Spellscribed: Provenance

by Kristopher Cruz

  The burning coals and embers immediately burst up into a full crackling campfire. Their flames flickered with blue and white as the flames were not fueled by wood but with magic. The area around him lightened, and he felt the heat of the fire increase satisfactorily. Glancing around, he found there were in fact a few pieces of wood set nearby the fire. It was likely Joven had set them aside for him to use.

  He tossed a few pieces of wood into the fire, so that when it ran out of magical energy to burn it would still have fuel to keep burning. He would have to either find more wood for the fire later in the night, or just fuel it with the spell again. He smiled, realizing that the little wizard’s trick he used was the first real use of his magic during his journey that was purely helpful. He slipped the glove back on his hand and resumed keeping watch on the camp.

  He could probably cast the spell in his gloves, but their thick and bulky nature would make certain hand gestures difficult. Movement was incredibly important for wizards, as it took a flexible body as well as mind in order to cast difficult spells. Most combat spells were simple enough that in war mages could go into battle wearing some decent protection without it interfering with their combat spells. Anything more elegant than a fireball or blast of lightning however, and the mage would have to at least shuck his gloves. Most wizards preferred to go unarmored in any case, as armor was constricting and uncomfortable and there were spells that were far more protective than a piece of metal. Endrance laughed to himself as he thought about it. He supposed wizards were a spoiled bunch, indeed.

  He stared into the dark of the trees around him, and wondered how many forests like the ones he and Joven had been traveling through were there in the world. This forest was different from the one he grew up near, with evergreen trees instead of deciduous, and the space between individual trunks was much further apart. Every animal seen here had a winter coat, grays and whites. Most were either very large, like the creature Joven called a moose, or very small, like snow rabbits.

  His stomach growled then, and he realized that neither he nor Joven had a chance to eat during their escape from the dungeons earlier that day. He put his book down next to his pack as he dug through it, retrieving a small pouch that contained smoked and dried venison. Finding the meat too cold to eat, he skewered it on a stick and left it near the fire for a few minutes while he looked around some more.

  The trees around him were quiet, and now that he thought about it he realized he didn’t see any of the signs of wildlife around him that Joven told him to look out for. The area was genuinely empty. He felt a sense of creeping unease pass through him as he turned around to survey the entirety of the camp. He saw and heard nothing. The horses remained crowded near the campfire, their reins loosely tied to a stick set in the ground.

  He plucked the now heated venison from the stick and chewed on it as he continued to try to find the source of his suspicions. He came back to the hill, and thought he could climb up on top and get a better look around. Finishing off the chunk of meat with a hard swallow, he packed up his book and carefully crept around the trees next to the hill. He took his first step on the hill when he then realized what his subconscious mind was telling him was wrong.

  The first thing he noticed now that he was in mid step up the hillside was that his boot slid on the hill’s surface before finding purchase. Stepping back and kneeling down, he carefully wiped the several inch thick layer of snow from its surface. He was expecting grass, ice, or even rock beneath the layers of fallen snow, but not white, thickly pebbled hide. Looking up slowly, he realized the hill was in fact very slowly, very subtly, shifting up and down. It was sleeping.

  Fear shot up Endrance’s spine. Terrified, he carefully, slowly backed away from the sleeping mound. He got several feet away from it when he finally broke and scrambled back around the trees to the campfire and the shelter. He squatted down near the fire and thought fiercely, uncertain what needed to be done. A hydra! Endrance thought. How in the god’s names did we miss that we set up camp next to a sleeping hydra!

  He didn’t know if they hibernated, or just dozed for a few hours at a time. What he did know was that if the thing woke up any time soon, they would not be long gone enough for his satisfaction. He crept his way over to the shelter, and patted Joven’s booted foot as gently as he hoped to. “Joven!” he whispered, “Joven wake up!”

  To the barbarian’s credit he woke up instantly alert. “What is it?” he responded, and Endrance could hear the sound of a knife being drawn from within the shelter. “The assassin?”

  The young man glanced back through the trees. The hill still hadn’t moved.

  “Worse.” He whispered back. “A hydra.”

  Joven jerked from where he was laying, almost spilling the shelter over as he wormed his way out from under it. “Where?” he half whispered, looking around in panic. “How did one sneak up on us?” he asked quietly.

  Endrance jerked his head towards the snowy hill nearby. “We snuck up on it.” He responded, looking very worried. “Do they hibernate or just sleep?”

  Joven made an uncertain face. “I don’t know! I only see them when they’re trying to kill us!” he whispered angrily. “We should get out of here. C’mon.”

  They carefully grabbed up their gear and tossed it on their horses. The horses hadn’t had a lot of rest, but they had no real choice.

  Endrance was kicking snow into the fire when his boot caught a branch that had been buried in the snow. It broke with a loud piercing Crack that resounded through the night air, and chunks of burning wood scattered across the campsite. He winced, and the two of them slowly turned to look at the pile of snow nearby.

