The Trapped Mind Project (Emerilia Book 1)

by Michael Chatfield

  “So what is he truly capable of?”

  A black sheet with silver runes appeared in front of the Dwarves.

  At first the Dwarves looked at it with mild curiosity; it quickly turned to shock. These men and women had created some of the greatest machines in Dwarven history and a simple black sheet with runes engraved into it made them pause.

  “What is this for?” A Dwarven smith traced her hand over the runes.

  “This is for his power.” Kol felt a shiver run through his body.

  “What is he?” another asked, their voice almost reverent.

  “That is his business to tell you or not,” Kol said.

  The other Master Smith’s nodded. Everyone had some kind of secret.

  “Teach him so that he might have counsel,” one of the Dwarves said.

  The others signaled their agreement.

  “I’d sure as hell like to feed him a few beers and figure out what the hell is running through his mind,” another dwarf said.

  The rest laughed.

  “Careful, he might out drink you,” Kol said. The tense atmosphere fell into the background even as the adrenaline and goose bumps remained.

  ***

  Malsour looked at the growing town as the cart glided over the Dwarven roads. Dwarven warbands were forming up into their ten-strong formations and moving onto the road in step.

  Induca stretched and yawned in the back of the cart.

  Malsour wiped some drool off her mouth as she leaned on his shoulder, looking around sleepily. Malsour looked over the various camps inside the village’s walls.

  Induca looked around. Her eyes rested on a compound off to the side of the road. Her eyes widened as Malsour opened up his senses. There was a lot of magical power all around. Players were like beacons to it.

  Malsour didn’t need to open his eyes to feel the raw Mana that was contained within a woman who was in one of the large guild camps between the southern and northern roads. Malsour felt something that confused him. His head turned to look at a smithy. He used Arcane sight, seeing a person of middling abilities, but the creation in their hands showed such a concentration of magical elements that Malsour couldn’t pick them apart.

  “Thank you for the ride,” Malsour said, giving the trader a petty soul gem.

  “Thank you for your patronage. If you need anything, let me know.” The Elven trader smiled, the gem disappearing into his robe as he slowed the cart.

  Malsour got off and Induca followed. She was wide awake and looked toward the one with a great Fire Affinity.

  “Go, make sure you don’t set fire to everything,” Malsour said.

  “Okay!” She smiled and headed off toward the guild camps.

  Malsour looked over the smithy. One of the smaller creations was actually a magical portable smithy. Malsour had never seen a smithy like it; its Affinities were balanced between all six, meaning that it did not favor one over the other.

  He had studied the Dwarven magical smithies. Usually they were just attuned to one kind of Affinity. With Dave’s more or less balanced Affinities, the smithy was more balanced. No matter a smith’s Affinity, they could use the different working areas. The smithy also took and stored all kinds of Affinity strengths, growing in power bit by bit.

  Its power was impressive but not up to what the master smiths of the Dwarves used to forge their great creations. The smithy was like a piece of wood to a great galley when compared to what the halfling was working on. He was at a workstation, carefully carving runes into a sheet of ebony. After the rune was completed, he sprinkled some silver particles on the night-black surface.

  Using magic, the man heated up silver and poured it into the runes, imbuing it with magic and making it so that the heating and cooling of the silver didn’t crack the ebony sheet. It was an intensely time-consuming process. There were just a few sheets but it must’ve taken weeks or months to get this far.

  The halfling looked up from his work as the silver was secured in its place.

  “Thank you for waiting. It’s hard with the heat of the silver. Have to contain all of the heat in a magical shield, place it and then reduce the heat inside the silver so it adheres to the ebony but doesn’t cause it to split.”

  “In this temperature, it makes it all the harder,” Malsour said. “It has been a long time since I have seen the work of a master smith as skilled as you. My name is Malsour.”

  “Dave, and I ain’t a master smith—just a tinkerer of things.” Dave moved out of his workshop and held out a hand.

  Malsour shook it, not trying to hide his surprise. “Did someone give you the task of engraving those sheets?” Malsour asked.

  “No. I designed them. My helper went off to go and do something else, though.” Dave looked around.

  “What will they do when complete?” Malsour asked.

  “That is a secret.” Dave smiled.

  Malsour smiled. He thought that it might be boring out in the backwaters of Emerilia. Without stimulation for his mind, he easily grew bored. He did find joy in meeting new people, but information and learning drove him forward. Induca was the friendlier one.

  “It seems that you will need a large power source for it,” Malsour said. “At least a few greater soul gems, which are hard to gather unless you have a ley line running through here somewhere?”

  “You seem to know a bit about soul gems.” Dave tapped his chin.

  Malsour pulled a soul gem out of his pocket, channeling some power into it so it glowed with power. “I may know a thing or two.”

  Dave let out a laugh and clapped Malsour on the back. “I was thinking that I was the only one who knew to charge them up with our internal power.” Dave kept his voice low.

  “How did you know?” Malsour asked.

  “’Cause I’ve been dabbling with soul gems a bit,” Dave admitted.

