by Ember Lane
I could see little of the northern claw, apart from rooftops leading away on both sides, but then my eyes were drawn to the gates, and after, I could look at nothing else.
They were huge, a black stain on an otherwise vibrantly colored scene. But stain wasn’t the word I was searching for—that was too derogatory, too harsh for what they were. Threatening, overbearing, dwarfing the tiny waves that lapped against it, the gates of Striker Bay were a wonder, a magnificent wonder, their top framed by the light blue sky, and their base by the swallowing, azure water.
Unlike the gates that protected the Five Isles, these ones slid side to side rather than up and down. Towering about fifty feet up, I realized I’d been right when I’d thought there were buildings atop them. It was like a little village on its own, the gate’s tops flat, around fifty feet wide, and bustling with folks.
“They’re bars mostly.” Pog’s little voice startled me.
“Bars?”
He emerged onto the terrace, sitting down opposite me and grabbing an apple.
“Yep, and restaurants, and other places. I’ve been down there with Faulk. It’s fun.” He pressed his flattened hand against his forehead, squinting in the sun, looking out. “You wanna go? I’ll take you. We should do it before…”
“Before?”
“Before we decide what to do. We’ve got all three wedges now; they make up a perfect circle. One has Vengeance in it, the other has Taric’s real self, Valkyrie’s independence, and I think the last has your next veil. It’s best we go down and have a look around before we open them. It’ll go to shit the minute we do. You know that.”
“Go to shit? When did you start swearing?”
Pog shrugged. “When the killing started feeling real. But it will—go to shit. It always does. Look how this adventure started out. By the way, did Melinka give you a hard time?”
“Some—not too bad.”
He scrunched his forehead up. “How are we going to get around it?”
“Around what?”
“We can’t have you emptying all your mana—draining your power. It exposes us too much. If I’d missed—”
“You don’t miss.”
He beamed at that compliment, looking up out of the corner of his eyes. In that moment, he seemed so old, seasoned, and I guessed we weren’t the innocents we’d once been. I guessed this place had changed us. He stared back out over the bay. “But if I had, he could have killed us both.”
“I had to blow up the tower,” I said, wondering what I could do about it.
“But did you need to use all your mana? I wonder if there’s a way to tell, to measure it?”
“I’m not sure. I get the sense that the magic needed is just drawn from me.”
“Drawn?”
I tried to remember back, to think. I’d seen the priests, the cauldron, the fabric of the tower, and I’d imagined it blasted to smithereens.
“I think I imagine my target getting utterly destroyed, and the magic I need to achieve that is sent on its way, sucked from me, almost.”
“So you’ll always empty yourself while you imagine destruction you can’t possibly achieve with the mana reserves you have.” Pog nodded as if he understood.
“What?” I didn’t.
“Well, you imagined the tower exploding into fragments. Did you imagine blowing its top off so that only a stump was left?”
“Something like that,” I admitted.
“Then look at this.” Pog jumped up, reaching out and grabbing my hand. He led me to the very edge of the balcony and then leaned over. “See, look at the tower now.” He pulled back, shoving me onto the balcony’s balustrade.
The tower was there, smoking. Part of its top was missing, the saucer shape below mostly ruined. A huge crack snaked down its shaft. It wasn’t as badly damaged as I’d thought.
“I blew its top off—I’m sure I did. I saw it.”
Pog ambled back to the table. “No, you willed it, and you tried to send enough magic to blow its top off, but you didn’t have enough, so you only part achieved your intended destruction.”
“So…”
“So you didn’t have enough mana to complete the job, but half the job completed your destruction of the priests. The question is, would quarter have done it?”
“Should I have just blown up the cauldron—left the fabric of the tower?”
“Possibly, and if you had, would that have been enough to destroy the priests?”
I sat, frustration welling inside me. “But I spotted them, and I just wanted them gone.” I felt like crying. “How in hell am I supposed to sit down and calculate how much mana, which type, I might add, to blow up what I need to blow up, so I don’t run out midbattle? That’s impossible.”
