Chapter 53
Spending decarmas on gear was one thing. Even the compass was justifiable, and that was before considering that it had proved useful enough that Jensen’s master had borrowed it. Wasting it on disposables because he’d gotten himself backed into a corner was a different story. ...
2024-12-14 04:24:13 +0000 UTC View PostReturning from the Astral Realm was an ordeal in and of itself. Pulling myself through my own mana core was rather like turning myself inside out, and reversing that was far from easy. In some ways, succeeding in advancing to stage nine actually made it more difficult, since my new body was so un...
2024-12-13 14:28:57 +0000 UTC View PostBeing attacked while working was an expected event and we’d figured out what to do thousands of years ago. It was well known that things lived in the Astral Realm even before the first archmage reached stage nine, and had in fact been one of the driving forces behind developing a mage’s shado...
2024-12-12 14:28:43 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 49
“What the hell is a corrupted seed bearer?” Velik asked.
Torwin frowned, but didn’t answer. They stood over the corpses of three strange monsters, all of which Velik would have said he recognized. One was an enormous mist toad, probably the biggest Velik had ever seen...
2024-12-12 02:37:31 +0000 UTC View PostI used every bit of mysteel I had left to make the cage surrounding this room. There wasn’t enough to make solid walls of it, nor did we have that kind of time, but the cage was possible. I wrapped divination and teleportation wards around it, sealing Querit and myself inside, then I systematic...
2024-12-11 15:37:59 +0000 UTC View PostFive weeks remained. Ammun’s army was broken and the civilians had been stashed away. My allies were as kitted out as I could make them. The Order hadn’t dared to show its face anywhere on Olpahun, at least not that the gestalt had seen. If they were back over here, they’d come some other w...
2024-12-10 13:53:23 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 46
Fetching the remains of his spear out of the monster’s ruined eye was Velik’s first task. Unfortunately, the phantasmal shaft he’d constructed out of [Phalanx] had shattered into motes of light, leaving the tangible, physical portion buried out of sigh...
2024-12-10 03:38:09 +0000 UTC View PostI spent the first week systematically tearing apart the remnants of Ammun’s army. It turned out I’d been a bit too pessimistic in my estimates on how the evacuation would go. By the gestalt’s count and my own estimations, something like seven in ten people had escaped the collapse of the to...
2024-12-09 12:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostGrandfather stared doubtfully at the chain. It was six feet long, each link an inch thick and covered in runes. Thirty more exactly like it hung from a rack standing nearby. “Why would we need such a thing?”
“Because you have an entire wall of portals connecting Eyrie Peak to the rest...
2024-12-06 13:56:47 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 43
Velik froze in place and peered around, half-expecting his doppelganger to jump out from behind a tree and run him through. When that didn’t immediately happen, he took a cautious step into the champion’s domain. Usually, the monster announced its presence right away, with th...
2024-12-06 01:12:52 +0000 UTC View PostMy already overburdened schedule was suddenly stuffed to the brim. There’d be no sleeping in my future, nor was there time to oversee any non-essential experiments. The only thing I’d be doing that wasn’t furthering my goal of meeting Ammun in open battle and prevailing was helping Senica.<...
2024-12-05 14:09:27 +0000 UTC View PostReaching stage seven involved a mage anchoring themselves in the Astral Realm, with future stages building on that connection. It was a difficult milestone to achieve, but well within my capabilities. The hardest part had been finding—or building, in my case—a mana resonance point that would ...
2024-12-04 13:58:06 +0000 UTC View PostThis was the riskiest part of my plan. If I called it good here, chances were I’d be dealing with the Order again very soon. They’d probably try to be a lot sneakier the next time, and given that I was going to be entirely focused on a skeleton-shaped problem in the near future, there was eve...
2024-12-03 13:20:13 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 40
The giant lizard’s body slammed into the ground with a hard, meaty thump. Black blood trickled out of its mouth and stained its teeth. Velik stood ten feet away, staring at it impassively as four spears made of magical energy kept the monster pinned through its death throes. 2024-12-03 03:37:56 +0000 UTC View Post
The Elder Council sat on their chairs, more thrones, really, and glared at me with various levels of mixed animosity and fear. Rounding them all up had been a chore, especially once I had to start dragging them around while keeping them subdued. While I was grabbing the fourth one, the first thre...
