The Void Mage (The Familiar and Mage Book 2)

by Honor Raconteur

  The destructive whirl of energy and wind dropped sharply.

  I didn’t dare turn around and upset her balance, but I did turn my head to look over her shoulder, watching as the wind went from a hurricane level to something smaller, dying down steadily. The pressure on my ears eased as it retreated, as Rena forced it down with every word, and the malignant energy I could feel crawling along my skin faltered. Not gone, but stunted, no longer pressing with a thousand prickly needles.

  Taking a breath, she watched it again, a long stretch of silence, then launched into a new spell. Toh’sellor actually flinched, the wind dying sharply down into something more comparable to a dust devil, although still tall. I saw traces of the core of it now, a flame of gas and energy standing as tall as a mountain. Without the wind shielding it, I could see every facet, every flicker, a mix of light, dark, and colors, all in a messy hash that turned my stomach. Part of me, some fundamental instinct, rejected that anything like this could exist.

  If Rena felt the same, she didn’t let it affect her, and she spoke without faltering until the wind shielding Toh’sellor disappeared completely.

  The absence of sound almost sounded loud, shocking in its stillness. My ears popped again as it readjusted to the lack of pressure.

  All around us, agents watched her steadily, barely breathing, not speaking, anxious to hear the results of her scrutiny.

  “I can’t see the details of it, not from here, but I can detect there is a core.” Almost apologetically Rena said, “I need to get closer.”

  This didn’t surprise our illustrious leader. “I expected that. Our main team will take us in as well as three extra mages. That brings up a question.” Maksohm did his speaking eyebrow thing, where he lifted it one millimeter and it said a thousand things. “Rena, I know you’ve answered this question before, but it’s never needed clarifying like it does now. Toh’sellor is huge. The core of it, I assume, is buried well within its center. Do you need to get fifty feet from the core or fifty feet from Toh’sellor itself?”

  I blinked at him and realized that I hadn’t even thought of that. Everything else that Rena had destroyed was always a more convenient size, smaller than a mountain range, at least.

  “The core is integrated with the rest of it,” she answered, “so I only need to be fifty feet from the edge.” Perhaps sensing that this didn’t really reassure him, she tried to explain. “Think of Toh’sellor’s core as the heart inside of a human body. Of course it is an individual organ, a component of the body, but it’s also part of the overall function. When I look at a human, I see the overall schematic of a human being, first and foremost. I have to focus to be able to see which part of that schematic is for the heart alone. Same thing with Toh’sellor. As long as I’m fifty feet from the surface of it, I can read his full schematic.”

  “I find that vastly reassuring.” Turning his head, Maksohm called out, “Isak! Sean! Rowe!”

  Three mages shifted people aside, coming promptly up. Maksohm looked them each over in turn, expression giving nothing away as he stated, “We need to bring Rena in closer to Toh’sellor. Not for long, just to give her the time to study it properly. Rena, five minutes enough?”

  “Should be.”

  “Gentlemen, I need additional support for shields. Do you have enough magical energy to support us?”

  I expect that Maksohm phrased it that way to give them an out, if they needed it. But Chi had been right earlier: MISD agents didn’t exactly have good survival instincts. The three men promptly agreed.

  Maksohm lost no time in forming us up again, leaving orders for the rest to stay in a defensive position, just in case. Nora cast personal shields on us right as we walked out of the main shield, then three layers of other shields popped up, strong enough that the air basically sang with magic. I felt it, actually, vibrating pleasantly along my exposed skin. Surely with this much protection, we’d be alright?

  Then I looked up at Toh’sellor, the sheer mass of it, malignant and flickering, and my mouth went dry. Rather, I prayed that with four different protective shields around us, we’d be alright.

  Technically, Toh’sellor couldn’t fight. The reason it created other shards and minions was to make up for its own lack in that quarter. Even knowing that, I couldn’t help the shiver of apprehension that skittered down my spine. We moved at a steady jog by unspoken agreement, wanting nothing more than to get in and out as quickly as possible.