“Agreed,” Pog said, to my surprise.
“Agreed?”
“You have no chance. It’s like me only stabbing someone enough to precisely kill them and no more.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Your mana storage is infinite now?”
“You know it is.”
“But it only grows so fast.”
I nodded.
“Then we need to do two things. First, get that bank as full as possible, and second, have some reserves.”
“Reserves?” I was feeling a little lost. My body and mind still shattered from Dolunr’s final strike. Trying to keep up with Pog was a struggle. His mind was so sharp, so good at this stuff. This was where him thinking in game logic was so advantageous.
Pog puffed up. “You need an instant bank, a well of mana you can draw on, just in case you drain yours.”
“Like a potion?”
“Bigger.” Pog crossed his arms as if it would make his pronouncement more effective. “Much bigger. Big enough that we can fill you up before we go into battle and then have some left over so that we can top you up when you inevitably lose you temper and blast something all the way back to its creation.”
I wanted that so much, too much.
I stood, walking over to the balcony. “And just where would we get that?” Excitement riddled my fragile stomach as if Pog had set a thousand butterflies free. If I had that, I had insurance. I could always escape.
“Simple,” Pog replied, and he brought out a small vial. “This is a mana potion, yes?”
“If you say so.” I knew so, but I was just grabbing some time to keep up. Then seeing it sitting there, I realized how pathetic it was. That potion would have once renewed my power to fend off some monster, now it was less than a drop in the ocean. My heart sank; there was no way we could get limitless mana potions, and even if we could, it would take me an age to drink them.
Pog carried on, undeterred by the slump in my shoulders. “Don’t forget, you have that spell, the one you stole from the crafter. Doesn’t it increase the size of stuff?”
My hope truly did plunge. Pog didn’t understand. “Enlarge?” I sighed. “Yes it does, but none of my spells work here. My whole magic changed the minute I crashed through the mists. I lost my shamanic tree, everything. I just have magic now—raw magic seemingly controlled by will rather than word.”
“You have old magic now, not new magic: that’s the difference. I’ll bet your whole game was tailored for you in Mandrake, but now, whoever pulls the strings has unleashed you.”
“I still lost all my spells,” I said glumly.
“From Mandrake. You lost all you spells from Mandrake. Did you lose your skills? I’ll bet you can still run, climb, but all that doesn't matter. Listen to me. You lost your spells from Mandrake.”
“I don’t follow.”
Pog rolled his eyes again, like he was the frustrated teacher, and I was the dim student. “What spell do we need?”
“Enlarge,” I said softly, and a tiny crack appeared in my gloom.
Pog drew alongside me, leaning on the balustrade. “But that spell isn’t from Mandrake, is it? It’s from the Variant, possibly even here if that’s where Jammer acquired it. There’s no reason, n
o reason in the world why the spell won’t work here.”
I could have kissed him, so I did. I picked him up and planted a big smacker on his cheeks, wincing as my ribs exploded. But my good mood deflated the moment I picked up the vial. “But that’s just the mana; my shadowmana is just as important. As far as I know, there’s no such thing as bottled shadowmana.”
“But it is still all around us?”
“Yes.”
“Then we need to find a way. There must be one, or someone who knows. Anyway, why not try on this first.” He slid the bottle over to me. “If we can’t do anything with this mana, the rest is moot—it doesn’t matter.”
I picked it up, resting it on the palm of my hand. The vial was about the size of a saltshaker, the mana inside a luminescent green, swirling around like it wanted to escape. I set it down on the table, scraping my sweaty palms on my nightshirt, taking a breath, trying to remember how to gather magic to perform a spell. Trying to remember how to form a spell. I felt my small reserves of mana gathering. Taking my time, I focused. “Enlarge!” I said, drawing on memories of Jammer’s spell.
