Immovable Mage

– Era of the Wastes, Cycle 219, Season of the Rising Sun, Day 56 –

The gathered vampires and necromancers jeered at the Arcanian who was covered in bird shit. The Guardian who was struggling to remain standing. The fool who didn’t know when he was beaten.

“I’ve heard that brings luck,” hooted the vampiress commander while pinching her nose to mock the shameful enemy. “But no amount of luck will change your fate.” She nodded at one of her subordinates.

Terry did the only thing he could think of. He struggled to stand so he might as well not bother. He jumped with full force right into the legs of the approaching soldier. He ignored the fresh assault from his protesting muscles and rotated himself to lever the soldier’s legs into an unstable position and throw him to the ground.

The soldier burst his mana and stomped Terry in the stomach, which put a stop to that idiotic idea.

Tears shot into Terry’s eyes while fresh blood spilled into his mouth. Through blurry eyes, he could see the pale face of Daisy who was staring at the situation with trembling lips and puffy eyes. A hollow shell of herself.

The sight didn’t inspire any feeling in Terry beyond the slight relief that the vampires were ignoring her now. That was all he could do for the woman that had claimed to love him while offering nothing but rejection of who he wanted to be.

Terry spat blood and turned around. He realized that he had lost his keen dagger somewhere. When he saw it, he slowly crawled towards it.

“Defiant until the end,” exclaimed the commander mockingly. “You’re stubborn, I give you that.” She stepped forward and drew blood into her hand.

“You know what they call a stubborn weakling?” The commander walked closer. “A bloody fool…” She still had to finish conquering this kingdom for their territory. It had been entertaining, but now was time to finish the pathetic worm. She shaped a blade of blood. “Bloody…” She thrust the sword towards Terry’s head. “Fool!”

Of all the things that Terry had believed he would feel in his last moments, the tug of an unanchored spatial transfer had not been among them. Taken aback but fully aware, he couldn’t burst even if he tried, so whatever happened happened.

A spear blasted across shadow and space and a small figure thrust it forward straight between the commander’s eyes. The vampiress barely managed to avoid the worst but the blade of the short spear still left a gnash on her forehead. She stared at the new arrival that was a dwarven woman with snow white hair and covered in equipment that put every member of the Kingdom’s army to shame.

“That fool is also my son.” Isille pulled her spear back with an unseen force and glared at the soldiers with a fury that could teach fear to a reaper.

“‘Son’?” The commander was the first to compose herself. She had been taken aback by the undetected approach of an enemy, but a single dwarf was nothing to worry about. She sneered. “So the shit-stained ‘Guardian’ is a little mamma’s boy?”

A loud explosion rang and from nothingness appeared an intense fire-aspected burst to push the vampires back. The fire incensed a batch of spherical items that blew apart and a blood-suppressive effect was added to the fire.

A dwarven man with snow white hair and equipment fit for kings wrested Daisy onto his shoulders. The woman had been pulled towards him with a magic rope that was now coiled around his forearm again.

Evidently, the manaless woman had fainted at some point.

Bjorln glared coldly at the commander whose words had dared to leave him out of the equation for saving his own son. “If you’re implying that our son’s other whaka care any less than his mother, you really have no idea what’s coming for you.” He safely placed the unconscious Daisy down behind him.

Terry himself could barely follow what was going on because he had been bawling his eyes out since the moment he had finally laid eyes on his accepted mother. On his accepted parents. They were alive. Both of them. He didn’t even think about his own situation anymore. He was so glad.

“Assisting in finding you has been the biggest pain in the arse mission I’ve ever taken.”

Terry became vaguely aware of the elven woman next to him. She must have been the dimensional mage to rescue him. He didn’t recognize her though.

“I can’t believe I’ve accepted it twice.” Mia shook her head. The promised reward by the crafter had been so tempting in the beginning, but if her uncle had not also asked for it, she would have dropped it. Who could have known that this pain in the arse mission would take years, cross several empires, and lead to a battle with the damned Kingdoms?

“How touching.” The commander rolled her eyes while her soldiers drew their weapons and readied their equipment. “Two mana cultivators and a—” Her eyes narrowed at the elven mage next to Terry and her expression darkened.

“Don’t mind me.” Mia lifted her hands. “My mission is done. I’m not being paid for doing more.” She shrugged. “Although my help doesn’t seem to be necessary either.”

“Oh really?” The commander scoffed only to jerk her head around to where their army was charging. She could sense that something was amiss. A strange orange fire had begun to circle the city. A fire that hurt the undead but not the living.

But it wasn’t brightfire.

That damned fire appeared to even heal the living. While the commander was still trying to understand the nature of the magic, the fire licked out of the shadows to assault her own squad.

The orange flames reached Terry and he felt a comforting warmth that appeared to heal his fatigue and injuries. He spotted a shielded spell structure he had never seen before manifest close to himself.

