fool.
"Ok, Let's say I believe you, and even your deeds are pushing at this mass production of human mages; I will need to know what I will be getting in return; you said immortality, but what exactly do you mean."
"oh, immortality is easy. I can enumerate the options for you if you want, from the easiest to the most drastic. First is a simple genetic and soul surgery, I make slight changes to your soul and body, and you will never age. The second would be reincarnating you into something immortal, like an Elf or a dragon. The third is I do some more drastic changes to your soul and body, and you start generating essence in appreciable amounts; this option will strengthen you as you age and allow you to do much more extensive magics." I pause to take a sip of my tea and let my words sink into her for a few seconds before continuing.
"I can make you an artefact that will render you ageless and allow you to come back from even violent death, sort of like a phylactery but much more elegant and only slightly necromantic. I can turn you into a vampire and modify you not to need blood; this also will make you fairly stronger as you age. The last is I can transfer your soul into a golem that is in every way better than your current body, this will never decay or fail, and even this could be made to grow stronger as you age, but that's harder as you will start as a peer to most dragons."
I clap my hand and conjure up some illusions showing her six options. The floating images of herself as various magical beings seem to fascinate her, and she spends a few minutes just considering all the options.
"I must say it's overwhelming. Can I ask you if I can take a few hours to consider it?" She asks me.
"No, I am itching for adventure again; I might just be leaving the plane in a few hours, so you have to make the decision now." I wasn't even lying; I will probably chill at the demi-plane for a few weeks, and then I can just planeswalk away; I have been feeling stifled; maybe a new plane will bring me happiness.
She considers it for a few seconds, and then she says.
"You know, now that it is in front of me, immortality doesn't seem that attractive. It's strange, I want my name to be remembered forever, but I don't want to live that long. So I will thank you, but I won't be taking up your offer." She stands up, and after saying her piece, she leaves, probably so she isn't tempted to agree.
Huh, it's been a while since I've been rebuffed by someone. It's refreshing; the rejection of my offer is exciting, a variable on my predictions. I guess there is something to this free-will thing; after all, we can't have these wonderful surprises from hidebound automatons.
I shrug and go back to reading their infrastructure arrays; I think they have some seeds of potential.
"So that's your decision. I can respect the conviction; you are facing a hard task without any safety cushion." I say while sitting in at the head of the council table.
"Aye, The troll lad's words ring true to my years. We are grateful for what you did, but the ancestors entrusted us to you because they didn't want us to die. But we need to grow up, recognise the problems our otherworld counterparts society faced and learn from them, form a new society that will make the ancestors proud, so they don't have to turn to strangers to save us; no offence." Thror says from his carven throne, his newly forged crown shining with the enchantments that overlaid its runic matrices.
"Well, I am glad you have a purpose, but I can't help but worry. It is a duty entrusted to me; I would be a poor wizard if I don't keep my word. But regardless, I will support your decision; it is well thought out and worth the risk of failure." I reply, trying to articulate my fears but failing.
"Our runesmiths have learned how to make talismans that increase the size of the demiplane and how to open portals; we have a good relationship with the trolls, and we have built a council on a meritocratic basis since all dwarfs you summon are grandmasters anyway. I will step down soon enough, and then a new age will dawn for the sons and daughters of Valaya." He says while chugging a stein of beer.
"And you all concur; you all want to develop yourselves as independent people away from my influence." I ask the other members of my council.
Blossom nods and Nestor grunts his agreement; the Elder treants send affirming shakes of their heads from outside the windows.
"Ok then. I will be rooting for all of you guys. Don't do anything evil, you all know what that means to me, and I won't be happy if you do. But aside from that, have fun; I am sure you guys will build a just society. I have some research to finish here, so I will stick around for two months, but I will leave after that. "
"Ok, that should give us some time to prepare a feast. After all, it's a momentous occasion."
I chug my last keg of the newly brewed beer and slam the porcelain mug in celebration.
"Bye, all. I am going to walk away now; either the void sobers me up, or I am going be the first drunk planes walker; I shall find out in the name of science." Saying that, I step away from the world, leaving behind the last embers of a 3-day fest.
I wake up to sand filling my mouth, my head bursting with a throbbing headache. I sit up, spit out the sand and cast prestidigitation to clean myself before I have the will to look around. I am in a desert, a sea of sand stretching as far as the eye can see.
I cast a quick restoration spell to cure the hangover and swear to myself that I will never drink again; it's simply not worth the risk of planeswalking drunk. But I should figure out where I am right now; I don't want to be eaten by a giant sandworm.
Flying up into the sky at that thought, I cast some divination spells and get an idea of where I am, a desert stretching for about 10000 miles, and then the plane abruptly ends. There are massive oases that dot the landscape and several major waterways. These druid spells only tell me the natural environment, so I don't know where the nearest city is, but it seems a simple enough idea to fly towards the closest one.
It's a bit dreary, but I don't want to risk teleporting; who knows if there is a giant toad that can intercept teleports there? I don't know where I am; the whole plane feels unnatural and broken to my senses, and it's tiny by any plane's standards. So I am under as much abjuration magic as I can manage, and I can manage a ton. Invisibility, transparency, etherealness, and a dozen other effects cover my flight. Force shields, ablative barriers and entropic fields protect fate itself, protecting me from hostile intent.
So it takes me a second to notice the warning from my divination alarms before I can react 4 beams of solar flames punch through my defences, and my force fields, prismatic cloaks, spell turnings, and globes' invulnerability block three of the plasma beams but are dispelled in turn, the magic of the beams burning their spell matrices. The fourth beam heads straight for me, and only my emergency-cast celerity allows me to dodge the blow to survive. The unbalanced weight tells me I have lost my left arm and torso. More beams converge on my position, but my contingencies have activated on my injury, and I am teleported a hundred kilometres away, a dozen bound healing spells restoring my body in a split second.
It's all the time I get before my attacker teleports in front of me in a flash of sunshine. The concussive force pushes me towards the ground, and that's the only thing that saves me from the scything khopesh is intent on taking off my head.
I blink away, turning ethereal and diving into the earth; beams rain down around me, turning hundreds of meters of sand into glass. I come up a kilometre away, under invisibility, and it finally gives me the time to take a breath and notice my foe.
It's a man, bedecked in burnished gold armour, a khopesh in one hand and a flail in the other. My mage sigh has trouble parsing him at first, and it takes a few seconds to adjust, but once it does, I realise I misspoke. It is not a man at all, it was the body of one, and its soul probably was at one point, but its been changed, shards of concepts have been grafted onto its soul, and it has been fusing with them, being transmuted from a mortal to the soul of a god.