  The hill was still at first, but their hopes fell as the snow shifted. The hill rose higher, and sheets of the snow slid off it as the Hydra rose to its full height. Joven and Endrance stared up at the beast as its eighteen foot tall shoulders towered over them, and three draconic heads rose from the snow on long, muscular necks. The three heads looked around angrily, and one almost immediately spotted them. The other two turned to orient on them immediately and fins on the sides of their heads fanned out as they screeched at the two humans in unison.

  Joven and Endrance looked at each other, shared a grimace, jumped on their horses and bolted. Snow kicked up from their mounts’ hooves as the horses needed no encouragement to flee for their lives from this foe.

  The hydra screeched again, its cry echoing out across the snowy woods. Endrance could see the sound shaking snow off the boughs of the trees ahead of them as it lurched into pursuit. The thing was eighteen feet tall at the shoulder, easily forty-eight feet long from tail to the farthest head. It propelled itself along at them on four heavily muscled and long clawed limbs. Its white pebbled hide made it almost seem to blend into the snowy land around it as it charged after them.

  Endrance couldn’t help but wonder if this was a good example of his life to come. He kept his eyes on the forest in front of him as this time getting knocked off his horse would be surely fatal. He could hear it behind him, and even hear the thing’s breathing as it chased them down. The two riders parted around a small cluster of trees, and Endrance’s hopes fell even further when the hydra crashed through them rather than slow to go around.

  Joven looked over at his charge and shouted through the din of hooves and encroaching monster. “Endrance!” he shouted, “Break off! I’ll lead it away!” he swerved his horse to the left, shouting at the hydra as he waved his axe. Endrance watched his bodyguard leave in a panic. He couldn’t leave his friend to die like that. He also waved his arms and yelled as the hydra started to veer off after the barbarian.

  The maneuver actually did work out slightly in their favor. Two heads remained focused on Joven, while the third turned towards Endrance. Not able to split two ways, the three fought for control of their legs, slowing the monster a small amount as it stumbled.

  Desperate he tore off his glove, and after a split second to aim at the great beast’s bulk, let fly a bla
st of lightning. The spell worked as it was intended to, charring the hydra’s hide, and all three heads whipped around to snarl at the young mage.

  “Endrance! No!” Joven shouted from the other side of the beast. He wheeled his horse around as the hydra came to a stop, reorienting to go after the pest that burned it. He slammed his axe into its holster, drew his greatsword, and charged at the beast. Endrance launched another lightning bolt at it, scoring it across the neck of its rightmost head.

  One of the heads saw Joven’s charge, and the leftmost one snapped at him as it flicked its tail at him. Joven saw the head dart in, and swung at it as it came in, gashing its maw and deflecting its bite, but the tail hit its mark slapping against the barbarian’s chest. The hardened leather armor cracked and he was unseated and flung from his horse in an instant. The barbarian crashed through a snow covered bush and skidded to a stop a dozen feet from where he was before.

  Endrance could not see what was happening on the other side, but he could tell Joven was actually trying to fight the thing. The hydra was hesitantly trying to follow after him, as it was dealing with attacks from both sides now. Endrance rode his horse far enough away from the beast to keep out of reach and he released a third blast. Three blackened patches burned against the hydras hide, but would be mosquito bites compared to the thing’s size.

  He was being careful, timing his shots to allow his scribed spell to ‘cool off’ after each blast. The cold winter air seemed to help greatly, but even if that wasn’t a problem he was taxing his reserves of power. He would have to figure out a way to kill the thing quickly.

  Joven pulled him self up from where he landed, still keeping a grip on his greatsword. He reset his grip on the weapon and charged in to attack the thing. He had to keep it from killing his charge; that was his sworn duty. He rushed in, his sword swinging at the head he knew would be coming in to bite him. He felt blade bite into flesh and bone, and cold blood sprayed across his face and armor. He had managed to lop the lower jaw of the left head clean off, and it was screeching and flailing around in pain. Joven saw the tail sweep in this time, and leapt up into the air. The bony protrusions on the end of the tail just barely missed his boots, and he brought his sword down on it as it passed back under him.

  Endrance saw the thing’s tail sweep over to the other side of the hydra and come back suddenly missing a few feet off the end. He smiled; that meant Joven was still alive. The center head had been trying to decide which morsel to eat and now turned to the right head, screeching and nipping at it. Together the total number of heads turned towards the barbarian on the other side.

  It seemed to Endrance that even if he used fire there was no way he would be able to burn it enough to keep it from killing his friend. He had to figure out a better solution. In fact, the only spells he knew that dealt with fire at all were his…

  Endrance tore the glove off his left hand as well. He figured he could try it. He weaved his hand gestures like he did before with only his left hand, intoning the words of power in gasps as his breath came harshly. He finished the spell, pumping a significantly larger portion of his magical energy into the spell than before. Instead of releasing it right away, he held tentatively onto the energy of the spell as he thrust out his right hand and held his left over it like he was trying to shield his face from it. He released the spell as he channeled one last blast of lightning.

