Ivetra reacted first. Mana flared as she wove a flame lance into existence and snapped out, “Igla Descarus.”
Just before the spell ignited, I reached out tendrils of my own mana to break apart her magic’s structure. Both mages had an instant to react to my counterspell, but n...
2024-06-06 12:51:59 +0000 UTC View PostJules made a show of tripping over herself bowing and scraping and being generally obsequious before the two women, both of whom were trying and failing to conceal just how unimpressed they were with the local priestess.
“We’ve only just reached your town a few minutes past,” Aphrona ...
2024-06-05 12:45:19 +0000 UTC View PostThe caravan of wagons and pilgrims rolled into town a few hours after I finished walking Jules back to her home. I knew which wagon the Lightbearers were in, and as they approached the edge of my ward stones’ ranges, I stood up. “It’s time,” I told Jules, who’d been watching me ou...
2024-06-04 13:10:53 +0000 UTC View PostI meant to have this up earlier, but... well... it didn't happen. Sorry for the wait. Enjoy!
2024-06-04 13:08:19 +0000 UTC View PostDespite my sister’s frequent complaints, I did not enchant our temporary house with all the luxuries she’d grown accustomed too. If we’d been planning to stay for more than a few days, I might have considered it, but as it was, it was easier and more cost-effective to just create the water ...
2024-06-03 12:45:55 +0000 UTC View PostAfter climbing back to his feet and dismissing the two guards who’d brought us in, the captain said, “If you truly aren’t Lightbearers, then perhaps you should be speaking with Jules instead of me.”
“That didn’t go so well for us earlier,” I said.
“Ah, yes. The blasphe...
2024-05-31 12:35:58 +0000 UTC View PostSenica bristled and jerked her arm away from the guard reaching for her. “Don’t touch me,” she snapped at the woman.
The mood, already soured over our disrespect of the town’s religious festival, turned tense. Both guards shifted their spears so that the tips were angled in our dire...
2024-05-30 13:37:25 +0000 UTC View PostWe settled into an easy routine over the next six weeks. In the morning, I would instruct Senica on the various aspects of magecraft. I wanted her to have as well-rounded an education as I could provide, given the resources we had available. That meant her fixation on conjuration magic in general...
2024-05-29 15:03:59 +0000 UTC View PostOur first day off the island hadn’t seen much variation in the landscape. Things were a bit greener, perhaps, but it the kind of difference that would have been easy to miss if I wasn’t looking for it. By noon of the second day, however, it was impossible not to notice how much greener the gr...
2024-05-28 14:17:34 +0000 UTC View PostAdult brakvaw were just too big to pummel with conjurations. They’d shrug off lightning bolts and fire blasts easily, and as I’d already proven, they had enough mass and speed to break through force magic without so much as blinking. For all their size, their immense mana cores, and their str...
2024-05-27 13:45:20 +0000 UTC View PostOur time at the Outlander’s Gateway was enlightening, but ultimately, not the purpose of this journey. Once dawn broke, I woke Senica—after stashing my bed away so she wouldn’t see it—and got us a meal for the road. I’d woken twice during the night to stuff more mana into my mana crysta...
2024-05-24 11:36:06 +0000 UTC View Post“Mages, huh?”
Eggert was a heavyset man with a red face, a big nose, and almost no hair left on the top of his head. He was wearing a plain white apron and had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. I noted his features, but what really caught my attention was the way he smelled.
It...
2024-05-23 14:00:44 +0000 UTC View PostMy original plan had called for us to reach the edges of the island, to a place that was known locally as the Outlander’s Gateway, about half way through the day. It was the only spot that was almost five hundred miles wide where there was a break in the mountains. Or rather, the only conventio...
2024-05-22 14:02:09 +0000 UTC View PostOur journey began at the teleportation platform. I’d made sure to fill the mana battery underneath to full a few days ago and swapped out all the emitters lining the platform itself for fresh ones in addition to topping off the ones in storage. That would leave more than enough mana for it to b...
2024-05-21 14:00:32 +0000 UTC View PostI floated across the brakvaw graveyard, my magic keeping me anchored against the wind that kept the island scoured bare of so much as a speck of dirt. Next to me, his ancient body hunched in on itself, Grandfather watched me deftly weave the fuzzy threads of magic to cast an advanced-tier spell. ...