A variety of fire aspects.

A structure beyond master level. Perfectly drawing ambient mana to replenish itself.

Terry sobbed again. He knew the only person that could follow such flames out of the shadows. He did not have to see the dark hair and blue eyes to know it would be his uncle Samuel.

When Terry finally laid eyes on his uncle, the only surprise was that Samuel’s burn scars had been healed. Terry should have guessed as much when he had sensed the strange healing fire, but he had been too focused on his own happiness to realize that his uncle had finally achieved significant success towards the long-elusive research goal.

Samuel had developed fire-aspected variants of at least two of the fundamental healing spells. The orange flames displayed effects of Heal and Cure Wounds with Banish Fatigue besides. Even if Cure Poison was not yet among the mix, the path had finally been paved for fire-aspected healers.

Those like Samuel’s deceased whaka Olgorn finally had a road to follow in order to fulfill their dreams.

Samuel did not wait around and instantly unleashed complex spellwork in chains. His wordless assault forced all the dozens of enemy soldiers to disperse. They weren’t weak, but they had to join to push back against the powerful mage.

“So it’s you they’re putting their hopes on.” The commander sneered and unleashed her own spellwork to counter Samuel’s. She scowled when she was at a disadvantage but this was nothing that could not be overcome with the help of her subordinates. A war was not won with a single soldier. They outnumbered this mage and his allies thousands to one in well-trained mages alone.

“Me?” Samuel looked at the undead commander as if she was a dead woman walking. “You’re not that lucky. I’m just here to give her time to fully unpack.”

The commander’s scowl deepened at the incomprehensible remark. She was about to retort when something unbelievably fast darted towards her and leaped from the ground. Her battle instincts kicked in and she unleashed a chained sequence of death and fire spears while covering herself with a Kinetic Push and blood armor.

The tall silhouette shrugged off spells and force alike. A blade extended from a spherical hand and effortlessly pierced into the commander. The figure’s shadow-fabric hood was blown backwards by the Kinetic Push and revealed an uncaring face of transparent material that barely distorted the light around it. Like an art supply mannequin made of glass that accepted light so as to be almost invisible.

The construct rotated the disk that carried its arms and shredded the vampire. It fluidly shifted its body with the elegance of a dancer. Inscriptions flared up and all the spilled blood evaporated into nothingness.

The commander stared with horror at the source of her power disappearing. That construct was impossible. To ignore her previous spells, it would have to incorporate anti-magic in its inscriptions. Impossible. She barely managed to escape with her life but while she had survived, she saw the construct tear through her most skilled subordinates as if they were manaless.

The ground trembled and a shadow descended from behind where the Kingdom’s army was located.

An army of constructs of all shapes and sizes flooded the earth and blotched the sky.

The earth seemed to reshape to create an entirely new mountain.

A mountain?

Yes but also no.

An impossibly large construct warrior with a gigantic sphere of rock instead of legs. Dense inscriptions covered every inch of the giant moving with the mountainous sphere.

The giant construct sucked in the mana from the entire battlefield to power itself. It flattened the enemies underneath. It grabbed a hold of a full-grown behemoth and simply squeezed it into paste. It shot an endless barrage of magic while being flanked and protected by an army of smaller constructs that dwarfed the number that the Lich Kingdoms had brought.

The huge army of invaders was being decimated in minutes. Thousands of soldiers, elites included. Tens of thousands of risen undead, hellspawn included.

The constructs’ rampage was an undeniable display of power. It was undeniably a completely overblown overkill. An irrational display of deep festering rage restrained no longer.

As it turned out, a war could be overturned by a single enraged crafter.

The vampire commander’s mana-enhanced eyes could see the woman with auburn hair standing high up on the giant construct’s head. No, not standing. The woman appeared to float with air-aspected magic. Towering and glowering at the battlefield below with eyes that could scare a soul into a devil.

The commander believed she could see the tall air-gifted woman stare right back at her while mouthing a single syllable. When the dancing doll construct clawed into the commander’s vampiric flesh to suck out even the last droplets of her blood, the commander finally knew what the devil risen from the deepest earth had been mouthing.

‘Die.’

The commander hoped their next wave of reinforcements would be able to assassinate that damned crafter…

The sky in the distance cracked with an eerie purple lightning that made her bloodless skull tingle. Shaken, her vision faded…

The piercing wail of a banshee shrieked in the distance of another direction and the commander doubted her ears. There were no banshees in the next wave of reinforcements. Such creatures were too unruly and too feral which made them too difficult to control compared to other death aura cursed. Doubtful, her hearing stopped.

Blind and deaf, she died while consoling herself with a final utterance: “The Spirited Duchess won’t be denied.” All the constructs in the world would not stop the Unholy Soul.

