Ends of Magic

After the brief moment of remembrance, Inarl jerked her head toward the fountain. “Let’s find the water, be sure the threat is done.”

Nathan led the search of the fountain, picking his way through the scattered rubble of the central plinth. The fountain was deep, and a putrid smell wafted out of it. After checking it out with light from Stella, Nathan clambered down into the pit, feet splashing into an inch or so of slimy water.

There was carved stone all around him, some shattered and some merely cracked and dirty with age. Nathan’s attention was drawn to the back wall of the fountain, where a broad divot had been carved into the rock of the cave, a circular hole almost twenty feet across that extended back just a few feet.

That looks like a place you’d put your water-management machinery. Or magic. But it only goes back into the stone.

Nathan carefully walked across the rough terrain at the bottom of the fountain to take a look at the hole as Aarl splashed down behind him. Set back a little ways from the opening was a faint rim. Nathan moved closer, paying careful attention to his surroundings in case of a trap.

He poked his head into the opening, detecting some faint magic caressing his skin, but it didn’t do anything. Just on the other side of a rim was a hoop of metal, almost twenty feet across, that was clearly magic. Nathan reached out his hand and could feel the magic coming off of it from a few inches away.

That kind of feels… like the dimensional bags I’ve occasionally touched by accident? But stronger. A lot stronger.

He withdrew his hand, then stepped back and beckoned Aarl over. As his friend approached the feature, there was a faint hissing sound and the back of the hole led somewhere else all of a sudden. It was now a portal into a vast and dark space, echoing with the sound of lapping waves. A small wave of putrid water stinking with venom and slime rolled over Nathan’s feet, and he thought he might have caught movement in the darkness.

Aarl jumped away, and the hole into the watery abyss vanished. Stella rode a ridge of conjured rock down into the fountain base, ending up standing next to Nathan and Aarl on a small pillar that held her above the muck. “Now that is the find of a Delve.”

Nathan looked at her. “What is it? A portal to an underground lake?”

Stella shook her head, waving her hand to flatten the ridge of stone that hid the enchanted hoop. She approached just close enough to activate the device before backing off, studying the portal and the enchantments around it.

Nathan almost asked more questions, but his teammate was deep in thought and so he looked at Aarl over her head and shrugged, receiving a shrug in return.

With a snap of her fingers, Stella spoke. “It’s just a dimensional space, anchored to the ring. It’s tied to a basic alarm enchantment to detect when a living thing comes near. Looks like some kind of failsafe? That part is always active but looks like it shouldn't be. I think this is just the primary water reservoir for the town. And the Ashblood cobra got into it. The water’s foul, and it's probably full of eggs and snakelets.”

Nathan frowned. “Is there a way to clean it out? Or can we prevent them from coming out?”

Stella tilted her head from side to side. “I could wall it off with stone. But this level of dimensional enchantment - the space is huge. It doesn’t enlarge an existing space, it’s more like a tether for an entirely separate demispace.”

“I could break it.” Nathan stepped forward. It wouldn't be hard for him to break the enchantment.

Stella took an involuntary step backwards. “Not a good idea. I don’t want to get drowned when the demispace ruptures. And it’s valuable to the right enchanters. Gemore already makes some of the best bags of holding, imagine if we could make these.” She resumed studying the ring, a look of intense concentration on her face.

Aarl had put away his weapons. “Need to clear out the snakes first. And the water, most likely. Can we carry it without it staying open?”

Murmuring to herself, Stella seemed to ignore the question. “There isn’t an obvious deactivation enchantment, but… oh, could it really be that simple? That’s just a safety feature, but obviously.”

She spent a few seconds carefully casting a weak stone spell, which bent part of the stone tunnel inwards, denting the hoop out of its perfectly circular shape ever so slightly. Then she stepped forward, raising more conjured stone to avoid stepping in the filthy water. The portal didn’t reappear.

Stella turned to them, looking immensely proud of herself. “As long as it’s not in a perfect circle, it’s deactivated. The enchantments only work well when the hoop is in a perfect circle, and there are safety enchantments that keep it deactivated otherwise. And the metal looks flexible. I bet it’s supposed to be portable.”

Aarl stepped forward, inspecting the hoop. Then he shrugged. “Can you help me get it free?"

Nathan stepped away, letting his friends retrieve the immensely magical device as he climbed out of the fountain.