  I had to follow Rena’s lead on when we got fifty feet away. Toh’sellor dominated everything I could see, so much so that it felt impossible to me that we weren’t within touching distance of it already. I found it strangely tasteless here, as if no smell, no flavor, not even sound could exist this close to something that destroyed everything. Even hearing the others breathe, harsh breaths in and out, didn’t shatter that illusion.

  Rena flung up a hand, stopping us at the outskirts. “Here.”

  We obediently stopped, our footsteps cushioned by the strange grey dust, silenced. We stood there uneasily, looking in every possible direction, none of us wanting something to sneak up from behind, even if we did have very capable agents guarding our backs.

  Seconds ticked by, slowly, an eon for every moment. The tension could be cut up like sliced bread and served as toast but we didn’t dare speak or try to joke around it. Rena needed to concentrate.

  When she spoke, the words sounded loud enough to come out of a cannon: “The core isn’t like the other cores I’ve seen; similar certainly, but not quite right. There’s an element to it I can’t immediately decipher, and until I do that, I don’t think I’ll be able to destroy it completely. I don’t think this is going to be as simple as a single incantation.”

  “We never expected it to be, though,” Nora observed hopefully. “So that’s fine, we’ve planned for that.”

  “We need to move soon,” Maksohm informed her, brows drawn a little together in a not-frown that spoke of unease. “Do you need more time?”

  “About six months of it,” she answered tiredly. “That unknown element? I can’t make heads or tails of it. It’s not gas, or solid, or magic, or anything else I have seen. It’s chaotic in the extreme, constantly flickering in and out of different shapes, and the schematic base for it is practically nonexistent. If this element has a structure to it, it’s rewriting itself from the base level up every few seconds, faster than I can pinpoint.”

  That didn’t sound good. “So what can you do about it?”

  “I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do at all. The rest of the core seems to be more or less stable, I can definitely destroy that part of it, but I’m not sure what effect that will have on the whole. It will definitely diminish Toh’sellor, that much I’m sure of. How much? I need to run some calculations based off what I’m seeing now, but my gut instinct says that destroying the core will whittle it down to half strength at the very least. Unfortunately, doing that will just about tap me out for the day. I will definitely have to go in once tomorrow, then again the next day, before I can completely destroy the core and the tendrils that connect it to the other shards. It’s drawing a lot of strength from them too.”

  “Perhaps cut off the connection to the shards first?” Maksohm suggested.

  “Let me run the numbers,” she hedged. “I know that I’m making this sound easy, but those tendrils would be as difficult as destroying a shard and there’s at least thirty-six that I can trace. I don’t want to tackle those at full strength. If I can destroy the core first, it might weaken the tendrils enough that I have a better chance of tackling more than two at a time.”

  I could see the sense in that, certainly. I just had one question. “But if you leave the tendrils in place to deal with the next day, won’t Toh’sellor rebuild the core overnight?”

  “That’s the other thing I need to calculate. I know its strength now, the elements, and how much power is racing through the core at a given moment. How much power will it take to rebuild the core? How fast can it pump
that power up from the tendrils? I think damaging the core enough will destroy its ability to regenerate quickly, but I want to work out cold hard numbers before I leap to any conclusions.” Rena slapped her hands on her thighs, glancing up Toh’sellor for a long moment. “We can leave for today. Staring at it for another few hours isn’t going to answer the questions I have.”

  Maksohm looked relieved to hear this and nodded. “But you’re sure that doing this in two stages will destroy Toh’sellor?”

  “No.” Rena gave him a shrug and a grim smile. “But I am sure that it will give us a fighting chance. The chaotic element embedded in the core, that’s my outstanding question. If we don’t come up with a way to deal with it, then we’ll never be completely rid of Toh’sellor.”

  We exchanged grim looks. That didn’t sound good.

  “For now, let’s go back,” Rena urged, tone tired and trembling with tension. “I have the answers I need for now. We can come back tomorrow.”