Nothing happened at first. I shrugged and was just about to give up when the bottle bulged wide and then doubled in size. At first, the mana inside appeared to dilute, turning from a rich, luminous green to a pale, milky one. But as we watched it, it darkened, like it was drawing mana in from its surroundings, concentrating, returning to some form of stability.
“I think it’s worked.” I heard the words like they were an echo in my mind such was my incredulity. “I think it’s worked!” I shouted them this time, knowing it had. A grin spread across my face. “You’re a genius!”
“Cool,” said Pog, beaming. “Do it again!”
I rubbed my hands together, reaching out, ready. Focusing solely on the vial, I said the word again, forcing my power into it. “Enlarge.”
It sat there again, doing nothing, but then it burst out and up, and was suddenly the size of a wine bottle. Once more, the mana inside became weaker, but as before, it began to darken as more mana was attracted in, was drawn to it.
“How much mana have you used?” Pog asked.
I made to check, but as I didn’t have a clue how much I’d had to start, I had no way of knowing. “Not sure.”
“But we do know that bottle is double-double what it was,” he pointed out, and drew out another two vials. “So what level is your mana at the moment?”
I looked it up. “Fifteen thousand, four hundred and twenty.”
“Drink that.” He pushed the first bottle over. “And then tell me how much.”
I drank it. “Fifteen thousand, nine hundred and twenty.”
“So, a five-hundred boost.”
“Yep. Just out of interest, how many of those have you got?”
Pog rolled his eyes. “Hundreds.”
“But you have hardly any magic? Do you horde everything?”
He blushed but ignored my words. “Now, enlarge that one. Wait until it goes dark green, and we’ll see how much mana it has.”
I pulled the vial close, concentrating, saying the magic word and waiting as it doubled in size and began to draw the mana in.
“Done?”
“Wait,” said Pog, pushing the two full bottles of mana together and studying the colors. “Now.”
I popped its top and drank it down and checked my mana. “Sixteen thousand, eight hundred and fifty.”
“Yes!” Pog cried. “So we doubled the mana, but the spell cost seventy. A four hundred and thirty gain!”
I slumped a little. “But think how much I would have to drink to get back to fifty, sixty thousand…”
“A bottle the size of a tower?” Pog replied. “Hard to undo the top.” He started giggling.
“Plus, it would be impossible to bring out a huge bottle in the middle of a fight.” He sniggered.
“A twenty-foot high bottle. ‘Hold on a minute; please don’t kill me; I just have to recharge my mana!’” I crowed.
“Let me just scale the bottle and dive in!” Pog laughed, and I joined in. It felt good to laugh, but it was a problem. We could increase the mana, but how could we make it drinkable?
Pog suddenly fell silent. “So we know it can be concentrated more than it is in the bottle.”
“How?”
He pointed at me. “Because you have sixteen thousand, and you’re not the size of a house.” I thought on his words, but nothing came to me. Pog continued. “Perhaps a vial isn’t the right thing to store it in. We assume it is because that’s the way it’s always been.” He picked up an apple. “What if there are better ways?”
“We need an alchemist,” I told him.
“An alchemist or a crafter or both,” he replied. “And I’ll bet we can find one here.”
I quickly dressed, and we soon left my room, bumping into Melinka a little way down the castle’s hallway.
“A crafter?” she asked, looking me up and down. “Ah, new clothes, yes, I can see that. You get through a few, don’t you?”
“I have a few enemies.” I took the jibe, grateful that I didn’t have to explain myself.
“And an alchemist?”
“Mana potions,” Pog explained.
“You need Pishagys Raad. Follow the main route out of the keep, and then bear left toward the gates. Take the road that winds up the hill toward the northern lighthouse, and Pishagys Raad is on the right. Mind, though, they are a peculiar lot.” She sniffed the air. “You should fit in fine.” Melinka brushed past us as though another problem had been solved.