The remaining Dusteaters were watching Stella’s excavation with complicated expressions. Inarl looked over to her brother. “Nornan gave up the loot of the hunt to the Heirs. We don’t have the know-how for that artifact.”

Oh. He did. That probably stings when Nornan died to help it succeed.

Nathan felt sad all over again. He was racking his brains for a way to make it up to the Dusteaters when Khachi spoke up. “It is good that we have found the source of the threat, and can ensure that no more Ashblood cobras will spawn from here. However, there are other sources of reward here. Come, for we may harvest the fangs of the serpents. They would make fine spears and arrows.”

Ah, Khachi’s fine-tuned sense of diplomacy once again comes to the rescue.

Ucric looked relieved that the Dusteaters would have something to show for the whole escapade, despite what they had lost.

Nathan joined them, helping lever the enormous fangs from the snakes they’d left scattered over the square. Only one of the Matriarch’s two huge fangs was still intact, and Khachi needed to use his hammer to shatter the base of the fang before they could successfully remove it. The other fang had been shattered by a bullet from Stella’s rifle. The fangs from the smaller snakes were easier, and soon enough Ucric and Inarl were tying up a bundle of curved hollow fangs.

Then Ucric took a deep breath and gestured towards the street they’d entered the square from. “Let’s see to Nornan.” Nathan nodded and fell in behind the Dusteaters, joined by the rest of the Heirs. Aarl had been able to fold the dimensional loop up somehow, so it was a four-foot bundle of braided and very magical cable that Nathan kept his distance from.

The mood was serious as they walked back across the square. Most of the puddles of blood and venom had been extinguished, becoming viscous pools of foul-smelling liquid that were still worth avoiding. The bodies of the huge serpents were scattered around, looking almost like crashed vehicles in the dim light.

Nathan entered the building where Nornan had been thrown by the snake that had snuck up on him. He saw the body, and immediately understood why it hadn’t taken Khachi long to give up hope.

Nornan’s corpse was draped over a large stone block that had fallen from the ceiling, and it looked like the Adventurer had landed there. The face was frozen in a look of fear and pain, though at least his eyes were closed. The blonde hair was messy and sweat-slicked, dangling limply behind the still head. His torso was a blackened mess, with cracked and withered flesh that had leaked reddish fluids down the stone. A deep chasm was visible under Nornan’s armpit, where the flesh had cracked away and flames had emerged.

It looks like he burned from the inside out, quite literally.

Ucric had found a plank, and Nathan helped maneuver Nornan’s body onto it before they began the awkward walk out of the ruin. There wasn’t really space for both him and Khachi to help carry Nornan with all three of the Dusteaters, but Nathan took position behind Inarl. With four strong people carrying, it was not heavy.

Not physically heavy, no.

There was no conversation as they retraced their path out of the ruin, and Nathan found himself reminiscing.

I didn’t know Nornan super well - honestly only talked to him a few times. But on every one of those occasions he was friendly, open and funny. He was a good dude, and we both cared about protecting the people of Gemore. I’m going to be sad I don’t get to know him better. And that I don’t get to find out if there could have been chemistry there. But I think we would have been friends for years, if given the chance.

I want to be the older Adventurer, who knows a lot of people, and has contacts everywhere. And I wanted Nornan to be one of them. At the least.

He was struck by a sudden thought. He’d spent a fair amount of time with the Guardians of Gemore at this point - and they had a number of friends, but not many of them were Adventurers. Most were people who worked in town - cooks, enchanters, weaponsmiths.

I wonder if this is why they don’t have more Adventurer friends. How many of my trainee class will be alive in five years? Fifty? With [Perfected Body] I’ll live to see it unless something kills me. But this is Davrar, and I’ve just been reminded that violent death is the most common kind. Vhala told me that when I first arrived, but I don't know if I really believed her until now.

Then Nathan snorted quietly. He could probably depend on Simla to survive for a while, to spite Nathan if for no other reason. Ucric looked back at Nathan, and he felt guilty for the disrespectful noise. However, the catfolk’s expression wasn’t judgemental. Instead he wore a sad smile and spoke wistfully. “He woulda’ been telling jokes about now. Comparing the cave to home, saying it was too drafty.”