  The world went white as thunder pierced the night. Light, piercing and brilliant, shot through the air and hit with tremendous force against the hydra’s hide. Endrance couldn’t see anything, nor could he hear anymore. All he felt was the sensation of nearly every drop of energy he had left draining out of his aura, through his body, and out his hands. The fingers of both hands burned for only a second before going numb, and he was afraid he could have burned out the meridians in his fingers, or worse yet outright destroyed his hands.

  Joven was cast in sudden shadow as thunder and lightning pierced the night behind the hydra. The blast of lightning punched into the monster’s body, causing it to fall onto its side as the heads convulsed. Ashes and black charred blood rained down around the hydra as it thrashed in agony before it finally fell still.

  “Joven!” the barbarian heard Endrance’s voice shout from the other side of the beast. “Let’s get out of here!”

  The barbarian ran to his horse, which had faithfully remained nearby but still as far away from the fight as it dared. Jumping on, he kicked its sides, and they shot off into the woods. He found Endrance blindly riding his horse away from the dead hydra in the same direction as he. They met up again as they left the beast behind, who would be in no condition to give chase if it did in fact survive such a powerful stroke of lightning.

  He whistled at Endrance as they rode silently into the night, trying to get as much distance as they could. “I have to say,” he commented as they rode on. “That was pretty impressive! It takes at least ten of us to hunt down a hydra of that size.” He gingerly felt along the cracks in his armor. Nothing felt broken fortunately. He looked his charge over, and found he was only holding the reigns loosely with his left hand and his right arm hung limply. His pupils had shrunken to pinpricks

  “What happened to you?” he shouted as their horses bounded through the woods. The young man was plainly coping with a lot of pain as he rode along, biting his lip as he struggled to return his bodyguard’s look. “Did the hydra get you?” he asked, ready to slow the horses down and help him.

  The young mage shook his head, wincing. “Burnout!” he blurted, “Happens when you don’t cast spells the way they’re supposed to be cast.” The young man raised his right arm with obvious pain, and Joven winced as he saw the young man’s right hand was scorched, blackened along the fingertips and burned raw all the way to his wrist. An injury like that would be crippling if he needed to cast any further spells. His fingers were awkwardly held, as if he wasn’t aware of their presence.

  “Gods, boy!” the bodyguard exclaimed, and Endrance dropped his hand again. Letting it hang in the cold snowy air felt much better than trying to move it, and he was not about to try and test his body’s ability to recover from burnout quickly. It might take him years to recover, if he recovered at all. While it did work, in retrospect amplifying the lightning spell seemed like a dumb idea. Couldn’t he have just put more power into the spell through the spell scribed?

  He shook his head and let Joven lead them, feeling too drained to do anything else but hold onto the reins. Whenever he over charged the lightning spell that was scribed on him he burned his fingers anyways. At least he had tried to find a workaround. He winced again as his back twanged in pain as well. He must have pulled something on top of nearly destroying his hand.

  They rested for a couple of hours, neither of them actually sleeping. They continued their journey when the suns rose, and they made their way through trackless forest utterly exhausted. The gods had mercy on them as the entire day and night after the attack from the hydra was uneventful. They rested as best they could, and continued to travel as fast as their supplies and the terrain would let them.

  A full two weeks later they finally broke out of the northern forest, coming out onto a great snowy plain. On the horizon a mountain range was visible, and in it the capitol mountain of Balator. The biggest of the range, it was easily half again as tall as any of the other mountains. This far out from the kingdom, they were only able to find a farming community, and after wearily dropping silver pieces for a room that would have rented for copper, the two finally were able to rest knowing they had made it into the barbarian lands. It was of far more relief to Joven than it was to Endrance.

  Endrance sat in a wooden chair at the farming community they had found. It had been only a day since they rode into the place, ragged and tired from the constant moving and fighting. He told Joven he needed a full day to rest, and the bodyguard was too tired to disagree. The farmers had been more than gracious enough to help them, and gave them a room at their house to sleep in and of
fered them a place at their table for their evening meal. Joven’s family was apparently well known in the barbarian lands, and they gave him these things out of respect for his family’s work.

  He carefully flexed his right hand as he looked it over. The burns looked much better after two weeks of healing, but he had no idea how much the cold had affected his recovery. His hand had gradually returned to a pinkish color, with red blotches that spread across it and it no longer hurt to move his arm. The fingers still twinged in pain when he flexed them, and the swelling still hadn’t gone away entirely, but he could feel things with them again.

  What bothered him was that the scribing on his finger had gotten more complicated. The zig-zag lines and spellwork that had been the completed lightning spell now had additions to their work, making it slightly more complicated than before. The marks now came completely to the tips of his two fingers, and converged into little black dots at the points. The completed lines ran all the way down that half of the palm and back of his hand to his wrist, where it faded away.

  The young wizard took to heart the lesson he learned that cold night. Spells can be made more powerful when overcharged with energy, but burnout could cause serious damage. When he put too much energy into the spell, he was overloading the conduit the spell flowed through -- his hand. His body was not capable of safely channeling a spell fueled with that many times more energy than should be done. If he had tried any more energy than that he would likely have lost his hand.