by Tao Wong
“Not at all. I’m just hoping we didn’t undercharge them,” I said, eying the field over the cover of my book. When I had pulled it out, I received more than a few glares, but those subsided when they realized it was a spellbook. Being a mage still commanded some respect, thankfully. If not more comfortable seats.
The field itself was a torn and bloody mess, the grass and earth looking like it had been tiled by a rototiller with a grudge. Particular portions showcased the extra-violent nature of the sport, blood and guts mashed into the ground. And all over the field, I could see the light glow of mana as the illusion array ensured the mundanes were kept in the dark.
“Come on, it’s not that hard. Is it?” Alexa dropped her voice to a whisper at the end, and her eyes shone with concern. Our job—my job—was to clean up the mess after the match was over. After losing their resident contracted dryad, the Supernatural Football League of Erie had contacted us. If we managed to do a good job, we’d actually have a regular contract, at least when the season was on. It’d be a nice change of pace from our regular scramble for jobs.
“Don’t know,” I said to Alexa just as softly. “I’ve never tried to manipulate this much earth and grass. Theoretically, linking multiple Healing Wards together with some direct manipulation on my part should speed up the growth of the grass. All I need to do beforehand is tamp down the earth and smooth it out, which an adjusted Force Spear should do well enough. It’d be more like a Force Plow, but it should work.”
“Good.” Alexa turned back to watching the orcs and dwarfs beat the shit out of each other under the guise of sport. I sighed slightly and watched the initiate for a second, seeing how she leaned forward, lips parted and eyes glinting with interest and enjoyment. Jocks. I would never understand them.
***
I frowned, adjusting the position of the warding block once again. After finally being happy with it, I moved down another twenty feet to set up the next block. Each of these warding blocks had been hand carved by me, their glyphs and spell formulas painstakingly cast beforehand. Along the field, Alexa walked back and forth, spreading fertilizer across the churned earth.
“How much longer is this going to take?” grumbled the large red-skinned, horned demon—Japanese demon that was, an oni. “Edith never took so long.”
“Edith was an eighty-year-old dryad linked to the very earth itself, who had been doing this job for forty years,” I replied as I pulled another block out. “And if you had confirmed the contract yesterday like we mentioned, I could have set up and buried these wards beforehand. Now, I’ve got to do the prep.”
“This better work. For the amount we’re paying you—”
“Which is two-thirds what you paid Edith,” I said, staring at him. “Don’t think I don’t know it. But we let you do so because we aren’t as good as she is.”
“Whatever. Just get it done right,” Ken said and walked off. I glared after the demon, my sight defocusing for a moment to see the fat, coverall-wearing figure he showed the outside world. Somehow, I felt the glamour was much more fitting for the caustic ass.
Left alone, I worked my way around the field and finally set all the blocks in place. I’d have loved to plant them deep, and perhaps I might another time, but until we confirmed the contract, I was not going to lose my warding blocks. Even if they were cheap hand-carved wooden blocks, they still took a decent amount of time to create. And if I ever wanted to increase their power, I would need to start working with some better materials. That being said, wood itself was a great material for my next spell.
Finally done, I took the next step, using a Force Plow to smooth the earth. Really, it was just a Force Spear with its container adjusted. It had taken just over three hours to work out how to create the Force Plow, adjusting the formula for the container so the spell formed the necessary shape and, more importantly, held together. Still, this was the first time I was using it for such a duration, so the worms in my stomach refused to stop shifting.
Stupid really. No one was going to die here. I’d just lose a little contract. But part of the reason I had stayed as low key—or a drudge, as my sister named me years ago—was that I hated pressure. I hated to make mistakes and lose face.
“Henry?” Alexa called after I’d been standing still for a few minutes.
“Just checking the spell over,” I replied, using a lame excuse. Raising my hand, I started the casting motions required, fingers flicking, twitching, and spreading as I cast. The physical motions were technically unnecessary, as were the words I softly chanted. Magic itself was all about intention and magical formulas, with the formulas more a mental guide than necessity. But the motions and words helped. The spell slid into a universal groove, which helped reduce the cost and difficulty of casting my spell. When formed, the Force Plow was invisible for the most part. To my eyes, it consisted of three portions. The first was a slightly blunted blade that helped level the earth, with excess dirt collected in the second, covered portion. The extra dirt was then compressed into the earth by a rolling cylinder of force.
“Huh. Never seen anyone do that,” Ken exclaimed, grudging admiration in his voice.
I glowed slightly at his words, though I didn’t tell Ken the truth. The spell might look impressive, but it only worked because, relatively speaking, the amount of damage done to the grounds wasn’t that great. I was only shifting around a foot of earth at most at each location. My spell and mana were nowhere near sufficient enough to say, compress asphalt. Yet.
Thirty minutes later, the ground was as smooth as I could make it. I paused, panting, and eyed the glowing blue line from the corner of my eyes. With a wave to Alexa, who walked the grounds again with more fertilizer, I slumped and waited for my mana to regenerate.