  “You seem to be a very interesting man indeed, Dave.” Malsour smiled.

  “I do my best.” Dave winked.

  “I haven’t seen a combination of runes like that, even at the Mages College in Opheir.” Malsour thought it might be a good idea to keep the fact that he’d been to most of the mages guilds across the world a secret.

  “You’ve been to the mages guild? What about the libraries?” Dave asked, going from stoic to pure interest. It seemed that Malsour had touched on an aspiration or interest.

  “Yes, I have found them rather interesting,” Malsour said, finding Dave more and more agreeable.

  “You have to tell me more. It is a dream of mine to gain access to the libraries. I’m something of an information junkie.” Dave smiled.

  “Certainly. What areas are you interested in?” Malsour said.

  Dave rubbed his beard. “Well, I have been thinking about summoning recently, the act of being able to transport a creature from one world to another. I would also like to get more information on magical lines, their formation and how they lay. Then some interesting things I’ve heard about herbs. Then, well, really anything on crafting. I’ve worked at smithing and dabbled with woodworking but I know that there is much more to learn.”

  “Those are indeed some high aspirations.” Malsour nodded.

  Dave sized up Malsour as if weighing something in his mind.

  “Something on your mind?” Malsour asked.

  “I am interested in the kinds of soul gems that are created from magical crystal with combinations of gems and other materials,” Dave said.

  “Ahh, that is rather advanced. I have dabbled in the area,” Malsour said.

  “Have you charged and recharged a soul gem before?” Dave asked.

  A slow smile spread across Malsour’s face, looking like the predator he was. “Of course.” He kept his voice low. Few ever thought to leave some charge in a soul gem, thinking that they had to use it all. If you had the right runes in place, then you could see how much power you were letting out of the soul gem.

  Dave’s thoughtful look turned into a smile.

  “Well, I am l
ooking for permutations of the soul gems to see which ones are able to withstand a large amount of charging and discharging as well as holding a large amount of power and not pouring their charge into the air and not into the target.”

  “Well, for the pouring it out everywhere, you would need to use runes not only on the soul gem but on the target that you wanted to charge. It takes longer but it would mean that your power loss would go from around thirty or forty percent to under five,” Malsour said.

  “I was thinking that might be the case—going to be annoying,” Dave muttered.

  “If I tell you what I know about soul gems, will you tell me what you know about runes? I am rather interested in your ebony sheets,” Malsour said.

  Dave paused for a few moments before he held out his hand.

  “Deal, but no writing it down and calling it your own. I’m going to make a book on it to barter my way into the College of Mages.”

  “Understandable. Much easier than having to go through all of the schooling.” Malsour shook his head, remembering how the school had tried to get him to do lessons with them before they allowed him access to their libraries. It was only after proving his knowledge to them that they allowed him access to Miol-huir’s College of Mages. The access to one college’s libraries was access to them all, so Malsour hadn’t needed to repeat the process constantly.

  “Well, if you don’t mind waiting till tonight, unless you mind being in a smithy,” Dave joked.

  “I actually rather like the heat. All of this winter has made me get quite the chill,” Malsour said. The smithy was only marginally warmer, in Malsour’s opinion. He’d like getting inside one the furnaces to actually start feeling warm again. The Densaou Ring of Fire he had been born in was a long way away and his burrow deep in the mountains outside of Miol-huir was warm year-round.

  Being in the north with snow, it was not his favorite experience.

  “Okay, just watch that you don’t get in anyone’s way,” Dave said.

  Malsour nodded and followed Dave into the workshop, talking of runes and soul gems.

  ***

  Induca looked at all of the colorful creatures who called themselves “Players.”

  There was no mistaking the inner power that they held. Many were high levels with great strength. The ones she was headed for seemed rowdier and although their external levels were low, the way they moved or their eyes flickered, they were predators.

  Work hard, play hard—my kinds of people, except all that working business! Maybe play hard, but game harder?

  She grinned at her own joke as she walked through the camp and came to an area that had been cleared.

  There were massive people, all working together under a female dwarf’s instruction. Each of them was bearing a shield of some type. They moved in sync to her words. She was about five foot tall while the people arrayed in front of her could reach twice that height.

  None of them seemed to care.

  Induca’s interest was piqued as she realized that while the trainees were all Players, their instructor was a person of Emerilia.

  A flare of the power that had drawn Induca this far away from the heat of the south grabbed her attention. She looked over to where it had come from.

  In a training area, a female Elf was fighting off three other opponents. All of them were using magic. The Elf favored Fire magic as she threw fire lances and coated her blade in blue flames, crashing into a rogue’s blade as they appeared from nowhere.

  The three opponents were no slacks, but her skills were evident. Although they had just started to learn, she had worked on her skills for a long time: her movements were thought-out, her magic was economical, and her lithe figure belied the power in her frame.

  The fight ended and it was clear that the Elven woman had won. She and her opponents talked as they walked to the edge of the fighting area.

