Dragon's Tale 86

“Impossible,” I murmured, unable to prevent myself from watching the Spear of Scipio as it slowly floated into my presence. 

It was truly impossible. The spear shouldn’t react to my presence.  

Not unless I had a bestowment ritual… 

The presence of the bow and the sword that was floating toward me didn’t make processing that idea any easier, but the reaction of the Spear was simply too significant to focus on them. 

If it had been any other circumstance, I wouldn’t have dared to use the Spear, afraid of the backlash it would create for daring to tap into its abilities. Unfortunately, the sight of three weapons floating toward me finally forced my opponents out of their passive state. 

Three of them sent spells at me, two of them sending balls of flame, the other choosing to send an earth spike. Yet, it was evidence of their passivity that the two of them still stayed focused on defense. 

Facing a rain of spells, with my magic still too wild to be used, my reflexes worked faster than I could prevent myself. My clawed fingers wrapped around the hilt of the spear and swung it in a familiar manner… 

One that I had been on the receiving side hundreds of times, and repeatedly using an ordinary spear thousands of times to perfect when I was just a young boy, hoping that, despite my heritage, I would somehow use it. 

A dream I abandoned years ago. 

Yet, that dream was resurrected in a moment that I never expected, a warm sensation that I never felt before invading my body as I touched the spear, resonating with something deep inside me, the thumping of the spear following the same pace. I didn’t have time to enjoy the sensation, however, busy swinging the spear, deflecting the spells back to them with the same ease my grandfather would have done. 

A familiar scene, though I had been on the other side thousands of times, usually hearing dismissive laughter from my grandfather with every spell he reflected on me, claiming that he just wanted to stay sharp while training me. That old codger even mocked me repeatedly about my destiny of never touching it. 

Yet, the spear was in my hand, obeying me, and there was only one reason for that. 

I had received an endowment ritual, a ritual that could only be conducted by a male of Scipio blood that also received the endowment ritual, and it could only be conducted when the target was a baby, just days after the birth. 

And, considering the impossibility of my dear uncle doing so, there was only one possibility. My grandfather had cast the ritual. 

This meant that all the times he told me that he had been ‘training’ with the spear was him training me, yet he never told me the truth, hiding it behind a layer of mockery… 

Like my feelings toward him hadn’t been complicated enough. 

Ironically, my ability to use the Spear of Scipio wasn’t even the most complicated question I was facing. For that, I at least had a reason to understand why I could use that. 

I was only able to spare a glance at two other weapons that were floating next to me, just enough to get a general impression before charging forward. One was a sword, made from gleaming bronze but otherwise unadorned, giving an aura of bloodthirst, the other a bow, made of gold and ivory, its surface covered with curvy lines, foreign yet familiar. 

Yet, I didn’t have time to focus on their details, not when I noticed four more spells flying toward me. I swung the spear once more, batting away another two spells back to my attackers, and dodged the other two before dashing forward, ignoring the weapons floating behind me. 

Patrician weapons were not simple tools that could simply be used once picked up. The only reason I was able to use the spear was the endless number of times I had suffered under its unique abilities and my years of hopeless practice to copy its effects in my youth. 

Picking random weapons was certainly not sustainable, as evidenced by the way the clunky way my opponents used theirs to defend themselves. They still managed to access some simple abilities like spell deflection, but that was not what made Patrician Weapons a strategic weapon that ensured the lineage of a Patrician family — at least allowing a collapsed one like Scipio to escape into Provinces rather than being exterminated. 

Spell deflection was almost a side effect, one that came from their unique nature. Their true function was their special abilities. 

The abilities were not that easy to discover, as my grandfather had lamented more than once. Some abilities required knowing the correct technique, while the others required more power than a casual user was able to invest — after all, not all families were lucky enough to have sorcerers in their direct line every generation. 

And since my opponents were yet to use any other ability, it was reasonable to believe that they either didn’t have to know any other ability, or those abilities were not appropriate for the current combat situation. 

Not that it changed the monumental impact of having that many Patrician weapons in the same room. If it wasn’t for the presence and the reaction of the spear — my spear — I would have assumed that they were just imitations, but there was no way I would mistake the Spear of Scipio for an imitation. 

And I was in the secret base of a man that was able to collect more than a dozen Patrician weapons to the same room. 

I really knew how to make enemies. 

Being scared of a mysterious enemy didn’t mean that I would hold back against them. The things I had done up to this point were enough to ensure they would target me forever. And considering they had the treasured weapon of my family — however complicated my feelings were about it — meant that I wouldn’t make peace with them in any case. 

Though, I would have preferred to handle my enmity from a position of strength rather than delivering it from their center of power with little preparation. If I knew the lengths of the opposition I would have faced, I would have arrived with better equipment. 

All of those, I thought even as I charged toward the five mages that created the biggest threat for me, but with the Spear in hand, they were not an enormous threat that I needed to risk my life anymore. Their earlier advantage came from their weapons, giving them an edge to defend my spell. 

With that gone, and my magic still blanketing the room, they were like a herd of donkeys to defend against a wolf. Technically, they had the firepower to defend against the threat, but lacked the attitude to apply that. 

Ironically, their problem wasn’t the same as donkeys. Donkeys would have panicked and scattered, and they were clearly lacking in such base emotions. Ironically, their problem was the opposite, the lack of fear. 

If there was one thing the endless tests my grandfather taught me, that fear was an even better weapon than anger if yielded correctly, the will to survive incarnate. 

Fighting against someone without a number sense of survival was much better, especially since we had the power parity once more. They had their weapons, I had mine. They had their dragon hearts, and I had mine. They had their magic… 

And I had mine, which, even impaired, still enough to challenge theirs — mostly thanks to the effect of the Spear, helping me to regulate my magic. 

What I had and they didn’t have was the endless torture disguised as training, and a desire to survive. 

I waved my hand, summoning fourteen bolts of lightning despite knowing that using any spell was dangerous. Just as I used a spell, I could feel the transformation getting stronger. 

None of those bolts were strong enough to seriously wound them, but they did their best to defend them either way, lacking the tactical ability to prioritize their defense. Despite the odd number, the attack was. 

They were spread in a square formation, with one defending them, giving them the ability to defend themselves from attacks from all angles. It was the most stable defensive formation they could create. 

But with that stability, came weakness. 

All that remained was whether I could leverage that weakness before my transformation caught up with me.