  She didn’t say anything along the lines of, I’ll know what to do then.

  I could only pray she had an epiphany before we returned. It sounded like she needed it.

  The initial plan had been to retreat back to our base camp, where we’d stayed last night, but no one seemed inclined to hike all the way there only to turn around the next day and do it all over again, it was too taxing. We turned, intent on retreating back the way we’d come, Bannen my silent shadow.

  I didn’t have to look to know where Toh’sellor sat. Even with my eyes closed, I could tell you how close I was to it at any given point. The feel of it, live energy and chaos, screeched along my nerves and I hated its very existence. Something in me instinctually rebelled at this thing existing and I wouldn’t be happy until I’d squashed it flat. I wanted it gone. GONE.

  “That’s not good,” Yez breathed behind me, sounding scared, and nothing scares this man.

  I snapped around, the words poised on my tongue, to demand what he meant, then my eyes caught the sight and I didn’t have to ask. Two of the largest minions we’ve seen, comparable to what Bannen had nicknamed Big Bad, lashed out, attacking the agents we had left on guard.

  Even in the face of this, Maksohm didn’t crack, just turned to me calmly, dark eyes level with mine. “You don’t get two days to whittle Toh’sellor down with. We’ll buy you as much time as we can.”

  I knew they wouldn’t be able to defeat both of those things, and I would have to get in ridiculously close to them in order to figure out if they were similar enough to that first one that I could use the same spell, which would put me in danger twice over and that was very poor tactics, even I realized that. We were literally between a rock and a hard place. Toh’sellor was fifty feet behind me, the enormous minions barely three hundred and fifty feet ahead. Taking Toh’sellor promptly down would be the safest, fastest way to defeat all the enemies, I knew that, we all knew that. Could I do it? Did I have the magical energy to do it? The time?

  Swallowing hard, I gave him a nod. All I could do was try. Try, and trust these people to keep themselves and me alive long enough to do the job.

  Yez barked out orders through his mouth piece to the other teams, splitting up the forces so that they could tackle both Big Bads at once. My team, of course, stayed with me as their first priority is always keeping the enemy at bay long enough for me to work. I tuned all of it out, focused on the task at hand. I couldn’t even try to clear some of the minor minions out of the way, as I needed every ounce of magic at my disposal to do this.

  Core first.

  On some level I realized my hands were shaking, from terror or nerves, I didn’t know. Everything seemed sharper to me, the sounds of fighting, yelled orders, the flash and feel of magic spells singing through the air, even the smell and feel of that weird chaotic energy on my skin felt too-sharp. I’d been under pressure before on a job, but never this extreme, this terrifying. I closed my eyes, took in three deep breaths, and that didn’t steady me, but I felt Bannen’s bond to me beating strong, and that did help me find my focus.

  Core.

  I snapped my eyes open and started speaking, using the spell I had tentatively begun to map out. The core was comprised of the elements of this area, as well as that strange energy, so I focused on the elements I knew first: gold, silver, copper, coal, shoal, granite, a trace of magma. The weird chaos energy acted as a glue, holding all of those ores and stones together, but I reasoned that if all of that was taken away, then the core itself would collapse. It took a while to get the full incantation out, what with the size of the elements and the way they were contorted together, but I got it out and watched carefully at the reaction.

  The core crumbled in on itself, flashing out of existence in a twinkling, and Toh’sellor’s energy flickered like someone blowing hard against a flame. But the flame didn’t die out, just diminished, some of the threads tying it to the other shards withering out, but not all, not even half. I groaned in dismay as I watched because that had not been the reaction I’d aimed for! It should have done more than that. And that chaotic energy in the center seemed to be holding up just fine, sard it all, which made me think it was the true core after all.

  Moments like these, I wished I could swear as creatively as Bannen.