A part of me pointed out I should be attempting to meditate. Well, not exactly meditate. That’s the wrong word, even if Caleb does use it. Cultivate? That makes it sound like I’m some Eastern immortal. “Open myself to the world” sounds too hippy-like. Whatever the case, it was a process to expand the refresh rate of my mana, of opening myself to the world’s energy to draw it in. I didn’t of course. Among other things, I sucked at the skill itself, and I looked like a complete fool doing it.
“Why are you stopping?” Ken asked, stomping back toward me and leaving fresh boot prints in my smooth earth.
“Two reasons. I need more mana for the next part. And we need to make sure there’s enough fertilizer.”
“Edith—”
“Was a dryad. She could draw nutrients from the surroundings and pour mana directly into the plants to nourish them. I can’t,” I said. Of course, I knew that theoretically there was a way to do so, but considering my mana pool and my lack of understanding of biological processes, I was so not going to. Healing—or in my case, accelerated growth—was already risky. Luckily, grass didn’t care about cancer.
Ken rolled his big, bulbous red eyes at me again before stomping away. Once again, I took the time to check over the wards and then began the slow process of linking them together in my spell. It was not particularly difficult, just complex, casting Link and holding each Link spell in place as I cast and added another to the chain. Each one led back to me and the tuft of grass I held in my hand, forming a giant spell rectangle bordered by my wards.
When I finally cast my Heal spell, it would trigger the grass to grow, replicating and covering the churned earth with freshly grown grass. I was particularly proud of the fact that since the spell was Linked and targeted at the grass I held in hand, it wouldn’t affect the various weeds, earthworms, and bugs living in the soil. It was both more mana efficient and smarter this way.
“Done,” Alexa called to me and I sighed, looking into the sky as I began the last spell process. Such a simple thing, Heal Linked to the grass with wards to denote the boundaries of the spell. Even as my mana dropped, the untouched grass could visibly be seen growing while the newly tamped-down earth slowly began to sprout. I found myself swaying
slightly, the spell draining more mana than I had anticipated, the loss making my face grow pale.
Linked Heal (Modified) Cast
Synchronicity 87%
“Henry,” Alexa called to me as she neared, seeing my predicament.
I shook my head, knowing that if I gave up now, the spell would collapse on itself. While not dangerous—except to me—I wasn’t exactly sure I could pull it off again, not with the pounding headache I’d already gained. Better to complete the job. And it was working. Already, I could see blades of grass poking out of the earth, slowly growing lusher.
“Damn it, Henry.” Alexa stomped toward me and kicked my shin. The sudden pain broke my concentration, the spell unravelling. The backlash of the broken spell made me cry out and clutch at my head. “Lily warned you not to overexert yourself.”
As I sat, cradling my head and eyeing the deep-red flashing mana bar, I growled at Alexa. Damn woman wore steel-toed boots. I was going to have a very big bruise there tomorrow. Yet, as my head cleared a little, I stared around the now-green fields with more than a little pride.
Magic was beautiful, complex, and amazing. Even after so many months training and learning, I still found myself marveling at the fact that I could wield such power. I could bring life to a trampled field and, perhaps most importantly, get paid.
Chapter 3
After overexerting myself spending mana, I’d been relegated to book study for the next couple days. It was frustrating, but I understood their concerns. Lily and Caleb had more than once described the dangers of mana withdrawal and overexertion. Increasing your mana pool required work, just like building muscles. The more you did and the closer you were to your limit, the more you built. However, do too much or too fast, and you created instabilities in your body. Ligaments and tendons took longer to develop in the human body than muscle mass. Mana channels and networks took longer to widen and strengthen than a body’s central mana pool. My levels were, in many cases, Lily directly intervening and increasing my mana pool, but it would take a while for my body to catch up, even bolstered by her magics. Even the jinn feared directly manipulating a human body too greatly. The risks of cancer, tumors, and other unwanted mutations were not to be taken lightly.
And so here I was, lounging in my chair, working my way through another damn book. The door swung open, and Alexa walked in with a slouch from her training session. I frowned, staring at the blonde Amazon as she threw her sports bag full of workout gear, her spear, and toy weapons aside before she stomped up the stairs toward her room.
“What was that about?” I muttered.
Lily ignored my words, either because she had not heard or was refusing to hear. Our relative silence was punctuated a short while later by the slamming of a door and further large, obvious stomping. Minutes later, a door opened and then another slammed shut before the sound of water running through old pipes made its way to us.
Blessed silence ensued for all of fifteen minutes before the sound of loud stomping feet reappeared, and Alexa descended the stairs. Her short hair still slightly damp, the initiate threw herself onto the couch, forcing me to scramble quickly to pull my feet aside before they were squished. Once she was down, she sighed loudly.
“Alexa?” I asked softly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“I see,” I said softly, staring at the blonde. I could push the matter, but I decided against it and instead shifted to a more comfortable position and propped my book open.
A few minutes later, a loud sigh broke the silence again.
“You know, if you have something to say, you could just say it.” Yeesh. It wasn’t as if I had never experienced teenage-girl syndrome, even though Alexa should have been old enough to have gotten over that period. I had to admit, it was amusing to think I was actually finding my sister’s teenage youth a blessing.
“Nothing,” Alexa snapped back at me before she sighed again.