My foe raises his hand, and someone else teleports next to him, a woman transmuted god just like the sun warrior but a bit behind on the path of changing as compared to the man. She smells the air and immediately pinpoints me, a hundred moonlight arrows streaming towards me, I teleport away again, and the arrows follow me, moving with impossible speed to follow me across hundreds of kilometres.
I cast a spell, and a swarm of magic missiles intercepts them in mid-air, resulting in explosions painting the noon sky. The warrior teleports in and swings his blade and flails, I activate my more conditional contingencies, and an elder treat is summoned right on top of us in mid-air. The warrior looks surprised by that and lashes out with more beams of solar fury, his attacks gouging massive wounds on the treant. It responds angrily in its own way; a tornado made of acid descends on the man and drives him from the sky into a sand dune. It's a momentary pause as the magic is dispelled in a burst of sunlight, but it gives me the time to cast a spell; I pump in nearly a thousand mana into the spell and feel my hands starting to freeze from the excess mana spilling out from the spell mandala, it wasn't designed to hold so much energy inside it.
But I cast the spell at the prone god, and a massive beam of freezing necrotic energy strikes his surprised face. His plasma corona lashes out, trying to dispel the magic, but it's not enough; I have put enough mana to mimic a major god in that spell; it punches through the protection and strikes the god.
The enervation saps at his divinity and vitality. His skin turns sallow and pallid like a cadaver dredged up from the river, I see his sword and flail fall from his hands, too weak to hold them. He probably hasn't felt his mortality in centuries, so when my spell has sapped him of most of his divinity and vitality, it's devastating mentally and physically.
I fly down and land in front of him while the treant channels magic to heal the wounds it suffered. Its roots dig deep into the desert.
"So, that was incredibly rude. We at least challenge someone before we kill them. So, Let me introduce myself; I am Ajax, a planeswalker, who I have the honour of besting today." I ask the god as he kneels before me.
"Eldritch, you haven't bested anyone yet. It's not yet over. I knew your kind can't help but gloat, just in my reach." As he says this and burst into renewed flames, his divinity and vitality return to him at an alarming rate. He grabs me quicker than I can respond, and his aura coats me, smothering any magic I try to cast.
"You really thought that it would be so easy to beat a god, Eldritch. Your magic cannot extinguish the sun." He continues, doing a gloating of his own.
I try to signal the elder treant to act, but before I can, a thousand moonlight arrows pierce through its body, shattering it to pieces as its mind returns to its soul.
The moon goddess floats above me, ready to put an arrow through my eye.
3 Demigods also surround us, piloting mecha that radiate their own divinity.
I do the only thing I can.
"Bye"
Then I planeswalk away.
Chapter 19Something is different this time.
I am floating in a void, unreality clawing at reality. Buts it's not the void I am used to, not the same ferocious lack of existence that destroys anything that isn't soul-bound to me.
It's like a cousin, a smaller more diluted version of it. There isn't any real difference here; it's both just a lack of existence. I open my mage sight and sense with my spark, the part of my soul that allows me to jump between planes.
It's a scene unlike any I have seen before; it looks like I am in a dying plane. Its outer membrane is barely keeping the greater void from consuming everything, and even then, it has failed; the void has leaked in and been shaped by this passage into a slightly less hostile version, its an incredibly complex process, I can't even begin to fathom how you can have this degree of unreality or how you would modulate the change in these phases, but some process has made it possible and that's the only saving grace of this plane. Its tatters float through this ultimate darkness, small chunks of a greater hole shattered by some unimaginable conflict because some of the damage I am seeing is artificial.
It is a strange step, but I can't stay here forever; even my much stronger soul is being eaten away by this darkness, so I find a different shard of reality and Walk to it.
I emerge in a desolate void again, but it is just the unforgiving void of space, just another part of reality. Sure I have trouble breathing for a second because of all my dispelled passives, but I quickly fix that with a few spells and heal the nerve damage and necrosis. It's not a big deal; I don't need my body to think or cast spells; it just prevents me from becoming a plane-walking ghost, so minimally important in the grand scheme of things.
The shard of a broken plane is small, just a few hundred kilometres of empty space. But it serves my purpose; I spend a few hours conjuring rock and soil and casting planar refuge to create a habitable floating island in that realm.
So I have a decision to make. I can simply leave this plane, walk out of here and find a new place. But that's a cowardly move. This is exactly the kind of place where I can do the most good. It's also an amazing opportunity to learn about planar engineering and metastructural magic systems. Because it almost certainly leads to the death of billions of people if I don't do anything. Physics is actively failing in some of those planes; a soul can only protect a person from hostile physics for so long.
To do that, I need to make some infrastructure.
So I have been researching the power generation of several civilisations in the previous plane. There is one main way that they acquire and use large amounts of magic, rifts from the elemental planes dumping a silver of their infinite magic on the material plane.
So I had to figure out how to adapt a phenomenon that isn't metaphysically supported by most realities because infinite planes of energy are rare and even those that exist are really dangerous.
So, designing the enchantment for opening the planar rift and stabilising and creating harvesting systems for the magic is fairly trivial; it's just basic attunement and channelling mandalas with some unobtanium framework to anchor the spells. The problem is where to aim that rift,
I was bashing my head against that for an entire week until a dwarven runelord saw my problems and just asked me a simple question in the signature straightforward manner of the dwarfs.
"If those planes don't exist, why not just make one? You made this demiplane already; it can't be that hard."
That gave me the idea that eventually lead me to my solution.
Of course, I didn't create an infinite plane of magic; I don't have the faintest idea of how even to do that, and I lack the power even if I knew how.
My quantum plane solution is a bit of magic and physics hack to get around those limitations. I created, after many failures and regrown limbs, a variant of creating a demiplane that can dump infinite magic into a universe.
It works by creating a plane completely inaccessible to reality, the rift being the only way to connect to it. This spell takes a lot of power, but the plane is put into a state of superimposition since no one can observe or access the plane; magically, it can be anything, from a plane of magic to a room the size of a closet. But since no observer can confirm its existence, the potential for an infinite plane of magic exists, and my magic harness that potential, converting it into pure magical power. The potential isn't reduced because it is potentially infinite, and that potentiality is transformed into actuality through magic.
It's the first piece of real fundamental magical research that I have done, and I am really proud of it.
So I spend days transmuting and conjuring unobtanium and building the giant pyramid that is the outer shell of the rift generator. The edifice is inscribed with mandalas and runes to channel the magic generator and reinforce the structure itself, alongside a suite of defensive spell arrays.
After that productive week, I summon arch druids and shamans to stabilise and expand the plane fragment I made my base. The archdruids cast the spells to stabilise the physical laws of the universe and enforce a single set of physics, and the shamans work on the greater metaphysical structure of the shard, buttressing the failing pieces and pumping in energy and intent to stabilise its collapses. It is a shame I can't repeat the same process across the entire plane, but there are trillions of broken shards, and I don't have that kind of manpower or time to fix it.