Nathan cast his eyes downwards. “That seems about right. I was just thinking that I won’t get to know him better, and I would have liked to.”

Inarl sighed deeply, breaking in. “He spoke of wishing to become your friend as well. Not gonna happen now, sad to say. We’ll bury him in these wastelands, and tell his tale to the village. Cromer won’t forget his name, even if Gemore does.”

Khachi replied with a quiet promise, repeating the remembrance for a lost Adventurer. “Remember ‘till Ending.”

The implication there is that everything is forgotten after an Ending, so it’s unreasonable to promise to remember somebody forever. I think I’ll plan to remember Nornan past that. The first person to die fighting by my side. Hopefully it won’t grow into a long list.

They carried Nornan out of the cave, and up to the hill where the Heirs had first found him overlooking the valley and the ruined cave. Then they got to digging. It would have been much easier with Stella’s magic, but toiling under the sun felt cathartic to Nathan. They all took a turn with a pair of shovels that Aarl and Khachi had pulled from their dimensional bags. Aarl had to pull out a pickaxe a few times to crack apart large rocks, but they quickly excavated a deep grave in the sandy and rocky soil, then gently laid Nornan’s body into it.

Khachi blessed the body, speaking a short prayer. “Nornan died in righteous battle, fighting against monsters that would attack Gemore. By my own Faith, by our conviction, let him be at peace.” A faint mist sprung from Khachi’s outstretched hands, somehow resisting the dry breeze atop the hill. It settled onto Nornan’s body like a blanket atop the corpse.

That… was different from Khachi’s other prayers. He didn’t pray to Deiman, he prayed to… himself? To us? It’s more like how Kia prays.

Then they covered the grave, and Stella used magic to form a rock into a small marker. After conferring with the Dusteaters, she carved some simple words into it.

Nornan of Cromer. Adventurer of Gemore. Died protecting his home from Ashblood cobras.

They stood around for a moment, then Nathan turned to Ucric, who seemed to have become the new leader of the Dusteaters. “What are you doing next?”

The tall catfolk scratched himself behind an ear, looking at his teammates. “Back to Cromer, see if we get a hunter to join up, bring us to four. Maybe to Gemore, see what could be made of this.” He indicated the bundle of cobra fangs. “What of you? Could we follow you back to Gemore?”

Nathan looked around, frowning. They weren’t really telling people why they weren’t going back to Gemore. “No. We’re going to stay out here. Any more threats we could take on?”

Inarl spoke up, meeting Nathan’s eyes with an edge of challenge. “A hunter from Surfeld found a Terrorghast lairing south of Tarren. It’s a ways out there, hasn’t attacked anybody yet. Not even a mission from the Guild yet. Not until it kills. Will you go for it?”

Nathan blinked, searching back for a memory of a Terrorghast. After a moment, he found it. A Terrorghast seemed like a relative of the Stalker - six legged, three eyes. However, it was closer to the size of an elephant, tended to be solitary and was a lot slower than a Stalker. The primary danger was some kind of [Fear] or [Paralysis] spell that it could cast from the third eye, freezing its prey in place as it slowly ambled up to devour them.

High-Tier Enhanced Memory 7 achieved!

I am glad I skimmed through every single entry in the Adventurer Guild bestiary. And that sounds like a pretty good opponent to train the Heirs’ mental magic defenses on.

Nathan looked around to the other Heirs, his eyebrows raised. “Sounds like something we can take care of. Do you have a precise location?”

The Dusteaters didn’t, but they had a general area, and it probably wouldn’t be too hard to track something like that down. So, while the Dusteaters headed off to the west, the Heirs turned south.

Status of Nathan Lark:

Permanent Talent 1: Magic Absorption 8

Permanent Talent 2: Perfected Body 3

Talent 3: High-tier Slow Fall 6

Class: Spellbreaker Juggernaut level 77

Stamina: 833/870

Juggernaut's Wrath

Antimagic Momentum

Raging Thrill

Juggernaut's Inertia

Unarmored Resilience

Utility skills:

Battle Meditation 2

High-tier Earnestness 7

Mid-tier Sprinting 9

High-tier Spellsense 5

High-tier Notice 1

Mid-tier Identify 8

Mid-tier Dodging Footwork 8

High-tier Enhanced Memory 7

Mid-tier Lecturing 7

Mid-tier Tumbling 6