Primal's Wrath: Book VI of 'The Magician's Brother' Series

by HDA Roberts

  I took some pleasure from imagining how just one mental trap being triggered would almost certainly dissuade the Aurelia from trying a second time.

  I worked for an hour, far less time than I’d imagined, flying to one Vampire after another while Bellegarde watched, but didn't interfere. Her species of Vampire weren’t great Telepaths, but she had enough of the talent to see what I was doing; more than enough to know how pointless it would be to try and undo what I’d done.

  Finally, I was finished, and I drifted down to rejoin her.

  "You saw?" I confirmed.

  She nodded, scowling angrily.

  "I did this because you tried to kill my family. I invite you to contemplate what I might have done to you and yours if you had succeeded."

  Her scowl faltered and she actually gulped; it made me happy.

  "Yes indeed. You see, the only reason I killed Vallan was because he was an imminent danger to millions of people. I don't kill, as a rule, not just because taking a life is an evil thing, though it is, but because I find that when someone is dead, it's far harder to make them suffer."

  "Something you may wish to keep in mind, Lord Shadow," she said, some of her bravado returning. She’d likely guessed that I wouldn’t bother talking to her if I’d intended her to go the same way as her associates.

  I smiled at her, "Touché."

  She inclined her head.

  "I'm led to believe that Elders can exist in a suspended state almost indefinitely without harm to themselves, so I have no compunctions over leaving them like this for a very, very long time. You won't be getting them back without me, though feel free to try, by all means. Just make sure to have someone on hand to scoop up the brains that will come pouring out of your ears."

  She grimaced.

  "Once you and the rest of your kind have come to your senses, give me a call and we'll talk terms. However, if you conduct any further attacks, then this will be the least that you will have to deal with, understand?"

  "I do."

  I pulled a business card and Willed it over to her. She snatched it out of the air.

  "My details."

  She nodded again. I released the Coma Hex in her human lackey and dropped through a Shadow Gate, grinning broadly once I was out of her sight.

  I knew that she wouldn't take my deal. She was too ambitious, and I'd just given her a clear run at four territories and hundreds of millions in assets. Great big bait for a great big shark. And if I’d done this correctly, she wouldn’t even realise she was on my hook until she was flopping about on the boat.

  Most importantly, I had my breathing room. From here, it was a waiting game, to see how the Vampires would jump, how high and in which direction. Tethys and I had planned and prepared for everything we could think of, but there was no way to plan for every eventuality. I just hoped we were ready.

  I was back home inside of ten minutes later, and walked into Tethys' office with what I assume was an extremely obnoxious smile on my face.

  Cassandra and Demise were waiting there along with Tethys. My Wardens sagged with released worry and came to check me over while Tethys just waited, her expression matching mine.

  "I'm glad you're alright, but that smile is truly offensive," Cassandra said, while trying to squeeze the life out of me again.

  I laughed and she let me go. Demise patted my shoulder once (she was only an occasional hugger), but she grinned to let me know that she was glad I was alive.

  "Shall we proceed with the debriefing?" Tethys asked, her voice doing that throaty purr that sent shivers down my spine. She made no effort to hide the double entendre.

  "No. Not while we’re in the room. Talk first," Cassandra said, making Tethys and I chuckle.

  I sat with them and we went through everything that had just happened, and what I'd heard while eavesdropping. We then used that information to make further preparations and contingencies. There were more traitors or patsies about the place than we'd known about before, and that required some additional resources to confirm and counter. We also had to divert funding to cultivate brand new assets, since we couldn’t trust any of the ones we’d thought to use.

  Afterwards, when Cassandra and Demise had left, I laid down with Tethys on one of her sofas, simply relaxing in her company for a bit.

  "This was a big step in the right direction, but things could still get much worse before they gets better," she said.

  "I know."

  "At what point do we bring in the other Archons? Especially if... Thirteen is a real problem and not just a loose-lips situation."

  "As soon as we have any evidence."

  "He said, knowing that was someone else's problem," she said with a smile, leaning up to kiss my lips.

  Our fingers intertwined and I smiled at her.

  "I’m not worried. If we can deal with an Elder God and come out smelling of roses, then some Elder Vampires and their... allies should be no problem," I said.

  "Yes, jinx it, why don't you?"

  Chapter 23

  The next day started off quietly enough.

  Thank God! I needed a little normality in my life.

  I spent most of it at the university, attending lectures and catching up on assignments. Tethys kept me updated, but I didn’t expect anything important to happen for a bit. It would take a while for the Vampires to react to what I’d done.

  I came home late, though in time for dinner. I was tired and still a little agitated from the last couple of days, so I was hoping for a bit of peace and quiet so that I could think and even decompress a bit.

  Alas, Ross was eating with us that night, so quiet was out.

  She and Des were bonding a little harder than usual, which was just... painful. I forced myself to remember that, not only would Tethys be upset if I banished her to a dimension she couldn’t come back from, but it would also deprive my brother of the only friend he was likely to make for a while (his attempts to reconnect with his old friends had not gone well).