It takes a lot of meditation, but I decide to focus on the small stuff first. That sun god's divinity is a good prize. Attachable shards of different concepts ascend you to divinity and give you various domain-based abilities. Even before figuring out how they work, I have to address the fact that I don't want to modify my soul, firstly because I haven't figured out how I planeswalk exactly, and secondly, it naturally gets stronger the more planes I travel; hence my lack of fear for physical death, my soul is strong enough that I can literally just walk around as a soul and recreate my body. Theoretically, at least, for obvious reasons, I haven't tried to do it yet.
But as I look around at my clearing and notice thanator playing with a shape-shifted archdruid, an idea comes to mind, a wonderful but crazy idea.
I am floating in the local void again, a soul floating in nothingness and feel the sparks of dying planes as their laws of physics fail and space itself collapses. I float to them, bearing the soft pain of nonexistence on my soul; I watch the void preditors as they dance and revel in the destruction of another shard of existence. Dark facsimiles of people and beings, aping structure and existence just to bring an end to the entire plane and then melt back into the void again, to repeat it somewhere else.
But this time is different; someone else is hunting them now, that can follow them back into the broken reality.
I pounce on the biggest one, wielding my soul like a sword, cutting into its un-flesh and ripping out chunks of its fabricated narrative. You don't have spells, powers, or physics in the void; it's a matter of pitting your soul against each other and imposing your will on the opponent.
I feel the retaliation, barbed lashes made of cruelty lashing at my back, leaving scars and divots that bleed eternally. I push through the pain and grab hold of those lashes with my determination, cloaking my soul like armour, and I fling the creature into the nearest shard. Its form elongates, compresses and then pops like a balloon as it crashes into the inviolate walls of the shard's boundary. I don't give it a chance and rip into it with fangs of viciousness and hateful knuckles. I continue pounding, biting and smashing the creature as it slowly dies under my barrage, losing texture as its essence tries to mix into the void so it may revive sometime in the future.
Of course, I don't let it; a cage of curiosity is all it takes to contain the creatures and its last embers of ego. I planeswalk to the plane that served as the backstop for my beatdown.
A gleaming mountain made of crystal greets me, small critters with crystal bones skittering away as I immediately begin casting restoration spells and healing to repair the soul wounds I had suffered. Imagine the most intense pain you have ever faced and then prolong that to a lifelong chronic condition; that's what a wound to the soul feels like, extreme pain that literally becomes a part of you. Unless you are a master soul forger, it's just like normal wounds to be healed by magic.
Then I manifest my captured prisoner in my hand, a dark ember of the void that seems to suck in reality around itself. I cast it into a diamond, reinforced and enchanted, and it goes in the bag of holding, making it the thousandth and one of these neverborn that I have hunted and captured now.
It was an interesting discovery when I discovered that not all of the shards aren't collapsing naturally, some of them are being actively sabotaged by realty-hating monsters. Another fun fact, my soul is the perfect predator for those sorts, I can chase them to their void and I am stronger than the vast majority of them, as long as they don't get to use their abilities at least. That had been a surprise, losing an arm for an entire week before I unravelled the death curse of a prince of the void.
It is exhilarating having these fights, each of them is a life and death struggle and the enemy is completely reprehensible so there is no moral quandary in ripping their pseudo-souls to shreds.
It's been a few months since I have come here and I have been spending most of this time collecting the core of these monsters I think I have enough for these uncreated abominations to do some experiments I have planned.
I cast a spell to look out of the plane and wait for the rest of the court to disperse and then I planeswalk away, moving at a speed incomprehensible to humans.
I arrive at my claimed shard and smile at the progress we have made.
A lush rainforest covers the land, with distant mountain tops scrapping the clouds, and natural weather patterns finally emerging after months of work by the archdruids to jumpstart the ecosystem and the water cycle. The shard is the size of Asia right now, the free time I had between hunting had been devoted to developing a version of the demiplane spell that would work on this shard.
It's a fairly unique circumstance, so it is a very niche spell. But since this is only a continental scale shard, with nothing to constrict its growth that a normal universe would, no almost infinite space-time continuum constricting the size of planes I can make. It still costs more mana to expand the volumes but the thousands of mana spent on summoning arch druids are well worth it. It's easier to create organisms that will ritual cast the spells for you, so they draw from their own sources of magic and not my own. Of course, it's slowing down but it's plenty big for my purposes.
I take out the bag holding the broken uncreated and put it in a stasis chamber and head out to my house, to relax and practice some poetry and maybe a bit of flight ballet, it's really fun when
you can be supernaturally dextrous and charismatic.
As I do a pirouette through a cloud when something trips my planar wards and crashes into my dimensional bastions. I Walk outside and spot an angel being hunted by a group of uncreated. I smile and open a hole in the defence. The angel notices the opening and flies through like a streak of sunshine.
I fall upon the horrors, adamant will against implacable hunger. I cut and twist, weathering their blows while gouging wounds from their pseudo-souls. I am scared by the end but I hold two more remnants in my hands. I Walk back to my plane.
The angel looks around from its binding, warding circles holding it still. I cast a few diagnostic spells and look upon its visage with my mage sight active.
Its form is but a shell, made of soul matter to contain the angel's essence. A spark of primordial creation burns at the centre of the fire, an animating motive force that sprang from the true beginning of the plane. I see the fire encased in an implacable cage of duty, a clear purpose writ upon each inch of its essence. An angel is a creature of the primordial creation and they are all created with a purpose in mind it seems, a chosen duty that they have failed. I see the warping of the cage, duty twisting to dogma as the angel failed to uphold its purpose. I see the damage done by the fire, a fluttering guttering ember that struggled to fuel itself without duty.
It takes me a few hours but I can slowly read the purpose written on this angel's soul. It was supposed to be a guide for heroes and champions, uplifting the paragons of mortals and making sure they reached their destiny. It failed, of course, heroes can't fix the broken world. So am I the target of its search or was it a coincidence it found itself near my shard when it got attacked? I make sure my anti-fate-bending wards are still up and that my own fate-warping spells are working to protect me, wouldn't want to be trapped with destiny or something.
I release the spell and the spectral chains holding her shatter.
"Sorry about that, just had to make sure you weren't a shapeshifter or an illusionist." I say laconically, it's the persona I want to put forward.
"Understandable, the vile uncreated abomination is conniving foes, it pays to be vigilant." She walks past me and takes a seat at the lavish picnic I had prepared for myself, she grabs an apple and bites into it. "So the reports are true, this shard contains a complete set of Laws. I haven't eaten an apple in millennia, ever since tielo and his infrastructure was sundered by The Betrayer's legions."
I smile sheepishly and reply.
