Into the Light (Axe Druid Book 1)

by Christopher Johns

  We made it to the bottom of the valley floor and halfway into the village when we began to attract the locals. Monks and villagers under their protection flocked to us. They were curious at first but then began to recognize the Monk in our party and celebrated his return.

  Some of the children began to dance amongst us asking to see what we could do. A few of the more fleet-footed teens among them sprinted off toward the monastery. By the time we arrived, it seemed like the whole village was there.

  A bald, elderly looking Halfling greeted us at the archway. The Elder Monk wore simple, light robes colored orange without sleeves with a red sash across his left shoulder hanging down to his right hip. His feet had simple, black slippers covering them, and the brightest thing about him was his smile. It was so cheerful. He looked at James through storm-grey eyes, like he would a son. James knelt in front of the three-foot-tall Monk and bowed his head.

  “Elder Leo,” he said softly. “I brought them home to hear out the Grand Elder, as you asked.”

  “Yes you did, and you returned stronger,” he observed. His voice was even and deep—not what one might expect from someone his size. “Come.”

  He walked us through the archway and back into the entry off to our right. We washed up after our travels and changed into some new clothes that we had brought along. I had to admit, I was beginning to smell gross. Some of the Monks inside offered to wash them for us, saying it would be an honor to help us, which we allowed although awkwardly.

  Once we were all cleaned and ready, Elder Leo took us out into the courtyard again and up the main steps toward a dome-like structure that we hadn’t been able to see from the distance. Inside, incense burned, not cloying the air but clearing it. I inhaled and felt cleansed, as if the air were healthier in here. Even though smoke was everywhere, it was better for me.

  There were dozens of Monks meditating; the ones closest to the front of the room sat directly on the floor. The dozens behind them on cushions that looked so soft that they could be clouds. Toward the rear, where we walked in, Monks were floating at various heights—some a few inches off the ground, others up to two feet. All different races, all different creeds humming to the same mantra, all together working toward enlightenment—or whatever it was they sought here.

  Elder Leo motioned for silence as we walked toward the front of the room by way of a side aisle. Once we got to the front, the small man leading the mantra opened his eyes but didn’t stop intoning his words. He smiled at us, and his bright blue eyes sparkled at us. He motioned for Leo to take his place. Leo bowed and began to intone the same words of the mantra and traded places with the younger man. Now that he stood, I could see him better.

  He wore the same colored robes as Leo with a purple sash rather than the red one. His arms looked well-muscled and toned. He motioned for us to follow him and cheerfully stepped off to a room on our right. We followed the bald Monk into the room, and he closed the door. He motioned to a tea pot and some cups on the table and sat down expectantly.

  James filled him in on what we did before coming, and the young Monk listened intently. He sipped his tea quietly and pondered what he was hearing. Once James finished, he motioned to us and waited expectantly. Yohsuke was the one who offered to tell the tale of our progression in this world.

  He listened well, gasped a little when he heard about our time fighting the Bone Dragon and the Lizardman village in James’s portion of the tale. It was almost unsettling.

  He took it all in and, for a few minutes, just sat and sipped his tea in contemplation.

  “Sounds like all of you have endured a great deal.” His voice was light and youthful. “I’m glad that you made it safely to our monastery.”

  He stood and bowed to each of us in turn. None of us knelt the way James had, but a couple of us stood and returned the greeting while others nodded.

  “I am Grand Elder Hiteno, leader of the Monastery of the Rising Sun. I was told of your coming and asked to fill in some of the gaps in your education about this world. Will you require rest before we get started? It’s rather late now.”

  We looked to the sky and saw that was an accurate statement. The sun had passed over the valley and was now setting in the western sky. We looked to each other, and it didn’t look like anyone was tired now, so we opted to stay.

  “Then here is what I know. Our gods learned of the threat to our world, and by extension, our neighbors, your world, more than a millennium past. Once they learned of our fate, they sought aid. Ours is a land rife and rich with magic and wonder. Your world? Not so much, but—you had the imagination to create glimpses into worlds that work similar to ours.” He smiled and clapped. A younger Monk came, and he asked him to bring food before returning to us.

  “The gods took the magic they had here and molded it to mirror what they had seen of your attempts at what we had. The result is what we have today—Brindolla, our land. For centuries, I have been blessed with glimpses of what the gods saw in your world, and it is fascinating. Weapons that bark fire and metal, beasts that carry you to and fro made of metal. Simply amazing. Mind boggling and terrifying. With our magics and might, here, we might forestall War and his minions, but your world would fall as so many others like it—all technologically advanced but no magic to bring forth and stop him.”

  The Gnome looked sad for a moment, then refocused on his words and went on. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that he had said he’d been watching my world for centuries, but he continued; I had to shake my head to follow along.

  “Bringing you here, people from different walks of life but who have all worked together to accomplish great things in your ‘games’ is our only hope, and unfortunately, your world’s as well. Now, time here moves differently than your world. Dozens of years could pass here, and in your world, merely an hour would go by. Maybe less time, maybe a bit more, but that is what we have gathered. When we asked you here, our worlds were closest to the veil that separates them, so it was easiest to get you here. Being truthful, we aren’t sure what will happen if you were to die here. Our Gods have the might to bring you back, but with them so distracted with keeping War out, it could be a while—if at all. You may wake up in your own bed at home, thinking this a strange dream, or you may get to meet your own gods.”

