“Are you certain, Marin?” the goddess asked, raising her eyebrows. “You can cast off the mantle which you’ve gained. You can even record some things, if you so wish, but no other can gain the power of a god in this way. This is something that can only happen once. You will never have the opportunity for knowledge such as you’ve gained again.”
“I don’t care about the knowledge, don’t you understand that?” Marin demanded. “It was the quest, the act of learning it! Of figuring things out for myself. This . . . I’ve learned all the things which I didn’t know, or which I was mistaken on, but it’s . . . it’s like ashes in my mouth. There’s no sense of achievement or triumph. I was handed everything, but I didn’t earn it. No, I’m not going to keep it.”
“As I thought.” The Spellweaver let out a soft sigh, raising her eyes to look upward, murmuring, “The Timekeeper was right. The best potential gods are those who do not want the power they would gain. If that’s what you truly want to do, you know how.”
“I . . . I do?” Marin asked, and as she thought about it, she realized that she did know. Seemingly limitless power was flowing through her body now, power which she had the knowledge to use. But at last she hesitated, looking at the other deity, then asked, “You’re just going to let me give this up, truly?”
“Yes. Why would I force someone like you to take up a mantle which you don’t wish for?” the goddess asked, shrugging. “I create the weave of magic and maintain it. Good or bad, it is what it is. It’s for mortals to see what can be done with it. Yet some knowledge is dangerous, even there.”
“It is,” Marin agreed, and some of the laws of magic which were far beyond even those which she’d theorized caused her to shudder slightly, then hesitated, mentally looking on Emonael again.
Her student was clashing with her opponent while laughing, driving the man back step by step. She was burning through her mana quickly, though at a far slower rate than he was. The people in the town would be safe so long as the other High Magi didn’t return, even if it was damaged and a number of people slain.
“Some of it’s dangerous, and shouldn’t be known. But other parts are likely to remain unknown, and might be needed one day,” Marin murmured, her thoughts playing over a number of those laws. “You said that I can record some things?”
“Yes. Nothing that might hint at your current state, and nothing which could grant such power, but you may,” the Spellweaver confirmed.
“Then so be it. I will do what I must, and I hope that you’ll forgive me for casting off your gift,” Marin murmured, closing her eyes and shaping her power. She did two things with her deific mantle, then cast it off as she activated the spell to break her ritual. A book formed from nothing above her desk, settling into place gently, and the immense power and knowledge began to fade away with the deific mantle, the spell she’d woven to wipe much of her experiences from her mind taking effect even as she felt the ritual shatter.
As Marin’s thoughts faded from the sea of primal chaos, she heard a last statement from the Spellweaver. “There’s nothing to be forgiven. It’s your life, after all.”
The ritual breaking was jarring, and Marin shook her head, blinking as she tried to recover from both the fading sense of omniscience that she’d felt and the fog where the spell she’d woven had wiped away memories. She knew that she’d done so, and that it was because there was some knowledge that she believed that no mortal should have access to, but that didn’t mean the gaps in her memories were any more pleasant.
Even the fragments she did remember filled her with awe. Sensing the flow of mana through the land and sky, as well as those nearby had been incredible, but those same senses had warned her of what was coming. So with that in mind, Marin stood from where she was sitting, stepping over to the door into the library and opening it to look out on her beloved bookcases a final time, and at the desk where she’d written the most important volumes of her life.
The mug Emonael had given her was resting on the desk, alongside a trimmed quill and waiting sheets of papers on which she’d intended to write down notes after the experiment. There was no time for that, and no need, for the thin volume resting on top of the pages was far more than mere notes. Marin’s eyes rested on it, and despite the knowledge that it was too dangerous to look at, her heart yearned to pick it up, to go through the pages of knowledge which she’d so briefly known and understood.
“Ah, well. Perhaps in my next life I’ll have the chance to learn it again,” Marin murmured, and with a word and gesture, she activated the library’s failsafe, watching the shelves as it activated.
With faint popping sounds, the books on the shelves disappeared and others appeared in their place, quickly racing across the shelves as one book after another vanished. The replacements weren’t perfect copies, and in many cases were far plainer and without any titles written on their spines, for Marin never intended for this library to actually fool anyone. She’d always planned on it to make people believe that the books had been inside the library when the building burned, which meant that even the number didn’t have to match. It only took a minute for all of the books to vanish, and she flinched as the desk, chair, and everything on top of it vanished with a much louder sound, almost a thunderclap, causing her to stare at the spot in confusion.
“I . . . must have altered the spell while I was in the midst of the ritual,” Marin murmured, shaking her head. “I didn’t think I’d set it up to take the entire desk, but so be it. My research is safe. Now to ensure that my apprentice survives.”
Taking a step back, Marin made a pair of gestures, and all around the edge of the tower interior a shimmering barrier of light sprang into existence. It hummed with intense power, and she smiled slightly as she felt her wards around the building inform her of the approach of outsiders, then the more intense alarm as the intruders shattered the ward on the front door. Her smile vanished when the sound of the door being blown off its hinges echoed through the building.