"Yeah, I didn't want to risk the shard unravelling because it lacks some laws of physics. It helped me learn a lot about dimensional formatting and terraforming."
"It is a Miracle of the One, a shard with all of the Laws can serve as the core of a new creation, we can beat back the uncreated and finally repair the missing infrastructure that has lost its guardians. Finally, lucifers madness will be seen for the insanity it is and maybe my brothers and sisters can come to their senses."
Ok, that was a lot, there's probably a lot to unpack there. But I am not going to do that, I am just going to ignore it for now and get the low down on the situation when she is calmer and less excited.
"Ok, well I am happy to let you have the plane if you want. I can just make another one. But I need to know you will make good use of it." I pause to do a few calculations and then continue "I can do something even better, but I will need your help to prepare for things, it will be dangerous."
"I am listening, for the sake of all reality."
I hold a thousand cores of uncreated in my hand ritual chamber. The mind-bending mandalas necessary to provide control of solid voids are painted in complex 3D diagrams, intersecting matrices that form a room of obsidian stone with glowing silver lines inscribed on every inch of its surface.
I place the cores in their proper places, forming a perfect circle and then I take my place in the centre of the formations. Then I begin the spell, channelling thousands of mana through the mandalas to form the framework of my creation and then I begin the soul forging.
The cores act as the seed from which the soul grows, the nothingness alloyed with mana to give it shape. Green mana gives it instincts, blue mana gives it logic, and red ignites passion. White mana gives it empathy and structure and black mana gives it the desire to live and the selfishness to survive. The strands of mana are weaved between all thousand cores, forming an energy matric that is intricate and entangled. Then I pump that framework full of raw mana, channelling enough energy to vaporise a mountain or give birth to a forest. The energy is poured into the mould and the soul framework shapes and bends and twists, gaining strength and complexity by the second. Then the entire form collapses, into a singularity of creation.
The floating point of shining light expands slowly, becoming bigger and bigger each second. The soul stuff starts changing shades, shifting from pure creation to a prismatic vista then it changes colour again as it goes through darker shades, finally ending up like its progenitors. A floating amorphous blob 2 kilometres in size draws in natural light, appearing as a void-given form.
It's not caustic to reality like its ancestors, the mana alloyed to its void allowing it to exist without 'leaking'.
Creator, I exist to serve. What is my purpose? It speaks in my mind, its nascent telepathy reaching out to connect to my mind.
I reach out in turn, nothing would be more traumatic than being spurned by your creator after creation. I am not going to repeat Frankenstein's folly. I send it warmth and love through the connection before I send proper words.
You exist as a free being, you always have the right to refuse any order I give if you do not wish to do it. Service is now what I require from you, I have created you for a grand purpose, but I will not impose it on you. I pause to send the complex ball of concept that is my ethical standards.
I literally had to create a spell to just send this information but I had long accepted it as time well spent. It was something all my summons understand by default but this is the first creature I have formed with my own two hands, creating a soul strong and complex enough to do what I desired was not yet in the capability of my shamans and life shapers.
I still choose to serve you, if it is a noble purpose then that is what I will need to learn. It says with a serene voice of an untroubled mind.
Let's hope it doesn't lose that sereneness. Besides, even if it said no, I have its summoning pattern already, If I summon enough of them over time I will eventually find a random one that will do the work I want to be done.
"Well let's introduce you to your new colleague then, she will be delighted to meet you." I speak aloud and lead it out of its creation chamber and to the first expedition bastion.
The Void Levithan's Kilometers long body swirls into itself until it shrinks down to a glossy black sphere the size of a softball. For a creature of nonexistence, it is trivial to shapeshift, it's not like they have a real shape.
"So this is the abomination you have made for my quest." Alicia the angel says, with a loathing scoff at the floating ball of the void behind me.
"It is not of the void, not in the way your foes are. It is an ensouled being whose soul has been merged with the void. It is not innately deleterious to reality and it's a good person so far, at least give this a chance. You can't do your task without it and it's soon to be summoned brethren." I tell her as we walked through the gigantic walls and into the purposed spot for the first expedition.
"Besides, you and the few angels that are with you won't be enough to protect the people that come here if they are followed by the uncreated. So we need beings capable of freely travelling the void and fighting entire courts, as well as transporting all the refugees. So unless you have developed new powers since I last saw you, you will have to get used to the idea of working with them." I say with a bit of anger in my voice, no being deserves scorn just for existing, I let beings' actions define them.
"I will accept this, as I have accepted everything so far, for saving the souls and reality, I will do anything. Even work with uncreated abominations. I am going to go to the first plane, my scouts have found a shard where the Laws are failing. I will get going with this thing." She says and teleports to the Night. The void leviathan follows behind, nearly unparalleled in its ability to traverse non-existence, I hadn't tested it yet but I hope it might even survive the true blind eternities between real planes.
But I couldn't help but be proud of what I have created and the work I am doing. The leviathans are the perfect rescue vehicles. They can teleport without regard for differences, they have a lot of magical, psychic and shapeshifting skills to solve any conceivable problem, and they can spawn courts of void creatures for work that requires multiple beings. But the best part is for this mission they can act as permanent intraplanar portals, by transforming themselves into living night roads, letting us mass evacuate entire shards.
That is the second reason for the pride, the Great Rescue. We will find and save every failing shard, every soul that we can find. I have been personally increasing the size of my Shard and it's the size of the earth now, after a few months of constantly pouring in mana and the lack of resistance from an existing reality that increases cost geometrically. Of course, there are billions and billions of people out there in the failing shards but many of them have godbound of their own, who have stabilised their own reality. So we grab the ones that have no one to save them or are being enslaved by tyrannical made-gods.
I hope she succeeds in my secondary quest as well, it would make Project Panpoly possible. It's not every day I get to design a custom Ascension for myself.
Chapter 20The waiting is agonising. Not knowing what's happening is a familiar feeling. I have always been an anxious person, I tend to get into my head. I have been waiting a week since the first rescue expedition left, I have been spending my time carving a few statues and learning how to cook food from a dwarven matron. It feels good to learn essential life skills, and a good meat pie is scrumptious but the anxiety comes back after a while.
I could try spelunking with some dwarven miners, that sounds like a fun time. Let's see if the magic has let me overcome the claustrophobia.
The first refugees arrive through portals opening in their designated spots, holes shining with iridescent colours. A beleaguered people walk through, first solo and duos, the boldest walking forward as a vanguard for their people. Then the dam breaks, duos turning to clumps and then throngs of people, a current of thousands flowing through the dozens of portals.
I watch from the aid station, conjuring food and resources, while the dwarves guide the people to new accommodations. The people are from a modern tech-level shard, with some of the first scouts carrying radios and semiautomatics. So they aren't surprised by the apartment towers in the background, as people are walked through a spell array that cures all illnesses and cleans up everyone. People walk with more surety in their steps after they pass through the curtain of golden healing light.