  Induca might be one of the dragons who tended to be a bit more flighty and liked to be involved in things, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t smart or hadn’t been paying attention. She might be rambunctious and childish at times, but her parents and her siblings had raised her to be able to defend herself, for centuries. It was the one thing that had kept her entertained when they had been forced away from Emerilia.

  “You went with economic and nice, small fire spells, but you could’ve just smashed their defenses away instead. You’re reacting to what they’re doing, not anticipating it with your magic. You could defend their blades easy enough and push them away, but then they’re just going to come back at you. Push them into a fire trap, have a hot lance waiting for them to skewer themselves on. You are thinking too linearly—about how you project your attacks outward, instead of how you can create them within an area,” Induca said.

  “Excuse me?” the Elven woman said, in mid-conversation with her opponents.

  “You have a large area of influence that you can cast Fire spells in, yet you’re only using the area close to you to create them. The farther it is away from you, the less solid it’s going to be, but still going to kill them. Also, why are you not using pops?”

  “Pops?” The Elf was now thoroughly confused.

  “Good, there’s still more I can teach you! My name’s Induca, and I want to teach you how to fight with Fire.” She held out one hand, a smile lighting up her face.

  “I’m Deia,” the Elf said.

  Induca looked at the familiar features, the eyes and hair. Someone looking at the two of them might think that they were cousins or similarly related. Induca’s smile only widened as she stared into Deia’s eyes that seemed to dance as if lit from behind.

  “It is very good to meet you, Deia. I think we’re going to have a lot of fun.”

  ***

  Josh groaned as Jules took a sip of the wine offered. Esa sat next to her, not caring who saw their clear affection for each other.

  “Are you sure?” Josh hated having to apologize but it seemed to be the only way to fix what he’d messed up.

  “I’m pretty sure. Dave is an E-head like you lot but instead of going out and raiding, he’s become part of this community. When you threw a knife at him, he probably wasn’t thinking about the damage to him, but the fact you threw it in a place where a bunch of his friends were and you could’ve injured them. As you know, People of Emerilia do not come back once you kill them,” Jules said.

  Josh wanted to argue the point but he knew that he had messed up, so he let it slide. “Okay,” Josh said. He wanted to get on Dave’s good side because then it would mean he could maybe get his daggers fixed up.

  He had seen the way Dave worked and talked. There was an innate sense that he liked the man, as if he could sense the beginnings of a friendship between them. Josh had called very few people his friends when he’d lived on Earth. Now, in Emerilia, he had gained friends and a purpose. He felt that Dave was similar to himself, though his friends were People of the land.

  It had led to Josh interacting with the People of the land as if they were real people instead of just people to aid in his progression. He’d been surprised at how they had opened up. His actions had spread through the guild and had led to Dwayne asking some of Dave’s Dwarven friends to teach them how to fight. The results had been surprisingly positive.

  They had trained with weapons all of their lives and their skill showed. Josh was seriously thinking about putting down roots in the village just for the people he’d met, their training and their ability to work on the high-level gear that the Stone Raiders got from their raids.

  He drummed his fingers on his dagger hilt and made noises with his lips. “Well, that is something to deal with later. In the meantime, what do you think of my offer?” Josh looked at Esa, Jules, and Mikal.

  The three looked to one another; it was clear that their fighting together had made them close friends. Smiles blossomed on their faces.

  “If you’ll take us, we’re in, O’ Guild Leader.” Mikal bowed.

  Josh snorted. He always found that ro
gues had a distinct lack of respect for authority and decorum. It’s probably why I chose the class.

  “Good!” Josh clapped his hands.

  Kim and Dwayne, who were in on the meeting, shared grins. They dealt with the healers and tanks respectively. Jules had become one of the best healers that Kim had ever seen and was eager to train her other healers with Jules’s skills.

  The same went for Esa and Mikal. They had all thrown themselves into Evolver training when they’d got to Cliff-Hill. Seeing Dave had showed them how hard training could improve their skills. They hadn’t just started training on everything and anything at the beginning; they’d been broken down by their respective teachers and built back up into what they were, combining their knowledge from Earth with the knowledge of Emerilia.

  Jules had been hesitant to join the Stone Raiders at first; with more time around them, it had swayed her opinion. They were fun and laid-back when they had free time, but when it came to training and raiding, they were focused and driven.

  Mikal and Esa had waited on their leader’s decision before adding in their votes.

  “The guild is stronger for having you in it. We hope that you have fun, and get us to the top of the raiding leaderboards!” Dwayne held up his glass and grinned.

  They all raised their glasses in salute.

  Josh sent them a guild invite and they accepted it.

  Now time to get Dave and Deia to join!

  ***

  Dave was talking to Malsour about Magical Circuits when Josh knocked on the workshop’s doorframe.

  “Josh.” Dave nodded to the man, wondering what he wanted.

  “First of all, let me say sorry for throwing a dagger at you. It’s a smithy and throwing daggers around is a pretty boneheaded move,” Josh said.