I used the teleportation platform to send us to Ghalin, but only because it saved me some effort having to draw my own circle to spread the effect to everyone instead of just myself. All of the Ghalin group came with us, even the wounded ones. Our own healers had done a credible job patching them...
2024-04-26 13:26:59 +0000 UTC View PostNothing that I was personally working on was time-sensitive, but I had some collaborative projects with Tetrin and Hyago. I went to Tetrin’s workshop first, mostly because I knew he’d be there. I’d need to find Hyago later, which would probably involve some scrying to track him down. He ten...
2024-04-25 12:09:46 +0000 UTC View Post“Absolutely not,” Mother said.
“Not a chance,” Father said at the same time.
Senica stood there, hands on her hips, face worked into a scowl, and demanded, “Why not?”
“You’re twelve!”
“Gravin is eight!” Senica shot back. “He left home when he was th...
2024-04-24 12:01:32 +0000 UTC View PostIt didn’t take much to get the story out of them. The worst injured among the party were led away to receive medical treatment, and their leader met with our version of the village council in the mess hall. The man eyed up the interrupted festivities with a scowl, as if he was somehow offended ...
2024-04-24 12:01:03 +0000 UTC View PostIn my first life, I’d never celebrated my birthday. As a child, I couldn’t have even if I wanted to. Once I’d grown older, it had just seemed like a waste of time. There was nothing there to celebrate. And then, finally, by the time I’d come fully into my power as an archmage, friends wer...
2024-04-24 12:00:35 +0000 UTC View PostAs far as surprised went, they’d certainly pulled this one off. Of all the things I’d thought might be going on, a birthday surprise was not on the list, mostly because my birthday wasn’t for another three months.
“Uh…”
As my mind whirled with calculations, trying to figur...
2024-04-24 12:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostAfter I relented and helped Senica get cleaned up—a spark of lightning caused the black mass to completely harden and lose its adhesive property—we headed back out of the cave.
“What are you going to do about that stuff coming through the wall?” Senica asked.
“Pull the stone...
2024-04-24 11:59:35 +0000 UTC View PostBlack slime steadily oozed out of a crack in the wall. There was already a pile of it up to my knee, and it would only continue to grow until the monster had seeped entirely past the barrier I’d built to protect my home from exactly things like this.
Finding and sealing off the tunnels le...
2024-04-24 11:59:08 +0000 UTC View Post
It’s been four years since Keiran learned the truth of what happened to his world while he was gone, four years of research and marshaling his resources, four years of experimentation in a futil...
2024-04-24 11:58:05 +0000 UTC View PostBefore I made my way back to Keeper, I took some time to loot the dead. For the most part, I hadn’t been terribly impressed with the creations of the latest generation, though the more I learned, the less I faulted them for their lack of ability. It seemed like Derro had already been on the bac...
2024-04-23 13:21:59 +0000 UTC View PostI floated in the darkness and watched as the wards, so painstakingly and carefully crafted, stretched and twisted beyond their tolerance. The shape of the room they’d been anchored to had been torn apart, and they could no longer hold. Even without that, they’d drawn their power from Monarch...
2024-04-22 14:11:36 +0000 UTC View PostMonarch was smaller in real life than I’d assumed from the scrying spell. It was only after I saw her in person for the first time that I realized that she was barely taller than my sister. Admittedly, Senica had hit a growth spurt in the last year, but even I came up to Monarch’s chest.
<... 2024-04-19 13:10:04 +0000 UTC View PostI used my own scrying magic to find my way after confirming Keeper’s information. There were a bunch of ways to get there, and I suspected there’d be traps in all of them. If Monarch was smart, and this base was as permanent as it appeared, those traps had been laid prior to me being born. I ...
2024-04-18 12:37:13 +0000 UTC View Post“I’ll give you a minute to try to process this on your own before I snap you out of it,” I said.
Neither of us knew exactly how many lifetimes’ worth of memories were stored in Keeper’s eye, but she’d had the memory sphere for over a decade now. Just having all of her own memori...
2024-04-17 12:50:48 +0000 UTC View PostOther lights flashed red as we walked. The two mages with me muttered back and forth to each other and cast glances in my direction, which I ignored until one of them tried to stop me.
“Those lights are letting someone know we’re here. Are you sure you—” he started to say.
“...
2024-04-16 12:15:01 +0000 UTC View PostI would have thought that my new entourage would tell me where things were in the Old Grounds. I’d expected them to know which way to go. It seemed logical to me. That was half the reason they were here, after all.