Marin could do little to stop them at this point, so she sighed and walked to the cushion in the middle of the circle, glancing at the spot where a precise stream of water had disabled the spell. Settling down on the cushion, she winced as she heard several more doors blown away.
“No respect of property at all,” she said under her breath, and an instant later the door of the library shattered, sending splinters flying across the room.
The man in the lead caused her eyebrows to rise in surprise, then annoyance washed through Marin. An elven man who’d seen better days, he had only modest features: washed-out blond hair and bright blue eyes. She also recognized him.
“High Mage Northwood, what an unpleasant surprise. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, though . . . you always did have the manners of an ill-bred boar,” Marin said, sighing. “None of the doors save the front were locked or warded, you know.”
“Marin. I should’ve known you’d remember me,” Northwood growled, stepping deeper into the library.
Behind the court wizard of Tethlyn were more magi, and Marin counted each of them, amused to see a dwarf and handful of humans among their number. She only recognized a pair of the magi from Tethlyn, while the others were new to her. Still, there were eight of them in total, which eased her worries slightly.
“Yes, yes . . . I have a memory for people who’re rude imbeciles, alas. I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that you’re here, though. I’d guessed most of the attempts to interfere with the Association were Tethlyn’s doing, though you appear to have found additional friends to help in your usual bullying,” Marin said, shaking her head. “Most unfortunately, really.”
“Northwood, get on with it,” one of the human magi grated out, his voice almost like gravel. “We need to deal with her before the other High Magi get here.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t going to happen,” Marin interrupted, smiling as the men and women looked at her. “See, I designed the barrier around this room to be able to block even a pair of High
Magi for up to six hours, as a final defensive measure. I’m afraid that you aren’t going to break it that quickly.”
“Oh? Well, we’ll just have to kill the other four and take your research,” Northwood said, snarling out a spell and lashing out at her with a bolt of shimmering water. The blade hit her barrier and bounced off, not making the slightest impression as Marin laughed softly.
“Oh, you poor, deluded idiots. I didn’t activate my outer defenses yet on purpose,” Marin told them, smiling more broadly as she murmured a few words and made a gesture. The barrier around the building activated with a deep, powerful thrum as she spoke. “I knew you were coming. I saw the dead you left in your wake around the Association, and it was quite obvious what you planned. You came here to not just kill me and take my research, but to destroy the entire Association, kill the High Magi, and take everything for yourselves while leaving Pharos with nothing. There’s no other reason for you to come here with nine High Magi. Oh, I’m sorry . . . eight, now.”
“Eight? You bitch, what have you done?” an elven woman spat out, quickly speaking an incantation and manifesting a spear made of pure starlight in her hands. She hurled it at the barrier, and it exploded against Marin’s shield with hardly a ripple. Marin laughed again, leaning back as she looked at them.
“I did nothing,” Marin said, amused. “I simply never told everyone that my apprentice likely was as powerful as I was to begin with, and that she’s far exceeded me by this point. Still, I can’t have you killing her. And that’s why I’ve trapped you in here with me.”
“Northwood, as powerful as the barrier might be, it can’t stop all of us for long,” the gravel-voiced mage said, looking over her spell with dark eyes and throwing his hood back to reveal short-cropped brown hair. “It’ll last no more than a quarter-hour, if that.”
“Agreed, I . . . wait, what’s this?” Northwood had taken a book from the shelf, but dropped it to the floor to grab and open a second, then a third book. “These are all empty!”
Several others quickly grabbed books and cursed as Marin grinned at them, amusement in her voice. “Oh, you poor idiots. I took measures to keep my research safe ages ago. And even for me, a quarter-hour is plenty of time.”
Taking a deep breath, Marin began her incantation, feeling at peace as she closed her eyes to ignore the attackers, even as they began bombarding her barrier with spells.
The enemy High Mage was powerful, Emonael had to give him that, and he’d bombarded her with dozens of intense balls of flame at once in an attempt to overwhelm her. Unfortunately for him, Emonael had dealt with worse during the battles among the lower planes, and her new shields shrugged off those attacks with absurd ease. The mana expenditure of water shields was high, but it quenched his attacks quickly, filling the air with steam as she hammered him with gouts of flame, blasting him backward step by step.
“Come now, weren’t you going to show me the difference between me and a real High Mage?” Emonael taunted between spells, taking another firm step toward him, staring at the man in challenge. “This isn’t all you’ve got, is it? Valis Firestorm is far more powerful than this, I assure you. Oh, you must be the jerk who detonated those fire crystals, aren’t you?”
“You . . . this is impossible! Not for some nameless woman from the middle of nowhere!” the man gasped out. “There’s no way you can be this powerful!”
She watched him cast another spell, dozens of tiny motes of fire igniting around her to lance out in a fiery shower that would kill or maim anyone caught in the barrage. Instead, she increased the mana supply of her shield and laughed at him. The shield shattered at last under his assault, sending steam billowing into the air as she stepped forward.
“I’ve been looking forward to dealing with those who’ve been attacking my students and my teacher,” Emonael spat, her eyes narrowing at him. “Not that you would get far against her, not on your own . . .”