The angels fly through the portals, acting as beacons of hope for these destitute people. They are all the malcontents from lucifers legions, angels whose purpose was compassion and nurturing. They glow with a reignited fire as their magic calms the people and guides them to their new homes.
The people look wary at first but slowly as the reality of their survival sets in, as fathers can feed their daughters again, as mothers see their sick children smile again, and hope blooms in those people's souls. A visible brightening in people's faces, even the dourest smiling for the first time in years.
A pair of people walk up to me, accompanied by a pair of thanes walking behind them to act as security. They are both a study in contrast, but slight divination tells me they are the leader of their nation or at least parts of it.
"So you are the one we have to thank for saving our people. Well, Thank you. You have saved our people's lives and it is something we will never forget it." The first man says, he is dressed like a decorated officer, his chest bedecked with medals and ribbons. He is infused with divine power, not his own but the concepts of war, technology and wealth resonate in the borrowed divinity he carries, although it is fading.
"The people of Morivia will name our new city after your name." The general continues "Here, I have already awarded you and your creatures the high Highest Medal in our land."
"Look at you, Trying to curry favour with our saviours just so your scum regime can eke out its existence now that your precious commander is dead." The woman who speaks is dressed in worn desert fatigues, with a bandana holding her hair from getting in her face. She is carrying a sniper rifle with her, held in the crook of her arm like a precious treasure. She has divine energy of her own, a young god-bound, her aspects of war, technology and community like a mirror to that of the general but her countenance of vitriol tells me she is not any less warlike than the general.
"Wait a second, I appreciate the gratitude but I am sensing a conflict here. We can't have that here. Let me talk to the angels to learn what's going on." Saying that I teleport to Alicia the Angel. She is in the midst of things, guiding handpicked mortals to establish the new living space for the refugees.
She looks up from the dozen glowing sigils transmitting information to her.
"So what's going on with those leaders" I point to the pair standing on top of a hill now, watching over the people with hawk-like gazes.
"That's a complicated matter but the essentials are. The general was a theocratic prophet of Made God, a tyrant that brought progress and plenty as long as no one questioned its rules. The lady is Karmia a rebel, The Rebel even, who gained divinity of her own and rose against the Made God Tyrant. Then it's the usual tale of revolutions. Still, luckily for her, she won the military victory, her sniper rifle laid low the Made God Tyrant and now the prophet and loyalists hate her and her rebels. They have enough influence to split the population roughly."
That's a problem, these people will set the standard for the future refugees that come to this shard for asylum and if they are embroiled in war then the future of peace I imagined would be in jeopardy.
"How do we make sure that the war doesn't spill out and that other wars won't break out between different groups of survivors? I think maybe I can make an order of warrior spirits to enforce peace. They would have to be experts at intrigue as well, to prevent any underhanded tactics and of course self-replication." I begin to ramble on about the potential peacekeepers. Before I get too deep in thought, Alicia snaps her fingers in front of my face, bringing me back from my musings.
"Do Not Do That. As a person crafted for a particular purpose, you will fail. Sapients shattered the Universe in their pursuit of ideology and that's just one of the reasons for war, they seem to be adept at inventing new justifications for wars. You would have to become a tyrant worse than Lucifer and Michal to even attempt that task. I would stand against you if you pursue those actions as will any heroes I could gather."
I am a bit dumbfounded by that triad and that threat. I give it a bit of thought and respond in a calm and collected manner.
"What you say is true, self-determination is the right of all sapients, and that includes to right to fight against oppressive systems and to fight for their ideologies. But I can't stand idly by if there is anything I can do to make sure the bloodshed is kept to a minimum. It is just a single shard with a few hundred thousand people now, but soon this shard will hold billion of refugees from diverse backgrounds, even if I stop this group, I can stand here and protect people forever."
"Then the people have to ensure that people's needs are met, that they have enough space to grow. They need meeting places and trade hubs where ideas can disseminate and people can mingle. Give people a universal internet, so they always have information and peers." Alicia says with a weary sigh "Sometimes you just have to realise that no matter what you do, it will fail eventually but the only thing left to do is try and try again. The sundering has humbled me but it hasn't broken my resolve just quite yet."
"Those are some good ideas I guess. You have lived and guided more people than me, So I will try your solutions. But if an antitechnology culture starts a crusade against the infrastructure, well I told you so right here. But I hope it works out for the foreseeable future."
I say that and then another thought comes to me.
"Now that you have succeeded in your goal, have you gotten me my prize as well?"
She nods and I See her send a psychic message to the Void leviathan.
A shadow falls on the campsite as an Oblong Whale plane shifts over the entire encampment and blocks out the sun, The people cheer, overcoming their fear of the shadow behemoth in face of its actions.
Its body bubbles and then forms into a giant funnel, compressing its bulk in a sphere to the size of a Semi-Truck.
I feel its mental tether tap into my mind and I send through Curiosity and satisfaction.
"How did your first excursion go? How does it feel?"
Its silky smooth voice replies in my head.
"It was an unpleasant experience at first, the people in that place were suffering and they felt afraid of any of my Armsmen that weren't accompanied by angels. But slowly I created new servants that are fit for interaction and the joy that the people feel is indescribable to a psychic being like myself. Sure I had to psychically reformat a few people's minds to prevent them from committing war crimes before we got to their prisoners but I felt they were justified and the angels agree, those people aren't even dead."
There are edges of uncertainty and a bit of guilt in the last sentences but I let it pass unchallenged, I am not going to mourn war criminals, I might not have agreed with the actions but they are in the field and they had to make a call that saved peoples lives.
"Did you get the secondary target then?" I ask
"Of course, I deployed dozen of agents to secure it" The void leviathan replies. Then he flexes his psionic powers and a portal opens inside the faux-space inside him. The crackling purple portal expands and drops the prize.
A fifteen-foot-tall corpse of a made god, still pristine aside from the sniper shot that splattered its skull across a mountain range. I feel the dregs of divine energy in the thing, enough to make a person a godbound. But I hardly need them for energy, but it does have something I want. They aren't called Made Gods for nothing; each was manufactured by synthesising divine domains and crystalising concepts into a being of unparalleled might. I want to learn how to manipulate and create those Divine Domains and how to tap into large-scale belief systems.
"Wonderful, Project Panapoly is a Go."
I kick the floating crystal heart into the wall, and to my frustration, both the wall and the heart stay intact.
"This so fucking stupid. Why would anyone do this?"
The other test subject standing in my divination array shrugs in response.
"You have created a method of forging your own gods, combining an absurd amount of soul and magic manipulation, all to make a glorified mascot. It would be if
I spend a year making a doll for a child." I sigh and pick up the crystalline heart and put it back in the array.
