The biggest sticking point was that the gestalt, for some inscrutable reason, wanted to bring its entire room of black-glass stone with it. It wasn’t impossible, but it was an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. I countered with an offer to relocate the ‘tree’ itself and all of the floor...
2024-09-02 11:45:12 +0000 UTC View Post“That’s unexpected,” I murmured as I settled into a sitting position in the air next to the ‘tree.’ “Sapient creatures.”
I couldn’t find a singular mind to connect with to return its telepathic communications. Clearly, this was some sort of gestalt entity, not unusual for a ...
2024-08-30 12:08:37 +0000 UTC View PostMy shield ward flared to life, protecting me from the impact but not extracting me from the pin. Whatever had smacked into me, I still couldn’t see or sense anything at all. I scrunched my eyes closed, wove mana together, and took advantage of the universal weakness of practically all subterran...
2024-08-29 11:55:56 +0000 UTC View PostWith just about everything else on my list of immediate tasks finished, I began searching for my entry point into the deep tunnels and caves under Derro. Worst case, I knew where to dig straight down from, but, if possible, I’d prefer to teleport past that and save myself a few thousand feet of...
2024-08-28 12:30:12 +0000 UTC View PostThe next morning, a niggling sensation in my mind prompted me to pull out my scrying mirror. I was expecting someone from New Alkerist, probably my family since the transmission stones should have projected the user’s voice directly into my thoughts, but it turned out to be Querit.
He bea...
2024-08-27 12:34:09 +0000 UTC View PostThree transmission stones sat on the table, one for Senica and one for each of my parents. Nothing against Nailu, but he needed to learn to talk in person before I gave him a magic rock to talk into my brain from a thousand miles away. Unless he also was secretly a reincarnated archmage that was ...
2024-08-26 11:52:09 +0000 UTC View PostI left two transmission stones with the council to be given to whoever they saw fit. One was immediately claimed by Oramo, which I supposed made sense. The man in charge of keeping the town safe would probably be the best person to react in the event of an attack. The others argued over who shoul...
2024-08-23 12:42:11 +0000 UTC View PostOnce things calmed down, the pair of arguing farmers were kicked out. They protested in booming voices, somehow still caught up in their struggle to shout over each other. One of the councilmen muttered a spell under his breath and a burst of telekinesis picked both of them up to hurl them throug...
2024-08-22 11:51:52 +0000 UTC View PostI stopped back home to use my crucible and let Querit know what happened to the mage I’d gone to collect. Without the planned second set of notes, it was going to be far more difficult to confirm which parts of the rune structures were accurate, but I had faith in the golem’s research ability...
2024-08-21 11:43:25 +0000 UTC View PostBased on some testimonies from a few of the flock’s primary hunters, we eventually narrowed Ammun’s mages’ entry point down to three possible portals. I gave all three a thorough examination and found evidence that one had been subverted to include an extra twenty-some people onto its regis...
2024-08-20 12:07:21 +0000 UTC View PostEyrie Peak was the largest mountain in the range by a mile. In fact, it was one of the largest I’d ever seen, its height dwarfed only by Ammun’s tower thousands of miles northwest of here. The peak of the mountain had been ripped off, leaving a relatively shallow—compared to the rest of the...
2024-08-19 12:47:45 +0000 UTC View PostI ended up with an entire notebook of sketches from Hebrem, who grew more and more cranky about the work I was forcing on him with each passing minute. His mental defenses remained solidly in place throughout the entire questioning, which did make it harder for me to trust him, but I thought the ...
2024-08-18 12:02:47 +0000 UTC View PostInterrogating all my new prisoners was a waste of time. Other than sorting out the ones who were there voluntarily from the ones who’d been coerced into it, I learned absolutely nothing of any value. For the six I didn’t kill once I was done with them, I sent them to the same place I’d bani...
2024-08-17 11:36:40 +0000 UTC View PostIt was a matter of efficiency that I had to leave the orb tracker in the area. If it were only a single connection, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, but with hundreds of links between the tank of liquid mana and all the orbs being ferried around by sand worms, it just wasn’t feasib...
2024-08-16 12:19:21 +0000 UTC View PostSand worms weren’t that smart, something I’d known intellectually but hadn’t really internalized until I’d wasted two hours following my scrying beacon around as the worm crawled around the sand and dirt in great circles, accomplishing absolutely nothing as far as I could tell.
It d...