Somehow, I was still channeling three different scrying spells while I pie...
2024-04-15 12:23:08 +0000 UTC View PostAs it turned out, the Hierophant wasn’t much help at all. He did stop the rest of his personal guard from attacking me when they caught up to us. It was no surprise that they were jumpy; the guy they were supposed to protect had run off after his two mages to stop them from trying to kill me an...
2024-04-12 13:24:57 +0000 UTC View Post“You have something in mind?” Tetrin asked.
“I’m building something,” I said. “It involves a lot of transmutation and enchantment. Some inscription, too. I can do the work myself, but it’d be easier with some help.”
This whole idea hinged on the man not having any loya...
2024-04-11 16:28:32 +0000 UTC View PostMy first problem was the sole remaining elite. He wasn’t terribly close to me, but his draw stone tower shield represented a variable to all spell work that could trip me up if he was quick or clever. I couldn’t rely on Ash to kill him for me, either. I was the interloper here and far, far cl...
2024-04-10 12:58:03 +0000 UTC View PostIt wasn’t so much the eight guards surrounding me that were the problem, but the hundred more in the palace that might find us before I took care of this group. The best option was to flee, and I could get away easily, but I needed to go deeper in. Every enemy I left behind was one who might st...
2024-04-09 13:59:40 +0000 UTC View PostThe information Haze had given me in exchange for her life was in line with my own observations about Monarch’s base of operations. She was in the very center of the inner city, in the Palace of the Hierophant. More specifically, she was underneath it.
Digging my way in was not feasible. ...
2024-04-08 14:36:56 +0000 UTC View PostAs the sun sank lower and lower toward the horizon, I began to fear that I’d overestimated Monarch’s ability to scry. The wards from my original hideout, where her mirror and mine were encased in stone and looked like nothing more than another chunk of rubble on the pile, had degraded to the ...
2024-04-05 14:03:16 +0000 UTC View PostI didn’t have it in me to be annoyed about my failure to gain mana from Hyago’s grow room. The unexpected presence of an ember bloom left me too excited to be concerned about that, not to mention I still had other options. If anything, I wished I’d taken the time to properly explore the fir...
2024-04-04 14:32:59 +0000 UTC View PostI needed to use telekinesis to get the trapdoor open, and as soon as I did, I spotted the webbing of a privacy ward stretching across the hole. Whatever was down there, Hyago didn’t want anyone knowing about it. That probably meant it was valuable, which in this new world usually meant it had a...
2024-04-03 11:42:21 +0000 UTC View PostMy walk back gave me a lot of time to think. A four-day wait prior to the meeting was helpful to me since it allowed me to regain some of my spent mana, but I hadn’t been the one to suggest it. What did Monarch get out of the delay? Part of me suspected she was looking for the exact same thing ...
2024-04-02 13:44:21 +0000 UTC View PostIf not for the modifications I’d made to her vanishing knife, Haze probably could have snuck up on me. I was tired from the back-to-back fights with Velvet and his vengeful phantasm, not to mention the infiltration and escape from his castle. It was the perfect time to ambush me, and if t...
2024-04-01 13:25:38 +0000 UTC View PostThe only decision I had left to make in this castle was whether to take the time to snatch up the journal and reference book Velvet had been using when I’d come in. I wanted it, but I’d run out of time, and it was at least twenty feet away in the wrong direction.
Fortunately, magic solv...
2024-03-29 13:31:35 +0000 UTC View PostUsing a wand to bypass the direct contact requirement of a spell wasn’t a new trick to me, nor was it all that useful. It gave a few feet of range, even with a well-crafted wand, and could easily double the mana cost of the spell if the caster didn’t understand how remote casting actually wor...
2024-03-28 14:21:15 +0000 UTC View PostI couldn’t walk directly through the wall into the office Velvet was using for two reasons. First, it didn’t have an exterior wall, so the closest I would have been able to get was a closet nearby. Second, it was part of one of the few spaces that was still warded. I probably could have gotte...
2024-03-27 13:30:15 +0000 UTC View PostI knew how to get through the wall without having to cross the underground lake now. The biggest problem was that a wide street circled the outside of the inner wall, one that was properly maintained and patrolled regularly. I really only needed about thirty seconds to pick my way through the war...
2024-03-26 13:19:45 +0000 UTC View Post