“Your precious teacher will die soon enough, along with the rest of this miserable village!” the man shouted angrily, fire igniting in each of his hands. “Even if I die—”
Emonael had heard enough, and his first words caused faint worries from within to surge to life. Without pause, she cast a spell so quickly others might have trouble discerning the words, and the man’s shadow sprang to life. Shadowy tendrils choked him as the shadow grabbed the off guard man from behind and bodily threw him at the glowing net of fire only a few feet behind him. She ignored the sizzling and the mess that landed on the ground, allowing her spells to lapse as she grabbed the amulet around her neck and reached out to touch Marin’s soul within it.
“No, no, NO!” Emonael shouted, throwing caution to the wind as she turned and ran toward the Association grounds.
“Emonael!” Damiya called out in confusion, and began to chase her, with most of the others in her wake.
Emonael ignored everyone behind her, instead focused on getting to Marin’s home, for what she’d sensed filled her with fear. Marin’s soul hadn’t been peaceful and calm, instead it was dancing as if in a high wind, its power blazing ever higher, and that frightened her. For as a demon, Emonael knew that the moment when a soul blazed brightest was when it was about to depart.
Marin took her time getting the spell right, the echoing explosions against the barrier fading into a slight annoyance as she adjusted it carefully. What she was doing now . . . she’d never intended to use, though she’d made mention of the techniques in the seventh volume of her codices. The only reason she had waited that long was because she considered sacrificial magic to be among the most dangerous forms of magic she’d ever encountered, and that fear had intensified during her moments of near-omniscience.
The departure of a soul to the afterlife released an immense burst of mana, she’d learned years before, and sacrificial magic controlled the moment of a creature’s death to channel that power into a spell. The more powerful the individual, the more mana would be released on their death, which was why many primitive shamans would sacrifice animals as part of their rituals to make their spells more powerful. It was another reason dark magi willing to sacrifice the lives of others were so feared and reviled. Even at the best of times, such efforts couldn’t tap more than a fraction of the mana released, Marin knew.
Self-sacrifice was different, though. If a mage set up a spell and channeled their soul through it as they died . . . all of their remaining mana and all the power released with their death could be tapped into a single, massive spell, if the mage had a spell which could handle it.
“What in the hells are you doing, Marin?” Northwood demanded, throwing another hammer blow of water magic at her shield as she opened her eyes, her spell coming to an end.
All she needed was one more step, so she smiled at him, glancing at the fragmenting barrier. Another dozen spells and they’d be through, but that didn’t matter. It was too late.
“My research is done, Northwood. My life was near its end to begin with, but those of my apprentice, and those of her students, have only just begun,” Marin told him, her voice mild. “With your presence, my life was bound to end today. The least I can do is to take all of you with me.”
As he screamed out a protest, Marin slapped her hands down onto the floor of the tower, channeling all of herself through the spell she’d woven, sending a sharp spike of power down into the node beneath her tower.
She didn’t feel the spell begin to pool power and the pressure building in the node. She didn’t feel the sheer, immense power preparing to erupt, for as the world went dark, she murmured, “I’m sorry, Emonael.”
Emonael burst from the woods at a run, her breathing hard as she took in the glittering barrier around Marin’s home and the shattered front door. The others weren’t far behind her, but they wouldn’t help, not if someone who could kill Marin was here!
Plans were just taking form in her mind as she felt the ground rumble, and the tower ahead of Emonael shook. She skidded to a stop, her eyes going huge as she murmured. �
�No, please . . . not . . . not like this . . .”
Ignoring her pleas, the rumbling increased in intensity, the ground beneath Marin’s home cracking and glittering wisps of pure white flames seeping out of the crevices. Emonael could do nothing as she felt the spell, it had to be a spell, finally take form.
The eruption of white-hot flames was strangely quiet in many ways, at least for the first moment. The barrier around the building shattered a moment later and the air began whipping past Emonael’s face, howling its anger and rage as a pure white pillar of flames erupted a hundred feet into the air, the very stones of the tower cracking and melting under their fury.
It seemed like an eternity, but the spell couldn’t have lasted more than a minute, and the flames from the ground slowly came to an end, leaving the shattered, molten remains of what Emonael had considered her home. She could do nothing but stare at it in shock as the half-molten stones began to collapse.
Damiya approached, laying a trembling hand on Emonael’s shoulder as she asked, her own voice quavering with tears. “Emonael? Is . . . was she in there? What . . .”
Emonael reached up to touch her amulet, just to confirm what she already knew. No dancing spark of a soul met her senses, the spell within snuffed out like a lamp in its absence. No sense of peace that Marin still puttered her way through her library, or even that Marin might have evacuated her books in time. There was nothing at all within the amulet.
“She’s . . . she’s gone,” Emonael replied softly, hot tears spilling down her cheeks as she stared at the ruins. With the unfamiliar emotion of grief came another emotion, though. A rising sense of pure, matchless rage, something she’d felt before, though never this hotly. Almost consumed by it, Emonael’s voice rose, and she stared at the star-strewn sky angrily. “I promise, by the gods, by all the stars of the heavens, and by my very name and power! I will track down those responsible for my teacher’s death, and they will pay for this!”
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