2024-12-02 14:10:45 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: Sorry, I didn't do any writing over the Thanksgiving holiday and am just now getting some work done. I should have another four or five chapters by Tuesday or Wednesday.
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Chapter 38
The parlor looked a lot like the common room, with an old, s...
2024-12-02 00:47:46 +0000 UTC View PostThe Global Order of the Arcane was, if nothing else, thorough. I’d already broken down the exterior wards of Tredor’s research lab and destroyed the ward stone. I’d been expecting the remaining wards to collapse at that point, but instead, the interior defenses were holding strong. For such...
2024-11-29 12:10:29 +0000 UTC View PostBakir dragged me through two more teleportation jumps over the next few hours before he finally left the safety of the Order’s warded fortresses. I’d used the time to explore the new cities he’d been taken to, mostly in an attempt to establish some baseline of the continent’s geography. I...
2024-11-28 15:32:00 +0000 UTC View PostBakir and his friend retreated from the surface to the back wall of the cave, then proceeded to transmute the stone until they’d burrowed through five feet of it to reach a second chamber. That was a mildly clever bit of protection, enough to turn away a casual attempt at scrying by virtue of n...
2024-11-27 14:37:52 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 35
Velik was three hours out from town and well away from the deep wood when he finally got that level up he’d been waiting for. It came from killing a group of worgs that he’d specifically targeted as practice for [Phalanx].
[You have slain a bris...
2024-11-27 04:10:47 +0000 UTC View PostDespite Bakir’s repeated proclamations that Adilar was who I needed to talk to—that the whole reason the senior archmage had come to my home was specifically to negotiate with me—he still guided me along the teleportation chains across the ocean.
The Order had spent a considerable amo...
2024-11-26 14:39:53 +0000 UTC View PostSurrendering his mana crystal voluntarily actually made me even more suspicious of Bakir, so I took the time to make sure I had him properly secured. There was no real way to keep him long-term, not without a massive expenditure of my own mana to maintain a draining field on him at all times. Eve...
2024-11-25 13:52:55 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 31
What had been vague intuition moments ago crystallized into sharp focus. Velik was no longer blindly guessing where his prey was and how it would approach him based on incomplete information. Now, he could clearly see the whole game laid out in front of him – move and countermo...
2024-11-22 14:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostIt required some patience to get the opening I was searching for. The Order’s new base of operations on the island was too well warded for me to casually enact my plan at my leisure, but I knew they weren’t going to sit in there forever. Sooner or later, they’d have to leave the safety of t...
2024-11-22 13:56:52 +0000 UTC View PostSurprisingly, the ointment of aging was properly made. I hadn’t given Senica enough credit for her work, but she’d done it all perfectly. Even substituting a few reagents for things she could actually get her hands on had been done flawlessly.
“The good news is that your only mistake ...
2024-11-21 14:16:42 +0000 UTC View Post“That’s totally awesome,” Senica said.
“No, it’s not.”
We were sitting around the table while I updated my family on what I’d learned about this potential threat and what they should keep a look out for. I no longer had any doubt in my mind that the location they’d cho...
2024-11-20 14:40:11 +0000 UTC View PostGrandfather returned to Eyrie Peak that evening. It was no surprise, really. Querit was still off wherever he’d gone to sulk. A cabal of mages many times stronger than the Wolf Pack had turned up on the island and had an unhealthy amount of interest in me and my allies. I still hadn’t figured...
2024-11-19 14:33:37 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 26
10 years ago…
“My feet hurt. Can we take a break?”
“We’re almost there! Come on, another five minutes.”
Velik scowled at Chalin. “You’ve said that four times now.”
They’d been exploring the forest...
2024-11-19 02:38:35 +0000 UTC View PostI’d been putting off a particular task for a few weeks now, one that I could justify delaying because I had other things to do that were arguably more important. However, now that three new archmages were here, I couldn’t delay it any longer.
It was time to go talk to Keeper again.
<... 2024-11-18 14:04:31 +0000 UTC View Post“Perhaps we’ve started on the wrong foot,” Adilar said. “Our intentions were not to spy on you. If we’d wanted to do that, we’d hardly have sent Archmage Bakir to knock on your front door and announce our presence.”
There was some logic to that. While there was every chance I...
2024-11-15 12:09:19 +0000 UTC View Post