  I wasn’t sure if anyone noticed, but I could feel my stomach sinking and the blood draining from my face.

  Wow.

  We could die for real here. The thought crossed my mind… but fuck. My son could be fatherless. Jaken’s daughter, too. Yohsuke’s wife a widow. Bokaj and his family, James and his fiancé, and Balmur and his true love.

  For fucks sake, man.

  This was a bit too real at the moment. I looked at my friends—men I had fought and triumphed with. Risked life and limb—unknowingly—for.

  Could we do this? Did we have the right to even try?

  “It was unfair of the gods to do so without giving you the whole picture before you agreed. That is why they dote on you so. We here who know of you, have sworn to help you how we can. As you are now, we don’t know that you could take the next minion of War’s. The one you seek to find has a hold on that entire region now, not just a piece of the city. It had been half asleep before; only its presence had brought about lunacy and strife, causing some to turn against their fellows quicker. Now that it is awake, the whole area belongs to it, though for now, we have it contained to the city. It doesn’t want to bring the power of the gods against it.

  You will need to be stronger and better equipped to handle this threat. We have many here who will seek to aid you. Then we will send you to others still. We will help to strengthen your bodies and minds while you are here. Then we will send you to the Dwarves to arm yourselves, though we have not the influence there to truly be of more aid.”

  We all nodded and were about to leave when suddenly, “Hold up.”

  Jaken stood and peered down at the little Monk. With the height difference, most normal people might
be intimidated, but not this Gnome. He just smile serenely.

  “Yes?”

  “You mean to tell me that we can die here? I might never see my daughter again?”

  “Unfortunately, it is all too possible of a reality.”

  “But we have a chance to beat this guy? Make him move on? What?”

  “It is my hope, and I merely echo the Gods in their wisdom, that if we defeat the minions and Generals of War who are here, he will be unable to break through the combined powers of the Gods, that he will be held at a standstill and will be stopped.”

  “What’s to stop him from just moving on and coming back?”

  “Pride,” the Gnome admitted. “Lady Radiance and her siblings watched as he took world after world after world. Never once did he let one not fall before moving. Never once did he pass over. He seeks to claim all life. Everywhere. His pride is what will stop him.”

  “So we have to ice this fool here and now, so that you guys don’t fall first.”

  “If it is possible, yes. But he is a cosmic entity, and I don’t know that anyone but the gods could do so.”

  From the time we had first gotten here to now, we had been going almost balls to the wall the entire time. The little downtime we had was spent either traveling, eating, focusing on improving ourselves, or sleeping. This was the first chance we had truly had to let this actually sink in. I looked around the table, and the faces I saw were bleak, slightly pale, and contemplative.

  “Fuck that,” Yohsuke said softly. We all looked over and a look of steely resolve passed over his face. “Fuck that. We will take him out, or I will myself.”

  “I’m not going to make you guys come,” he said looking at all of us in turn. “Jake, Evan, hell even Jaken—I don’t know you guys as well as I wish I had on Earth. You guys are fucking awesome, but I’m not going to sit here and let this asshole threaten the people I care about. Aaron, Chris—you guys are my brothers, and as awesome as I am, I can’t do it all by myself. You guys in?”

  “You know I am,” James said with a smile.

  “Ask me again, and I’ll beat your ass,” I said. I still had doubts, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. But I wasn’t about to take this lying down. I’d dealt with a lot of shit in my life—a lot of pain, confusion, and bullshit. Who better to fight beside than my brothers, especially when my boy and my loved ones were on the line.

  But still, even with them fighting beside me, was I up to this? Could I hack this? Sure, I had joined the military—I’d even been ready to take a life if I had to in order to defend my loved ones, but this, so far from home? So far, things had been easy enough. Terrifying and brutal at times, yeah, but still, we were able to come out on top. But now? Now we were facing stronger enemies. More cunning and they weren’t going to hold back because we were outsiders. It was all a little much to take in. Luckily, I had a little reprieve from the darkness in my head.

  “Hell yeah, homies.” Jaken grinned and slapped us all on the back. “That’s what I’m sayin’.”

  “I’m in,” Balmur said simply. There was a lot going on in that man’s mind, but he kept himself well.

  Bokaj looked at all of us, grinned, then patted Tmont. “Hell yeah, I’m in, broskies.”

  “I’m glad to hear that you are all fighters.” The Gnome smiled.

  “Are you really that old?” Jaken asked, and all of us couldn’t help but laugh.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “AGAIN!” barked my trainer. I swung my now weighted great axe for what seemed like the thousandth time that morning in a series of chops, hacking motions, and double handed twists.

  It had been three days of doing this training. The muscles in my arms, shoulders, back, core, and legs screamed in agony. By the end of this round, my strength rose another point. That was four points total. Then after this, we went on a run, one mile with one hundred pounds attached to my body.