2024-05-20 12:37:21 +0000 UTC View PostIn many ways, lacquering a mana core was similar to creating a lattice for it, only on a far grander scale. The first time I’d done this, it had taken me close to two years to complete. In my defense, I’d been dealing with a trio of mage hunters on a quest for revenge at the time – somethin...
2024-05-17 13:30:23 +0000 UTC View PostThe chamber was ten feet by ten feet. Each corner had a massive mana crystal in it, a black pillar glittering with pinpricks of light. Individually, they held ten times as much mana as the original crystal I’d made out of a rock in my mother’s garden so many years ago. Together, they represen...
2024-05-16 13:51:55 +0000 UTC View PostOver the next few months, I divided my time between monitoring my mana sealing experiment, practicing what I’d taken to calling lossless casting, and teaching the basics of constructing a mana lattice for those budding mages living in Sanctuary who were interested in progressing past stage one....
2024-05-15 13:55:58 +0000 UTC View PostIn a way, figuring out the first step of brakvaw spell casting when I did was perfect timing, since it marked a good point to take a break and return to Sanctuary. I could have gone home, resupplied, and returned to Eyrie Peak all in the same day, but I gave myself a few days because we were comi...
2024-05-14 13:53:55 +0000 UTC View PostTo make things easier, I built my own little abode on a nearby mountain. Perhaps the brakvaw would have accommodated my stay, but I wasn’t all that trusting, and, besides, my magic could very well have interfered with their unending circuit of mana. It didn’t seem likely—none of my spells h...
2024-05-13 13:33:58 +0000 UTC View PostWatching my sister perform alchemy was somewhat nerve wracking, if I was being honest. Though I’d made the equipment myself and it would take a giant dropping a boulder on the glass to so much as scratch it, I still winced every time Senica carelessly smacked two pieces together. Some mixtures ...
2024-05-10 11:47:35 +0000 UTC View PostThe floating island stretched out before me, nearly a mile of bare stone interrupted only by massive cairns lined up one after another. They spiraled out from the very center, where a single mausoleum sized for the enormous brakvaw stood its lonely vigil over the hundreds and hundreds of graves.<...
2024-05-09 14:03:19 +0000 UTC View PostIt was only when we got close to Eyrie Peak that I realized how much mana was coming off of the mountain, far more than was reasonable. It shot straight into the air, only to cascade back down and be absorbed into the stone. Somehow, this cycling method the brakvaw used was writ on a grand scale ...
2024-05-08 13:51:57 +0000 UTC View PostThe mother brakvaw was clearly communicating with her children in some way, probably telling them to stay back in case she needed to kill me and things got messy. I wasn’t offended; it was a reasonable precaution and if a stranger had approached my family, I might not have shown as much restrai...
2024-05-07 14:30:21 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: For those of you not watching on Royal Road, I've accelerated the release schedule to 7 days a week until mid August in order to get the entire volume out on Royal Road before it has to come down in September.
* * *
The two birds circled around me while...
2024-05-06 13:03:34 +0000 UTC View PostIt took me four days to prepare for the expedition. Most of that time went toward the final set up of the valley-wide mana containment spell. By all indications, the ember bloom had anchored the magic successfully, though I suspected we’d need to take a cutting soon to mirror that anchor on the...
2024-05-03 13:57:54 +0000 UTC View PostWhatever else the eyrie might be, it wasn’t abandoned. Sitting under the eaves on the top of the tower was a knot of mana woven to point in a specific direction. It even had faint streamers of magic trailing off through the sky that gradually faded out of my perception after a few hundred feet ...
2024-05-02 12:17:29 +0000 UTC View PostWithout resorting to stronger scrying spells, I couldn’t do much besides look around at the moment. The building was three stories tall, sort of a squat tower, and though it had a roof, it wasn’t the sort that kept out the weather. It was more like a canopy that was mounted at the top, one th...
2024-05-01 13:21:37 +0000 UTC View PostEverything was going well. It took me a day to make the ward stone, during which time the hunters from Ghalin paired with the mages from… Sanctuary… as we were calling it now… to start killing the well-hidden monsters lurking around the area. Their basic-tier divinations helped them track d...
2024-04-30 12:09:09 +0000 UTC View PostI’d broken the Wolf Pack four years ago, ending their stranglehold on nearly every chunk of civilization on this dusty, dry island we called home. For decades, they’d been harvesting mana from everyone, both to reinforce their own power and because the woman in control of them was about three...
2024-04-29 13:17:05 +0000 UTC View Post