  And, though I really hate, hate, hate to admit this... Ross was actually good for Des. She made him laugh, she made him think (something I had perpetually failed to do), and she was supportive in a way that only a friend can be. No matter how close the family, they will always have a different perspective to a friend. I could be my brother’s friend, sure, but he was stuck with me. Ross, he picked.

  So, as much as I hated the disruption, I couldn’t take that from him.

  Stupid conscience.

  Finally, the pair vacated the dining room (we’d had to move from the cosier breakfast room since the number of people eating at once had increased) in the direction of the TV room in the east wing (one of the many alterations my friends from university had cajoled me into making) and I sagged in my seat.

  Father chuckled at me and patted my shoulder, "You're a good brother, Mathew."

  "They’re so loud," I complained.

  Mother chuckled as well, and so did everyone else who was left.

  "So, Mathew..." Cassandra began in a reasonable tone.

  Too reasonable.

  "Y-yes?" I managed, which made Tethys snort.

  "Really? That's all it takes to reduce you to a stutter? Your name?"

  "Said by you, like that, you betcha."

  Cassandra smiled, "Maybe you aren't so dumb after all. Anyway, I was thinking..."

  I actually sagged further into my seat.

  "Would you stop that? You're making me seem like a tyrant!"

  "Sorry, wasn't that the image you were going for? Ow! If you don't want to look like a tyrant, then maybe stop hitting me!"

  "Anyway, as I was saying," she said, having to raise her voice over the laughter of my parents, Tethys and Demise, who all thought that this was hilarious, and not one of whom seemed willing to help me, "you intend for Desmond to pursue his ambitions in professional duelling, correct?"

  "Yes..." I said tentatively.

  "Well, and I do hate to point this out," I doubted that, but didn't comment, "but the
last time you tried to train duellists, it all went pear shaped."

  "I think ‘pear-shaped’ is a little harsh..."

  "They lost. All of them."

  "Not true! One of them won... I think."

  That was at the University after I’d revealed myself to be an Archon. The Duelling Team coach had asked me to give his kids a few pointers. How badly that had gone need not concern us here; suffice to say, Cassandra had a point.

  "That's not how I remember it," she replied.

  Of course it wasn't, she couldn’t even give me that much...

  "Anyway,” she continued, “you're too powerful to properly teach a Wizard how to duel. You're too reliant on raw power for your victories, and that just won’t work for Desmond."

  "You said something nice... I'm scared- Ow! Stop that!"

  "I meant that it's made you sloppy."

  "That was a rather rapid return to form."

  She glared, I shut up.

  "So, I was thinking that I would teach him. Our power levels are similar, and I can use Light Magic well enough to teach him a trick or two."

  "That... that would be great, Cassie, thanks!" I replied, smiling broadly.

  She was right about my teaching Duelling technique, I wasn't that bad at it, not after I'd learned what not to do, anyway, but she would, undeniably, be better. Cassandra had lived and breathed Magical Combat for the better part of four hundred years; she'd learned to use her Magic like a scalpel, just enough force in just the right place to do the job. She used every scrap of it to the fullest, whereas I just threw power at the problem until it stopped moving.

  Des couldn't ask for a better teacher.

  "Of course, since I'll be training one Graves, I think it perfectly reasonable that I train you t-"

  "Holy God, did you know Matty could run that fast?!" Tethys squeaked.

  "I didn't know he could run at all! Matty, you come back here!" Cassandra barked, laughing as she got up to chase after me.

  I had, rather sensibly, scarpered.

  "No! I know what 'training' means and you just want an excuse to hit me!"

  "How did you know?! I mean, no I don't!"

  I sprinted around the corner and towards a dark patch, which unfolded into a Gate into the Shadow Realm. That was as good a place as any to hide in until she forgot all about beating me up 'for my own good', because I just knew that those four ugly little words would enter into this equation at some point.

  "You know it's for your own good!"

  See? Right on bloody cue!

  "No I don't!"

  I nearly made it to the Gate... alright, I didn't even get three steps from the dining room door. She caught me and dragged me back. Literally. She tripped me and actually dragged me back by my foot.

  "This is very undignified," I complained.

  "Boo hoo. Come on, we'll go and tell your brother about your new training schedule."

  "But, and I don't want to put too fine a point on this when your feet are so close to my groin, how do you intend to teach me when, and again, please don't hurt me, I have about a hundred times more Well-Power than you do?"

  "You'll see. I have a plan."

  The way she said that made me wonder if I could move in with one of the other Archons for a while.

  "A Spelleater? You want me to wear a Spelleater?"

  "No. I want you to wear nine Spelleaters," Cassandra replied with an evil smile on her face as she ushered Des and me into the North Wing, where she'd taken up residence recently, along with the other Wardens. She used to live in the South, with me, but she wanted her own space to properly train and manage her people.

  A big part of the lower ground floor had been converted into a sparring room, complete with a duelling circle that would allow Magicians to practice without fear of accidental injury. It was silver, set into a wide expanse of varnished wood, like the floor of a dance studio. There were training pads stacked neatly in the corner and a door leading to the North Wing's dungeons in the opposite wall (those had been converted into a shooting range). The far wall from the door held a set of stand-seating so that Cassandra and any guest trainers could see everyone and effectively supervise.