2024-08-15 12:35:22 +0000 UTC View PostQuerit agreed with my theory after I explained it, though he didn’t seem all that excited about it. Considering that I’d potentially gain a huge source of mana generation and kill a whole hell of a lot of the sand worms plaguing the area that he was actively digging through, I...
2024-08-14 12:44:05 +0000 UTC View Post“I don’t want to commit to anything,” I said. “There’s a lot going on right now and it’s all kind of time-sensitive.”
“I understand, but hear me out.”
Querit cast a quick illusion spell and a cityscape appeared between us right at waist level. “This is Derro as I r...
2024-08-13 11:42:09 +0000 UTC View PostQuerit took the news that I’d plundered his homeland’s most valuable artifacts better than I’d expected him to, if only because the fact that I’d modified the rune scheme through multiple layers of mysteel without damaging any other part was overshadowing any offense he might take. What r...
2024-08-12 11:22:46 +0000 UTC View PostThe connection to Querit’s scrying mirror snapped abruptly, meaning he’d either cut the mana feed or the mirror itself had been broken. I quickly cast my own scrying spell on the area I’d dropped him in, some seventy miles southwest of Ammun’s tower in a thick copse of trees.
The fi...
2024-08-11 11:30:40 +0000 UTC View PostQuerit and I walked through the petrified forest together. He brushed a hand across the stone trunks, still textured like bark years later. “Amazing,” he said.
“I can’t take all the credit. I figured out how to make it work, but it was someone else’s idea initially.”
“Me...
2024-08-10 12:35:39 +0000 UTC View PostI had far too much to do, and not nearly enough time to get it all done. I’d made my modifications to the mysteel pillars I’d relocated from beneath Derro, but I still hadn’t gotten a chance to test them. With Querit here, my demesne’s mana reserves were under immense strain and I wasn’...
2024-08-09 12:13:28 +0000 UTC View PostThree hours later, I’d finally finished checking every single piece of decorative armor I could find. The good news was that none of the ones I was planning to steal were secure in any way. The bad news was that there were only three of them, and of those three, one was missing the bottom half....
2024-08-08 11:54:14 +0000 UTC View PostQuerit had been my guest for a week now while I attended other business. During that time, he’d been perfectly reasonable in all ways but one, and that was that he was the most mana-hungry creature I’d ever seen. His golem core drank mana at a rate of three or more master-tier spells a day, m...
2024-08-07 11:35:37 +0000 UTC View PostNailu clung to my leg and stared up at me with big, blue eyes. He wanted something, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I was afraid it was for me to pick him up or play with him, neither of which I wanted to do, but I didn’t know.
Would our parents be upset if I cast a mind reading spell on...
2024-08-06 11:17:06 +0000 UTC View PostI set Querit up in a set of rooms near the outer edges of my demesne, a place where there was enough ambient mana that he wouldn’t drain himself dry just existing, but where he wouldn’t be anywhere near my own workshops or the mysteel pillars I’d pilfered from his homeland and hadn’t gott...
2024-08-05 11:48:06 +0000 UTC View PostI summoned Querit out of his cage after a few minutes of discussion. It was obvious he was having trouble processing some of what I’d told him, and I thought an in-person meeting in an area completely devoid of mana might help speed things up. Not coincidentally, I didn’t want him to have acc...
2024-08-04 12:19:04 +0000 UTC View PostThere was no way that body was actually human. For one thing, it was far too small to properly fit the body of the armor, if that’s what the golem truly was. For another, it was perfectly preserved after what had no doubt been centuries of isolation trapped in a closet. There were plenty of spe...
2024-08-03 12:54:36 +0000 UTC View PostThe whole world, as least as far as I’d gotten around to exploring it, consisted of a thousand little villages, most with populations of less than three hundred people. Sometimes they had connections with other nearby villages; usually they didn’t. The places that did have real connections wi...
2024-08-02 10:38:40 +0000 UTC View PostAfter draining the mana from all three of them and taking a few minutes to stabilize the woman—and drop a sleep spell on her while she wasn’t in the right state of mind to resist it—I turned my attention to the one I’d dubbed as the clever part of the hit squad.
“Let’s start wit...
2024-08-01 11:17:43 +0000 UTC View PostI spent the next six hours scouring the lands being absorbed into the new Ralvost Empire. My first project was to confirm the locations of the other seven facilities I was guessing existed, which wasn’t something I could complete in a single night. I settled for the nearest two, both of which w...
2024-07-31 11:59:22 +0000 UTC View Post