Terry saw the vampire perish. That distant shrieking wail had nearly frozen the blood in his veins. He shivered and inhaled a quivering breath before he found himself embraced by familiar stubby arms. He suddenly became aware of himself and weakly muttered. “No, Ma, the poo…”

“Shh…” Isille clung to her son firmly. “Who gives a shit?” She squeezed her son even tighter. “We’ve searched for far too long to find you…”

A second pair of hands added itself to the pile and the scent of herbs and potions entered Terry’s nostrils.

“Nama…” A word whispered softly to give way to a deep commanding growl. “Don’t you ever do something like that to us again.” Bjorln spoke with eyes both teary and hard while his frizzy beard tickled Terry’s skin.

Even if Terry had been at his full strength, he would not dare to protest those words of his pa. He did not know what to say. He had so many words to say but somehow they all escaped his tongue.

He stammered in front of the parents he had feared dead. He shrank in front of the parents and family he had missed so long. In front of them, the beaten and worn down man turned back into a sobbing little boy. No sane person could confuse this mess of a boy with the famous Guardian that had protected a country against the dead forces until stepping onto the threshold to death’s door itself.

Not unless they knew him.

Before Terry had a chance to chase down the words escaping him, his parents let go and stood up. After taking measure of the battle that was won but not finished, they turned back to Terry to announce in perfect synchrony: “““You’re grounded.”””

***

Terry was levitating behind his uncle Samuel while a sequence of complex and very specialized spells were treating his injuries. Of course, his uncle would know spells specifically dealing with nerve and mana sense damage from lightning phenomena as well as for temporarily cutting off pain receptors.

The clock floating in front of him was blinking yellow. Terry picked up the bag of pills that his father had handed to him. He took a yellow one and swallowed it with a mouthful of mana-imbued tea from his favorite tea house in Arcana. Of course, his father would have prepared medication that could significantly speed up the recovery of damaged mana channels.

Terry could see that there were still a few fights going on, but mostly straggler specters and shades. He glanced at the five impossible fighting dance doll constructs that acted as his additional escort on top of his uncle. His aunt had brought more constructs than the city had citizens. Terry chuckled painlessly. Of course, his aunt would single-handedly squash an army meant to conquer a small kingdom.

Terry quietly watched the surroundings. He had worked so hard to return to Arcana. Never had he seriously considered that his family would instead move out to find him. Where would they even start? Regardless of the daunting prospect, the retired bounty hunter returned from certain death had never considered failure an option. Of course, his mother would track him down across multiple hostile empires and spatial transfers.

Of course, they had never given up.

Of course.

Not everything was so easy to accept though.

Terry glanced at the wand and glove in his hand. Two items he never thought he would see again. The high quality wand with the three fundamental healing spells that Samuel had sent him to the Libra Outpost in Tiv. The Gravitational Attraction glove that he had purchased himself in Arcana.

His family had tracked his path through the Wastes and to the Valkyrie’s prison dungeon. They had traced all rumors and eventually picked up leads to his stay in Thanatos, where they lost the trail again because of his transfer to the folded space. They had spread out for clues to follow until they finally discovered a trail to the Free Factions Union.

Thanks to the hired dimensional mage and Brynn’s constructs, they had been able to cover a lot of ground.

When they had made their way through the chaotic lands of the martial sects, the challenge changed entirely. Where before the problem was to find a promising lead, exacerbated by hostile parties trying to violently obstruct them or to hunt Terry down themselves, there suddenly was a fog of false leads to sift through.

Thanks to Isille’s experience in tracking, they had been able to see through the diversions and progressed persistently.

However, they were still forced to spread out to check multiple locations at once. They split into groups and made up the numbers with Brynn’s strongest constructs. It was at this point that they stumbled over a bundle of items that had belonged to Terry and a message that pointed to the territory of the former Bloodborne Kingdom.

They had already been on the right track to arrive eventually, but the message had shaved off a few days by giving them a definite target. More importantly, it allowed them to gather everyone before checking out the location personally.

Terry’s first reaction was to grumble that his second bidirectional attraction glove was still missing before realizing that he could now ask his aunt Brynn for another one. Only then did he start to wonder how the items had reached his family to begin with.

These items had been among those that he had lost to the Xuan in the Thanatos Proving Grounds. If they had been among those the lizan martialist had sold, then the buyer must have decided to pass the message for some reason.

The presence of the healing wand made Terry pause, however. Other items had been obvious sell options for the lizan wall of the Proving Grounds. What use did Xuan have for Terry’s spear or glove? They didn’t match the fighting style of the martialist from the Soaring Mountain Sect.

The healing wand by contrast? That would be useful for anyone, wouldn’t it?

Terry had trouble believing that the martialist had sold the wand but he had even more trouble coming up with an alternative explanation. How would Xuan know much less find his family? Why would the lizan he had beaten want to help him anyway?