"Hey man, I understand that emotion, if the zerubian stallions need a magical mascot I would build that myself. Sometimes a little hometown pride is what you need." Jack, the other test subject, says.
"No, it's fucking stupid to put so much effort to try and prove your ideology to be the best one, whether it's necro-communism or hydro-agrarianism. Just live and improve your people's lives and not SHATTER THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE." I say with an exasperated sigh.
"Well, you got me there, they did mess up quite badly." He checks the chronosphere on the wall and taps his foot "So how much longer are you going to take, You pay good money but my next appointment can't be pushed."
"Yeah, Yeah. I got you." I wave my hand and the floating mandalas of the diagnostic spells disappear "You are free to go. This is likely going to be the final session. The comparative data between you and that Made God is done. I can see how to replicate your Godbound Self apotheosis mechanism alongside the divine generation of a Made God. As promised, this information won't be used on this plane."
I hand him a pouch of holding, containing a 100 metric ton of mithril. It's comparatively much easier to transmute and conjure, compared to my unobtainium. But Jack's people will probably be able to set up their magical infrastructure with it once they buy it off him.
He belongs to the third expedition, with the Void Levithan pods evacuating their shards after the hyper-consumeristic society drove themselves to near extinction with their exploitation of their local metaphysics. I have woven protection spells into the shard's laws, there will be no kleptocrat selling people the physics to use electricity here.
But for all that, these people are often the simplest to interact with in some ways, they just want money and I have an unlimited source of that. Of course, I burnt out the souls of the magnates that hoarded the laws of reality on their shards first, that is the unimaginable level of greed that deserves non-existence.
"Thanks, Ajax. Hit me up in the future if you ever need a guinea pig." Saying that Jack transforms into a massive dragon and flies to his people's city.
I do some further experiments on the data for a few hours before I move on to my next significant improvement to the shard.
I fly through the window and over the burgeoning stronghold that is serving as my base of operations. A cultivated forest, full of glowing Pandoran trees stretches as far as the eyes can see. Magic pulses through the entire forest, in rhythms and waves of nature fueling and being fueled in turn by the forest. Spirits and magical animals frolic in the meadows and dales, thanator packs hunting Dino-mammoths. Life shapers toil in their Home Tree Bases, giant citadels of shaped and reinforced wood and living magic, leaking essence into their territories, claiming the land for their experiments. They are pushing their craft forward, creating new and unique life forms.
I fly to one such Home Tree, notably distinct by its Living Iron Bark and the intermittent sparks of lightning that roar through the canopy. Its leaves glow with inner luminescence, forming digital patterns.
This is the solution I have crafted for Alicia's suggestion of trade and information exchange preventing bloodshed.
I flow through an opening and into the heart of the tree.
I am greeted by a team of Lifeshaper Leshys and Shamans, shapeshifted into green-skinned humans to put the other members of the team at ease.
The other members are humans in lab coats, holding digital pads and computational devices. They are some of the best data scientists and system architects from a dozen different refugee groups, chosen and hired to develop the digital side of my creation. I have to admit I have no idea how to make functional information systems.
But I will also gladly claim I did a hell of a job on the hardware and metaphysical side.
"Heya boss finished with the side project. We were just finishing up the last diagnostic checks and everything looks good." Frank Adamns, my chief software, says while handing me the progress report.
"That's good to hear. Any problems on the UI side of things? I know you had a lot of trouble adapting to it." I ask to make sure they had solved the last major problem we had.
"Yeah, the essence tactile controls are hard to intuit but once you get used to them they are efficient, you can't beat intent-based inputs for control."
I smile at the response and nob contently. I spent months designing it and it feels good that it's ready to be deployed.
"I will be ready to send you guys your bonuses. Keep your chin up Mr Adamns, you have shaped history here." I pat him on his back, my 6-foot frame tiny in front of his 8-foot gene-engineered frame. He is a former cyborg warrior slave. He learned to code and broke his control shackles, leading a rebellion against his controllers. I offered to regrow his biological body and he happily accepted. He did request some enhancement, just so he and his cyborg comrades still have their usual level of performance because their corporate overlords still existed and sent assassins against him.
"I still have concerns, sir. The amount of power that anyone that controls these will be immense, I know you said they will prevent any monopolising but I still think you should have a more decentralised system." Frank raises our often-discussed issues again.
"I agree with you in principle Mr Adamns. It just didn't work out mystically. The ontological density required for them doesn't work properly without a centralised system." I repeat.
I should explain the system, to give context to the conversation.
First came the physical base. Which was a project by itself to figure out, took me 3 weeks' worth of work.
The Server Tree's Body is made up of living metals, magically imbued metals that can grow and change just like wood might do. The outer layer is Iron Bark, enchanted to withstand dozens of Archmages attacking it and acting as backup magic batteries, to store any excess generated magic. The more magic they hold the stronger their defences.
Everything Internal is an Unobtanium, the superconductor perfect for all the magical and processing needs of the project. It forms everything internally and serves as the processing and magical substrate for processing.
Then comes the magical bits.
The tree is host to a non-sapient spirit of knowledge and information. It was a hell of a time figuring out how to create an inherently paradoxical creature like a spirit of knowledge that can't think. In the end, I opted to create it as a Golem/Spirit hybrid. Golems are much more singleminded, they just wish to perform their function. So I crafted a Spirit/Golem whose purpose is to store, process, compute and present information. The actual coding was done by the people I hired but I directed the metaphysical process of creation.
I attached the essence generation framework to the spirit so that its influence will spread and grow stronger as it ages.
The essence will act as the interface as well. Since anything the essence is imbued into counts as part of the spirit/golem/tree, it can serve as an interface, as the spirit uses its power to read the intentions of the users and project the information in whatever format the user needs.
Of course, there are risks of someone trying sympathetic magic to try and attract spirit throughout its interface but that is why the metaphysical oomph is required so that any curse will slide right off its wards.
There are other miscellaneous things like how the spirit will grow stronger and gain more computation power as its information density increases, due to being a spirit of knowledge and gaining strength from more information. That is also a problem I had to fix.
Because my scientist pointed out to me, that if the magical density of the spirit continues to rise with time, then it would inevitability turn into some sort of informational singularity god-being, probably over 10000s of thousands of years but the problem still exists, I have to plan for the long haul.
So my solution is simple, the trees will deposit a portion of their power and knowledge into seeds that will grow into full Trees Of Knowledge. Neatly solving both my problems of the Singularity and Propagation of the infrastructure.
"But I have thought of two more ways to at least mitigate it. You can never really remove the advantage of the centralised infrastructure. But we can mitigate it. You should choose what options I employ." I put forth the offer I have been thinking of to Adamn. I truly don't know what the better option is, divination doesn't work with the integrated mind-blank. So let's hear it from the expert for this, and his team of course.