  "Specifically, I want you to wear nine sets of Spelleater Manacles."

  That made more sense. Spelleater Amulets were designed to disrupt all Magic within a given area, generally a radius of about six feet or so, depending on the Living Energy of the user. They would cause Cassandra and Des far more trouble than they would me; even one would neutralise them both completely, much less nine. Spelleater Manacles worked differently, they only affected the Magic of the wearer and were powered by Life Force rather than Life Energy.

  This was important because Life Force (energy that governs a living creature's aging and overall deterioration) was easily topped up with Magic, whereas Living Energy (concerned with the chemical reactions within a body and the very sustenance of life) was not, and difficult to replace if spent incorrectly (I knew this from painful experience). That meant that I could wear nine sets of manacles without keeling over afterwards and not lose so much as an instant off the end of my life either.

  Anyway, that many manacles would force me to use so much Magic to get off even a single Spell that I’d only be able to cast a few before I completely ran out of power. It was a very clever way of teaching me to do more with less, unpleasant though it was likely to be.

  "And we're certain this can't wait until next, you know... year?" I begged.

  Cassandra pulled a jangling sack from a nearby cupboard and tossed it to me.

  "What do you think?"

  I grumbled and pulled the manacles out one by one. These weren't linked by a chain, and it didn’t matter which wrist they were on as long as there was an equal number either side. I put all eighteen on, nine on the left, nine on the right. I didn’t like them much. That many Spelleaters on me felt like a great weight on my Well, making me feel sluggish and slow.

  While I was doing that, Cassandra fitted Des out with a protective gauntlet. It would interface with the duelling circle and dissipate any attack coming his way. Once my Spelleaters were on, she tossed a gauntlet at me, too, which I slipped over my left forearm and its manacles.

  "Alright, let's just get an idea of where you both are in terms of finesse," Cassandra said, "Let's start with a simple duel. No High Magic."

  I still felt a little fuzzy, but nodded, stepping into the ring.

  "Both ready?"

  "Yeah!" Des cheered; I just nodded again.

  "Duel!"

  I called a simple Will Shield and started working on my standard defences.

  It was immensely difficult, like trying to run through waist-deep water. The constructs came to mind as easily as ever, but projecting them past the Spelleaters was slow and tricky. It was so easy to shove too much power through the individual strands of a Spell and shatter it, wasting the energy into the bargain.

  If I’d been facing anyone else, I’d have lost within the first few seconds.

  Fortunately for me, Des was still dancing around like some sort of demented horizontal whack-a-mole, while drawing in pitifully minimal amounts of Light.

  "Stop, stop, stop," Cassandra said just as my shields finally popped into place. "Desmond, what are you doing?"

  "Moving around, trying to keep him from hitting me."

  Cassandra sighed.

  "Who taught you how to duel?"

  "I'm self-taught," Des said self-consciously; it made me smile because I'd said it in almost exactly the same way in somewhat similar circumstances (though with considerably less in the way of pure, ignorant stupidity as the cause).

  "I thought you taught him," Cassandra said to me.

  "I tried, he wouldn't listen."

  "Well, yeah, but you were just a normal human, no offence, what did you kn- oh. Damn it," Des said, as it finally dawned just how much it may have cost him to ignore me for all those years.

  "What did Mathew tell you to do?" Cassandra asked patiently,
no doubt vastly increasing the estimate of how long this was likely to take. That also made me smile.

  "Will Shield then regular Shields then attack spells, but that's so boring! Best just to hit them while they're doing all that dumb stuff."

  Cassandra's eye began to twitch, and one of the warning veins on the side of her head began to throb dangerously.

  I wanted to smile here, too, but knew better than that. No matter what happened here today I would be the one paying for it, so best not to put any more fuel into the fire.

  "Desmond," she said in a voice that spoke of glacial calm over a whirlpool of growing annoyance (I'd learned to recognise Cassandra's various annoyed tones), "if you wish to succeed in duelling, then you need to understand the principles of Magical Combat. It can get very technical, but all you really need to know now is that it comes down to three things; attack, evasion and defence. Watch."

  She threw a beam of coherent light right at my face. It hit my Shields and dissipated, taking the outer layer with it... quickly followed by all the rest. I’d tried to compensate for the attack, but messed up the amount of power I was putting into my regenerative constructs, which caused them to shatter explosively. The resulting blast wave tore into the rest of my defensive Spell-frameworks, and when I tried to fix that, I under-compensated, and everything just collapsed like a house of cards. That left me dazzled by the sudden flash of light and nursing a rather nasty feedback headache.

  Not my proudest moment.

  "Whoa," Des said, staring at the impressive light show where my shields used to be.

  "Alright, that was my fault,” Cassandra said, instantly understanding my problem. “What I mean is that, in any sort of Duel, and in most fights, your first priority is defence. Magicians are glass cannons, always have been. The slightest graze from an attack Spell can do immeasurable damage to a human body, so we either raise shields, or we make ourselves fast enough to dodge, the latter of which you cannot do, and neither can your sluggish brother."