We left the castle without bumping into anyone else, soon climbing the upward slope toward the lighthouse, which resembled the black tower—a column with a pyre atop, but no exploding priests—I mused. It was a fine day, the sun warming my recovering body, a refreshing, inland wind eddying around us, trapped in the claws of the tranquil bay below. There was something about the sea, something that just kept you going. It had still been there in the end, on Earth, somehow overcoming everything we threw at it. The sea endured, like we had to.
We were soon above the city proper, the buildings more scattered as if our destination demanded aloofness. The road forked, like Melinka had told us it would, but the fork offered little in the way of a route. It was like a beginning but also an end. There was no route to the lighthouse, but one led there, and the lighthouse stood at its peak.
“What do you think?” Pog asked. “It appears to be a painting.”
Before I could answer, an old, wizened face poked out of the confusing haze. Gray hair jutted out of a floppy, blue hat, much like a scarecrow. His narrow eyes studied us. “What do you want?”
“Is this Pishagys Raad?”
“Yes,” he replied, snapping his head back into the haze and vanishing.
Pog looked at me. I shrugged.
The head reappeared. “Well?”
“Can we come in?” Pog asked, beaming as usual, enjoying every strange encounter.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
The scarecrow man rolled his eyes. “On whether you’re a dire, evil devil from the black, shadowy land of Ruse. On whether you intend to take over our honed minds through the dastardly devices of the combinium.” His hand shot out, a long, bony finger tapping the end of his crooked nose. “Yep, that’s about it. Well? Are you? Because if you are, you aren’t coming in.”
“No,” said Pog.
“And you?” the scarecrow asked me.
“No,” I replied, more bemused than confused.
The air around him shimmered, and a blue-cobbled street curled away with a slight upward slope, pastel-colored houses sat bunched tightly together giving it a feel similar to an artisan’s quarter. “Aldus Preets at your disposal, any non-Ruse-type person is a friend of ours and Ruse-type person isn’t.”
“And you can tell just by that question?” I asked, stepping over the invisible threshold and into Pishagys Raad.
“Tell what?” Aldus asked.
&
nbsp; “That we aren’t Ruse.”
“You said that, not me,” Aldus insisted.
I gave up. If he was still alive, I guessed he had a way of knowing.
“Have you got an alchemist here and a crafter—preferably both?”
“We have each but not both.” He strode away, marching up the street with purpose, his blue cloak flowing behind him. Without dropping his momentum, he spun, ducking into a pastel-green house. We followed and entered a tiny tavern that seemed small but actually just kept expanding as we strolled farther in. We shuffled past full tables, the patrons barely taking a breath as we passed, the clamor of excited conversation filling the place. Aldus called for a pint when he finally got to the counter, and a short, stocky bar lady served him. “Why exactly do you need a crafter and an alchemist?”
I ordered two more ales and then paid. Aldus indicated a small, round table and we sat. Pog retrieved another mana potion and placed it on the table. “This is our problem,” he said without further explanation.
Aldus picked it up. “A standard five-hundred-mana boost. You need more? I can get you a good price.”
“Watch,” Pog said. “Alexa?”
“Here?” I questioned.
“Here,” Pog affirmed.
I flexed my shoulders, reached around the bottle, and focused.
Aldus rolled his eyes.
“Enlarge!” I said.
The vial pulsed and then doubled in size.
“Wait for it,” Pog said as Aldus made to snatch it from the table. The mixture darkened. “There,” said Pog. “One thousand mana.”
The bustling little tavern fell silent.
Aldus uncorked the vial, putting his thumb over the open top and turned it upside down, righting it and then licking his thumb. He nodded, clearly satisfied, and carefully placed the bottle down.
“So are you here to gloat, put us out of business, or sell us your grubby little spell?”
A bunch of jeers followed his pronouncement.
I weighed up my response, all eyes on us. “We need your help.”
A buzz of anticipation filled the room.
“What’s it worth?” Aldus asked.