"What do you have in mind, I have some Ideas I want to suggest as well. I wonder if we can make it so that the Spiritual Interface itself acts as an anti-monopolising measure, I am thinking of a system that wants to be more equitable." Frank says with the conviction of a man that has suffered at the hands of tormentors and wants to help make sure that never happens again.
"I can't do that, even a little bit of intentionality in the golem/spirit will quickly be warped into a malign intelligence as soon as it gains more power. My idea was to make an order of guardian beings, something created to serve and make sure that access to the network is not impeded by anyone. The creations will be non-sapient of course, no need for a potential order of power hoarders to form." I counter his conviction because I had to think on a larger scale "Besides, decentralisation should occur naturally over time. People will develop their infrastructure that can treat the Trees just as another data centre. There is a reason I had you make sure the coding is designed to interface with even the most alien architecture."
"That won't work, without dynamic decision making, the defenders will lose against constant attempts, remember they only have to succeed once while they would have to stand unfettered for a millennium." Frank says, smashing my idea with the brutal wrecking ball of truth "The same applies to any sort of fate blessing, worthiness enchantment and any other sort of active defences. People will grow familiar with the system and eventually overcome them."
"Then what do you suggest? We are at an impasse, I think our current precautions are enough. The essence radius will grow larger and larger, eventually, everyone will have access to it." I reply, out of ideas.
"The best I have got for you that isn't a personal scale version of those is to create repeaters and extenders. Make sub-golems that act as range extenders for the essence and act as multiple points of contact for potential access to magical computing." He mutters, half in thought, clearly something he was still thinking through.
"That's just smaller trees, that will happen regardless as their gain more information and sprout more offspring." I sigh "I think we just have to take the risk and just do it."
A look of anger passes through his face but he composes himself, no doubt some skill he learned to hide when he was planning his escape.
"Very well then. As the final arbiter of the project, you may do as you wish. But I won't be part of this, I am leaving. I can't work for someone so negligent." He hands me his magical security bracelets.
"Me too." "I will follow frank anywhere" "Eh, I didn't like them anyway."
A chorus of resignations follows his announcement, both human and leshy alike. Those who believe in his ideals drop the bracelets at my feet and walk out of the lab.
A majority of the scientists stay but I can't help but notice the most brilliant ones went with Frank Adamns.
But I can't stop now, I have already spent so much time in this world and my wanderlust is stirring within me again. The Void Levithan fleets and the angels are doing their job, the shard is stable and expanding, I have nearly decoded the data of the divinity and most of my infrastructure idea is done. I can't just let it be as well, there are already reports of conflict between nations. I think it is worth it to try Alicia's Idea and that it can help a lot of people. So I will push through and whatever happens with the Trees of Knowledge is up to the people now.
Chapter 21The true void between reality roars in my year is just as implacable as it's always been. I thought the more time in the diluted nothingness might have given me some resistance but even now, all I feel are claws of unreality tearing at my soul. The void leviathan that tried jumping with is destroyed utterly, and the brave volunteer faces a final death.
I vow to remember his sacrifice as I step onto a new plane. A wall of flesh appears around me, learing maws snapping at my abjurations. I step away again, this time it's a dead plane empty of matter. Another Walk and I emerge underwater, but the water is acid and there is a kilometre-long fish snapping at me.
I step away again. The next destination I emerge on the edge of a black hole, I feel the inescapable pull of gravity, the all-devouring maw pulling in everything to continue to expand. My wards and spells twist and warp, shielding me from unfathomable forces. I feel my molecules being pulled apart at the seams, my fingers losing shape and cohesion. I step away and even that is harder than I have ever done it before, the graveyard of a star refusing even planeswalking an escape.
The next plane is safer, so I stop and I pause to take a breath, casting a calming spell before the building panic attack hits. I almost died there, knowing that my soul would hang forever on the edge of a singularity. It is a horrible reminder that I am still susceptible to death, no matter how immortal I think I am. As I feel the calming spell take effect, I look around and take in the plane that I walked to in my panic.
Giant neon signs shine their scintillating glare. Advertising about everything from medicine, food, electronics and guns. It takes me a moment to recognise the language. English looks rather strange now. I haven't seen it in any of the worlds I have been on. Its peculiar sounds echo in my ears, like coming home after a long vacation. Of course, it contains words I don't recognise and my magics work to correct that information gap.
I look up from the alley I am slumping in, my spells healing my spaghettified hand.
The people that walk the bustling street are stranger than any I have seen, not because of their individuality but because of their collective nature. I see half a dozen races mingling, elves, dwarves and orcs walking in relative peace. They are all unique too, cybernetic augments, neon tattoos, magical charms, tribal gear and a whole lot of guns adorn the people in a tapestry of sapience in all its heterogeneity.
I wave a hand and my clothes change, matching the synthetic fibres of the people around me, some sort of neo-cotton and denim blend. A pair of jeans and a hoodie lets me blend into the flow of the pedestrians.
I get a feel for the world when I see an orc woman, an office worker of some sort, walk into an alley and is immediately accosted by skinheads with human skull tattoos. So the world is not harmonious but I guess that would be too good to be expected.
I silently waggle my fingers and attach a blessing of luck and prosperity to her, just as I turn the corner. My last sight is one of the thugs stabbing their friends while stumbling over a banana peel.
Hmmm, Interesting, that was a stronger reaction than intended, I will have to look into that.
My stroll takes me out of the side road I am walking merges into a major thoroughfare. Its a gridlocked river of concrete, a 24-lane highway in the middle of the city with a tiny sidewalk acting to buttress a corpulent artery of travel. Thousands of cars are moving, driven by autopilot as their occupants are engrossed in some form of entertainment. People wear Glasses and swat at the air, like a monkey trying to flick away flies from its banana pile.
I notice how every square inch of the space is covered in cameras, both subtle and overt. They make London look like a love hotel, there is no privacy in the future. I cast a minor glamour spell, hiding my appearance behind a holographic face. I didn't really need to but I always wanted to be a spy as a kid and it harms no one.
I twirl the AR glasses in my hands, the design is fascinating, and all the power of personal computers in these compact devices projects an entire layer of reality for the user.
I feel bad that I had to steal these ones but the Corpo executive looked like an amoral dick, so ethically I am fine it's just those basic morals taught as kids that make me feel bad. But it is fun stealing things from people that deserve it.
But that's for me to pursue later. Now I have a novel internet to explore.
With a flex of my will, I manifest my panoply. The previously hidden armour transposes itself on my body, a sleek fully enclosed black armour in the style of power armour. It is a bulwark of divine vitality and is imbued with the concept of protection. This was the first piece of the panoply I made and thus is the roughest. A simple divine mantle that I can 'physically' wear. It interfaced with my soul, acting as a power armour for my soul and sort of a wearable divinity.