I rolled my eyes and focused on my book, the silence lingering for a few minutes before it was broken by Alexa.
“I might need to leave.”
“Oh?” I frowned, turning my head to the side. Considering Alexa was here because she was “fated” to be, I found her sudden decision interesting. Not that I truly believed in their oracles, but then again, I was a mage. What did I know?
“I’m getting my squire’s test,” Alexa said.
“Pardon?” I frowned again. “I thought you were going to be a faith healer?”
“So did I, but they feel that because of my ‘involvement’ with you, I should be a squire,” Alexa said bitterly.
“But your healing—”
“Will become a secondary function,” Alexa said, “until the jinn situation is resolved.” Alexa shot a look at Lily, the jinn completely ignoring the discussion. “And maybe not then.”
“Oh. I’m sorry about that,” I said softly, grimacing at the fact that somehow my decisions had changed her life. Unintended consequences, they always seemed to play out no matter what I chose.
“No es nada,” Alexa said with another sigh. “I just need to accept the will of heaven.”
I paused, considering her words and then raised a hand slightly to ask the question that had been bugging me. “Is it heaven or the Templars? Because you being here is your heaven’s, but making you a squire seems to be theirs.”
“Our heaven,” Alexa said, correcting me before she sighed. “In my case, it’s the same. Or so says Templar Ignis.”
I grunted, shaking my head. I would admit, the idea that anyone, especially someone I might not agree with, could have such control over my life was anathema to me. Then again, I was the guy who refused to get a proper job forever, even when my family and friends had pressured me to do so, just because I hated working for others. The number of jobs I’d been fired from before I learned my lesson was staggering. I sometimes wondered if my reason for doing so was due to my traditionally minded parents. Their views on what was “right,” the pressure they exerted on me to “fit,” was significant, especially while growing up. Or at least, fit in the doctor, lawyer, accountant, or engineer aspirations they had.
“When are you leaving?” I asked.
“Not sure,” Alexa replied with another sigh, eyes half-closing. “Most squires receive a trial or series of trials they must pass to qualify. They’re often very similar. We used to joke they’d reach into different helmets to pull out what monster and how many to kill.”
“But?”
“But I’m not getting the regular,” Alexa said softly. “I’m not allowed. I’m important.”
“Oooh.” I hissed at her words. I knew that song. The “special treatment” you got when you were unique, potentially better than anyone else. As if somehow, getting something harder and more difficult than what everyone else was doing was supposed to be a damn reward. As if the extra homework, the additional classes were “good” for you.
“Well, if there’s anything I can do…”
“Thank you, but I don’t want to think about it right now. Do we have any quests outstanding? Something that is easy to finish?”
“Mmm…” I paused, considering, and then waved toward the pile of papers which had accumulated in the corner. “Take your pick. Can’t do much right now, but I should be okay for some light work tomorrow.”
“I just want to hit something,” Alexa said softly, a low growl in her voice.
“Right.” I winced at her words and hoped there was a suitable quest in the pile. Because otherwise, I knew exactly what would happen. Alexa would decide I’d had enough of my book studying, drag me to the backyard, and force me to do calisthenics. And then afterward, she would make me practice on the punching bag and target pads. All to give her an excuse to use them as well.
I still had bruises on my thighs… and ribs. And that was with her hitting through the bag last time.
***
“Do you know what a large group of crows is called?” I s
houted to Alexa the next day, my hand held in front of me as the Force Shield twisted and distorted before me under assault.
Mystic Crow (Level 9)
HP: 28/28
“No,” Alexa said as she finished screwing her spear together. Its durable titanium-and-steel construction allowed her to break it down when not in use for easy transportation. Spear locked in place, Alexa stepped forward, the weapon held close to her body and raised toward the sky. “Can you drop your shield partially?”
“Not going to have a choice in a moment,” I said with a snarl. Already, my head was ringing as my spell buckled under the repeated assaults. With an initial synchronicity rating of 38 percent, it was probably one of my worse casts in ages. But surprise and speed had factored greatly into my failure. Alexa, seeing my face distort, nodded.
A moment later, the force shield fell, and the crows descended with a vengeance. Over two dozen crows, each of them as large as a raven with glowing red eyes and claws that gleamed with an eldritch sheen, now had free and unfettered access to us. Luckily, they weren’t helicopters, so many had to beat their wings and twist as they turned in a desperate attempt to reach us as quickly as possible.
Alexa thrust her spear forward, hand gliding down the end as her weapon was launched to its farthest extent and plunged into one crow’s chest. A quick retraction, with a twist of her body as she did so, smashed another crow aside. The injured bird plummeted to the ground, a wing torn. Without pause, her hands shifted on the spear shaft to strike with the blunt end to beat aside another creature.
While Alexa played offense, my fingers snapped and twirled, my mind flowing through spell formulas without missing a beat. It was a simple spell at first—Gust—but I worked to combine it with another spell, Alter Temperature. Together, the pair of spells formed a gust of bitingly cold wind. I poured mana into the spell, the wind blowing perpendicular and above our forms to push the crows away from us, altering their trajectories and chilling their bones.