Forget Xuan, who would know about his situation, want to help him, and go about it in such a half-assed and suspicious manner as to merely leave a message?

Conspiracy?

Terry halted his line of thoughts before Thanatos style overthinking would infect him too. He couldn’t come up with a reasonable conclusion, so he simply stopped trying and accepted it as it was.

The next surprise waited for Terry right around the corner.

“Calm down!” said an elven woman that looked oddly familiar. “I’m not from the Lich Kingdoms!”

“Do you think I’m a fool?!” Rafael pointed at the elven woman. “I’ve seen that banshee slip into you!” His eyes and claws began glowing. “You’re obviously a demonic cultivator of death!”

“I hate these lands,” grumbled the elven woman. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“Who said I would be giving you a choice?!” growled Rafael. The mana resonance of a white wolf was beginning to take shape.

A figure stepped out of the shadows and a blade of shadow was silently placed right at Rafael’s neck. “We’re here to help, you fool.” The human woman glanced at the fading resonance. “What’s with the wolf? Aren’t you a felan?”

Rafael’s eye twitched and he uttered a deep growl while considering how to get out of this predicament.

“Is that…” Terry blinked. “Instructor Mirabilia? And wait, is that—? Why is Siling’s mom here?!”

“Mirabilia insisted on helping Isille in tracking you down,” said Samuel. “She wasn’t the only one of your parents’ old team mates. The situation in Arcana is less dire than when you left it.” He glanced back and smiled when giving the good news.

Samuel turned his attention back forward while continuing his explanation: “After receiving the message, your friends were quite insistent on coming and Daiyu refused to let her daughter step close to the Lich Kingdoms. Her presence is their compromise. Matteo and some of his friends decided to ambush the reinforcements. Emaldine, Chadwick, and the others are accompanying your siblings and team mates with their new groups on other tasks.”

Samuel cleared his throat. “Be prepared Whaka Terry. The twins and your friends are going to have a word with you for what you pulled with them in the Wastes and subsequent disappearance.” He glanced at Terry’s armor that was still showing traces of bird poop. “I can see that one of them already took her first chance to display her discontent.”

That was a thunderblood hawk, wasn’t it? Siling said she had it noted as an option to replace the bloody frogmouth soul.

I’ll miss Grumpy.

Wait, Siling told the bird to shit on me in that kind of situation?

Terry had the bad premonition that he might rather face another count of the Lich Kingdoms than his friends and siblings.

Speaking of friends…

“Stop! I know them! And him!” Terry shouted at the stand-off between the two Guardians and the martialist.

“Terry?!” Rafael’s eyes opened wide. “UNHAND MY BROTHER, YOU VILLAINOUS FIEND!” He roared at Samuel with a snarl. His shout had brought more of the city defenders to the area where their expressions immediately darkened at seeing their city’s Guardian being the captive of an unknown group.

Oh boy.

“Hello?” Mirabilia with her shadow blade at Rafael’s throat felt ignored. She used her free hand to knock on the felan’s head. “Anybody there? Are you kidding me?”

Seriously.

Terry took a deep breath. He had the bad premonition that a meeting between his old and new friends could lead to more than a few headaches. He pointed at Samuel, who appeared intensely amused. “That’s my uncle.” He pointed at the others. “The mother of my companion from Arcana, and my former Instructor and the companion of my mother.”

“What’s wrong with your family?” barked Rafael. “Why is the shadow creep sneak-attacking me? Did you tell your mother about the trial tomb? Seriously, brother, I thought we were friends!”

Oh boy.

Terry knew the felan martialist had a knack for mouthing off, but to make so many mistakes in a single exclamation.

“‘Shadow creep’?” Mirabilia hissed at her captive felan. “Something to say about a ‘trial tomb’? I’m sure Isille will have some questions about that.”

That was your own fault, Rafael. Can’t blame me for that. Good luck. You’re going to need it.

Even though Terry was under a spell that didn’t allow him to feel pain, he still managed to feel a headache coming.

He was sure of it.

He involuntarily glanced back at the woman that was also levitated by a spell close to him. Daisy was peacefully asleep under a perpetually refreshing sequence of Calm spells. In contrast to Terry, her injuries had already completely healed.

“You can be proud, Whaka Terry,” said Samuel quietly.

Sure can. Terry turned to look at his uncle and smiled warmly. Such a family. I'm lucky.

“All those people not hesitating to confront us for your sake, even after they’ve witnessed some of what we can do.” Samuel gestured at the crowd of people that had rushed over as soon as they had heard his name. Martialists, mages, mana cultivators, crafters, manaless. Many of them had drawn weapons with grim faces before the situation had been cleared up.

Huh?

“I’m proud of you, Terry.” Samuel glanced back. “We all are.” He turned to the front and continued walking. “But please don’t ever do that to us again.”

***