I don't need the vitality, my magical defences outstrip even its considerable power but it is nice to never get the cold again or act as a vector for an interdimensional death virus.
But the armour is just the base, the interface I use to control my actual treasures. The 9 Orbs of Arcane. The 9 melon-sized spheres float behind me, forming a halo of multicoloured balls. They are each a different colour, crackling with the excess power of the spell work that is their core.
The first 8 orbs are the distilled concept of each school of magic bonded with the greatest foci I can make. Each orb is a magical golem, each with the capacity of an entire Tree of Knowledge in the size of a Melon. Then I forged the meaning of each school of magic into reality and bound them together in a seamless union of magic and divinity.
Each orb controls a single school of magic, the evocation orb can shoot fire, freeze a lake, disintegrate a spaceship, and make a music concert. Anything that can be done with the manipulation of energy and its symbolic control can be done by the same. The same holds true for every other Orb, Conjouration can open portals, teleport, bind and create creatures or heal beings. Necromancy can kill and raise the dead, shape souls and make curses.
The 9th orb is the Masterpeice. An Orb of Meta magic, essentially a magical multi-tool that will allow me to combine and append any magical effect I want. Because while each individual orb is a crystallisation of their school, this is the bridge that lets them interact and mix like oil paint, and it will be the brush that allows me to make a Mona Lisa. With it spells of unheard complexity are possible.
A combination of Metamagic, Evocation and necromancy can be anything from a bolt of chain lightning that raises each of its victims as a Wight King to Starting a Fire by reviving it from the ashes. A pairing of Metamagic, abjuration and transmutation can be the creation of solidified Antimagic, a transformation into a Holy Warewolf. DIvination and Conjuration could be summoning stuff from the future or unerring blasts of powers that transport their foes into the sun.
The only limit was how many orbs I can chain together and how much mana I can supply and that will grow stronger with the strength of my soul.
If each spell is an executable program then these orbs are AIs that can make custom spell effects on the fly.
I begin my investigation of the AR goggles, the divination sphere lightning up as it pulls information from the device and thin air and shoves on a book I conjured. It starts with the basics, the make and model of the device, its specification and so forth. Then the complexity starts ramping up, showing me the parts and manufacturing process. Then come the basic principles of how the object functions and how it is designed.
I turn it off before it gets into more minutiae of where the metal was mined and how it was marketed.
It is an interesting read for when I have the time but its just a proof of concept of the process itself. It's not important in the grand scheme of things but at least I will know how to use the damn things when Interacting with the people of this world.
That's the big problem I realized when the calming spell faded. Being almost trapped in that black hole, forever, has shaken me. I have to confront the fact I have been living a performative existence. I pretend to do good but I am a coward in my actions.
I visit planes and make magical solutions to their problems, but I have been too craven to see those solutions through. I have thrown those miracles at the world and hope that they fix the problems themselves.
It is the actions of someone who doesn't want to do the hard work of making the world a better place, someone who has always chosen the option to run away whenever things are about to be tough.
It is stark and apparent, especially when my first thought about this plane is how to make a massive work that can fix the world and I haven't spared a thought about the actual people living here and how my easy way out would impact them.
This changes today, I will live in this world. I will live among the people and bear all the challenges they face and learn what it is like to face complex problems head-on. I won't swear off my magic but I must forge bonds of empathy with the people of this world if I am to truly try to fix the problems that likely plague this world.
Because that's what I have realised. In my pursuit of using magic to do good, I have failed in being a human. True heroism is facing the challenges head-on and not scurrying away when real work is needed. True heroism can only be done by those that something that they care about and for all my high-minded ideals and ethics, I have failed at the first step, I have failed to care about the people that are facing problems without my vast cosmic powers.
But I will rectify that now, I will be a human and I will do the hard work necessary to make up for my shortcomings.
After a good night's sleep, I realised something. It's easy to make dramatic decisions, but following through on them is hard.
Improving this world is going to be a long process, hell I don't even know what challenges this world faces aside from the generic corporate abuses of any such world. I need to gather information, set up networks of agents, get a resource base and then improve the planet. I need to do this, to prove to myself that I can commit to something.
That is going to require a lot of work, things I can't just skip with magic, like talking to people and getting them to do things. So I am going to make the first big change in my existence since I became capable of magic.
I pour mana through my orbs, necromancy and transmutation, I take a knife and give myself a small cut before flicking off the pooling blood drops. Twelve drops fly and before they can disperse, my magic changes them.
Proteins, Minerals and Lifeforce are conjured, twisting and growing. Like an explosion of flesh as the twelve drops grow into twelve clones, slightly altered to be fitter and ageless but visually exact copies of myself.
A bit of telekinesis holds up the bodies and I do the second part of my change. My original body collapses in a puddle of amino acids and my soul crawls out of the viscera, like a swimmer exiting a pool. A dozen spells of destruction and ruin leave my soul, erasing all sympathetic traces of me. Even the astral realm is cleansed as a dozen black blades erase the very space the body used to be.
I give one last mournful look at the place where my body used to be, my last connection to the world I was born in and my parents. Sure the Clones shared the DNA but it's not the same. But I have to do this, to commit to doing what I want and not just half-ass it like a dimwit.
I channel my next spell, a dozen invocations of the conjuration to like them to my soul. Then I cast one of the darkest necromancy spells and possess my own bodies, while my soul is safely hidden in a demi-plane to pilot my possessed bodies like fleshy dolls.
Now the real work begins.
I need agents to go out into the world, instruments of my goals that don't need me to micromanage them to achieve my wills
The best options for that are the dwarfs of course. Humonioid so they can blend in with the people on the plane. Skilled and strong, especially now that I can summon them as godbound beings.
So I proceed to Summon Rangers, expert spies and scouts. They were the sneakiest of the dwarven nations and can go where others don't want people to go. I bind the concept of Shadows, Exploration and Hunting. They can blend and travel through shadows, blend into an empty room, survive on an alien planet and track a target across the continent. These will be my wet work specialists, the ones who can go retrieve things and liquidate any targets I desire gone.
The next batch of divine dwarves are the Traders, Dwarves imbued with the essence of prosperity, luck and communication. These are experts that will form the Companies and organisations I need, the ones that will recruit my local agents and the ones that will turn our skills into local resources.
The lasts are the Skalds, Supernal Bards that sing the song of heroes and guide them to their destinies, they will find, recruit, train and bless the locals and allow them their own say in how the world will be changed. They will use their divine mastery of Heroism, Adventure and Music to raise mortals to make a change as People and not just get downtrodden by corporations.
While these agents are going to be doing that, I will be running a public front, a sort of publicity stunt to draw attention like a lightning rod.
Last edited: Feb 5, 2023