  Toh’sellor started recovering right in front of my eyes. Outside of the core, drilling deep in the ground, writhed deep tentacles of power that I assumed drew power in for Toh’sellor. Actually, I had a sneaking suspicion this was the source of the shards, the way Toh’sellor spread his influence to the rest of the world, circumventing the barrier around it altogether. Time would prove that suspicion right or wrong. At the moment, I knew that it was curtailing my attempts at destroying this thing, as Toh’sellor drew deep through those tentacle things, not just for power, but for elements. My eyes flew every direction, taking it all in and calculating at high speeds. Yes, that was problematic, although not terribly so. At the rate it went, it would take at least a week to rebuild its outer core, but still it actively created faster than I would like. I needed to tear those tentacles free before it could really start channeling power. I did not want it regenerating faster than this. Or at all, really.

  I tore into three, destroying them with the same spell I used on the shards, and grinned in vicious satisfaction as that dropped the power levels. But only a little. Where did it get all of this energy from anyway?

  Frowning, I destroyed another four, but that didn’t have much more of an effect. Something more was going on, something happening underground; I’d bet my left eye on it. I couldn’t see under all of this bedrock, and that chaos energy still threw me for a loop. I’d had a brief plan when seeing the tentacles to just destroy Toh’sellor’s connection to them and then focus on the shard, with the hopeful thought that everything would die naturally if I could destroy the shard, but that didn’t seem adequate to the task and I didn’t know what else to try.

  Scratch that, I didn’t know anything sane to try. Or at least, anything that Bannen would allow me to try.

  I’d sensed it yesterday, even more today, and I didn’t know how to say it aloud without sounding certifiable. Trammel had been right—my magic was eerily in sync with Toh’sellor’s but not in the sense that we were similar. Far from it. More like we were two halves of a whole. I was this thing’s perfect opposite. I knew, looking at it, that I could leave the shield right now and walk through that churning, powerful force, and it wouldn’t have any effect on me.

  The thought scared me right down to my marrow.

  I’d said before to Bannen that I thought Toh’sellor was one of the reasons why Void Mages existed. Why would we have a magical type that excelled in destruction, only in destruction and order, otherwise? But that had been conjecture up until I saw this thing. Then I knew. Knew with absolute certainty. The reason for my magic was to destroy this thing before it devoured the world, to keep it in check, so that it couldn’t reign free.

  Even though I knew that, I didn’t have the experience, the know
ledge, of how to dismantle this thing, just this instinctive throb in my chest suggesting something that made me want to wig out.

  The thoughts in my head tangled, then went for a second round, and I didn’t have time to sit and stew on this. I turned, reaching for Bannen, because he was good at helping me sort the mess out in my head before I get stuck in a rut. “Bannen—”

  Several things happened so closely as to be almost simultaneous. I heard several shouts behind me, perhaps a scream from the unicorn, felt wind whip in a vortex I knew well from the first Big Bad we faced, and from my peripheral vision saw one giant whip-like arm head straight for us. My mouth opened in a scream, too late, as this wasn’t a full on hit, but the tip, and no one anticipated that, or stood in the right place to stop it.

  Vee noticed too, already moving, staff up, but I knew she wouldn’t make it. She wouldn’t make it, and Bannen had broken the rule to take a half-step out of the shields, his attention in the other direction, engaged with the other Big Bad. I watched it like a train wreck unfolding as the tip of that arm hit Bannen squarely in the chest, throwing him back, hard, hard enough to make him bounce twice before he slid to a stop. The sound he made, bones breaking and gasping in wretched pain, tortured my ears.

  I moved to his side before I even made the decision to leave my post, skidding to a stop on my knees, wrenching his shirt open to see what injuries he had. The skin had already turned into that darkened hue that meant broken blood vessels, perhaps more serious injuries, and I knew from the concave way his chest looked that he had multiple broken ribs. The scent of iron and blood filled the air, mingling with the dust, catching at the back of my throat. Swearing, I tilted his head back, but his eyes were closed, a gurgling sound coming from his mouth, as if he had a punctured lung. He likely did.

  Turning, I demanded of Yez, “I need a Healer yesterday.”