  See, the Monks had these ingenious little weights that wrapped around a limb, kind of like the ones I’d had made for Kayda. These weighed thirty pounds on each of my legs. A twenty pound vest was strapped over my chest, and ten pound weights went around each wrist. My dexterity had gone up four points as well. This was the final day of this portion of the training, and I was honestly looking forward to it. Jaken was right there with me. His load distribution was similar, but his weights were heavier at two hundred pounds. His strength had gone up by three, but the Monks had been drilling him to increase his dexterity, so that went up six points.

  Balmur had been undergoing similar training but more specialized. He was throwing weighted knives as fast and accurately as possible for hours at a time. Then when he was out of knives, he had to endure walking over hot coals, hotter than even his resistance to fire would halve while being bombarded with blunt arrows. The poor Dwarf went to sleep with healing salves on his bruises, nightly. His dexterity raised by three points, his constitution by three, and his strength by two.

  Kayda had grown quite a bit with her training. Her weights had been increased; they now weighed eight pounds apiece rather than five. Her strength had gone up on the flight here by one point. Then during the three days of hellish training, her strength and dexterity had gone up by another four in each. They fired the same blunt-tipped arrows at her as they did Balmur, the poor dear. She weaved in and out, carrying items with her claws, then eventually a bucket filled with a little sand. She was growing stronger and larger by the day. She was now bigger than any bird I had ever seen in my own world. They were feeding us a lot to keep us in top form but her most of all. Must be bird people.

  After the end of the third day training our physical traits, we switched to train our mental ones. Jaken was taken somewhere to learn meditation and to help him gain some wisdom, and I was taken to train my magic and see if I couldn’t raise my intelligence stat.

  The training actually wasn’t what I thought it might be. As soon as I came into the room, I was told to sit and crack a book. I read theorems on different types of magic by people whose names were completely foreign to me. Much like the gift of the common tongue that the party had been blessed with, we also had the ability to read and write in the languages we could speak.

  The book I was currently reading, Flitwing’s Feast for the Magically Curious Mind by Syllius Flitwing, spoke about the histories of magic and how the Gods eventually gave the people the ability to copy their divine feats, thinking about how the people might be better suited to their environment if they had the powers to fight back the monstrous hordes that had populated the planet at the time. You know, because creating just one thing that might be seen as inferior didn’t sit well with some of them. Beasts like Dragons, Leviathans in the seas, the great birds in the skies, Goblins, Kobolds, warrior races such as the Orcs, the trickster races such as the Sylphs, and the other Fae creatures wandering the realms.

  As I learned more about the history, I realized that this didn’t seem much like the games I was used to playing but one that I had always admired watching others play and wanted to play myself, one of the first tabletop role playing games to ever grace our world. Which led me to wonder when the ability to cast spells had changed from a certain number of spells per day to the use of mana and why?

  I mean, I wouldn’t complain. I was slinging spells, shapeshifting into animals, and swinging a big ol’ axe like a beast. I was not going to look the gift horse in the mouth, but my curious mind almost always gets me into trouble.

  The more I poured over the tome, the more I realized that they didn’t actually know when the change had occurred. Hell, it may never have needed to if the well of mana inside the individual had always been there; it may have been easier to define their spell casting ability that way. The pages did tell me that the stats given to each person are different and that they grow. Also each spell caster can claim different types of spells, and certain spells can be learned regardless of class. So, as a Druid, I could learn a spell cast by Warlocks and Wizards, so long as I could understand
the concepts and had the ability.

  “Take, if you will, the simple Dimensional Sleeve spell,” the book stated. “Commonly used by those with a knack for magic and sleight of hand. The caster takes an object into his hand and, with a flourish, pockets it into a small dimension in his sleeve. This spell allows for objects of up to five pounds to be stored there until needed, at which point the caster need only think of the item and pull it from his sleeve. Trivial, but wonderful for children and drunkards.”

  There was an example of how to create such a dimension in a sleeve, taking mana into your hand, then holding it in the sleeve and filling it, seeing a small tear in the space between sleeve and wrist, and putting the object in it, like a bag or a small sack on the wrist. I tried it several times; nothing happened. I wondered if Balmur might be able to teach me the spell himself, if he knew it. I’d ask later.

  After that, it was all just theory on how magic continues to evolve and change. Purely conjecture and opinion. No other real spells or practical application.

  Next, I flipped through a book on elemental magics. Food had been brought in sometime during my reading, and much like my previous life, I had ignored my body while I read. I ate while I studied, and the book on the elements had to be my favorite by far. There was no title and was very small, but it was so descriptive. It described how pure mana was turned into aspected mana for spells. The passage at the end of the book was fascinating. It read:

  “The mind naturally accesses information on elemental processes without the need for conscious thought. As a magus grows older and experiences the world, he is exposed to nature and the elements in their natural state. All magus will their mana to change into the appropriate form when casting a spell. Reaching for the heat necessary to lob a fireball. The soothing cool of water, the chill of ice, and the void of dark, all are elements known to us, but further understanding is necessary to truly evolve as a magus.”