Magium

by Chris Michael Wilson

  “I could make an ice dome to protect us from the storm,” Kate says.

  “And I could make little balls of fire to spin around us and make us dry!” Flower says. “There’s no need to light an actual fire for that.”

  “Yes, but I think it might be better for you two to conserve your magical energy,” Daren says. “There’s no telling when we’ll be meeting another one of Tyrath’s elite monster groups, so we should always be ready for them.”

  “I really doubt that we’ll be meeting another one of Tyrath’s elite groups anytime soon,” Melindra says. “It’s not like they grow on trees or anything. He can’t afford to send all his finest warriors after just one group of mages. By the time we’ll be seeing them again, we’re probably already going to— Whoa…”

  Melindra suddenly stops in her tracks, as if she were just about to hit something, and then she begins to study an empty area in front of her very carefully, while the rest of us gather around her, trying to understand what she’s doing.

  “Are you seeing something there?…” Hadrik says, confused, as he tries to touch the empty area with one of his hands.

  “No, don’t touch it!” Melindra shouts, as she continues to inspect the area. “I still don’t know what the spell actually does, yet.”

  “A spell?” Daren asks. “Here, in this area? But I can’t sense anything.”

  “It’s one of Eiden’s spells,” Melindra says. “It’s designed to remain hidden from people without a keen enough magical sense. I can tell that it’s been cast by him from the aura signature, but I can’t tell what it’s supposed to do. It must be some sort of spell that he designed himself, although I’m not familiar with it.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember seeing this spell in plenty of other places in the past week,” Arraka says. “Eiden must have been casting it all over the continent since he came back here. And he’s probably still doing it, as we speak. Casting complicated spells like these takes a lot of time and concentration.”

  “But what does it do?” Kate asks.

  “How should I know that?” Arraka says. “It’s not like I’m some spell researcher. I can’t tell what a spell as complex as this does just by looking at it. But there’s one thing that I can tell for sure, and it’s that the spell is waiting to get triggered by something. Whatever that is.”

  “Could this have anything to do with that calamity that Eiden spoke of?” Hadrik asks. “Or maybe with the lessathi? Maybe they’re all bombs, and they’re meant to explode when they detect a lessathi nearby.”

  When she hears this, Leila suddenly takes a few steps back from the area that Melindra is inspecting.

  “I mean,” Hadrik continues, “I’d say it’s pretty clear by now that Eiden and the lessathi aren’t exactly best buddies. He told Barry to deliver that threatening message to them, and from what I can understand, he’s killed a bunch of them in the still winter, so it’s not like he’d need any special reason to kill more of them now.”

  “What are you babbling about?…” Melindra says, as she’s still concentrating on analyzing the hidden spell. “Eiden never killed any lessathi during the still winter. He took their side…”

  “He did what?…” Hadrik asks.

  “Oh…” Melindra says, as she suddenly realizes what she’s done. “I don’t think I should have told you that.”

  “Wait, so Eiden fought against the stillwaters in the still winter?” Daren says.

  “Oh, yeah, he killed plenty of them during that time,” Arraka says. “Almost as much as me!”

  “What do you mean?” Kate asks. “Weren’t you the leader of the stillwaters during the still winter war?…”

  “Oh, no, no, no,” Arraka says. “Therius was their leader. I was just fused with him. And the two of us weren’t exactly friends. We tried to take over the body from each other constantly. But the most hilarious thing happened when he had to go to sleep for the first time. There was no way for him to stop me from taking over his body anymore, so I wreaked havoc all throughout his camp. Those idiots tried to kill me along with him, but I squashed them like bugs. I still left half of them alive, though, so that I could play some fun games with them. You should have seen Therius’ face when he woke up to see the dead bodies of his friends. And the funniest part was that none of his friends would ever follow him of their own free will after that, so he had to lead them through fear and intimidation from that moment onwards. Oh, man, those were the days!”

  “But what triggered the still winter?” Kate asks. “Why were the lessathi and the stillwaters at war with each other? And why wasn’t Eiden on the side of the stillwaters?”

  “Do you seriously think I was paying attention?” Arraka says. “I only just told you that I massacred half of my own army in one night. It’s not like I cared to hear their reasons for going to war.”

  “And I’m guessing that Melindra won’t be revealing this information to us, either,” Daren says.

  “I’ve said too much, already,” Melindra says. “I’ve promised Eiden long ago that I wouldn’t give anyone any important details about the still winter, and I intend to stick to that promise.”

  “Right…” Daren says.

  “Anyway, since I can’t really tell what this spell is supposed to do, I recommend avoiding it for now,” Melindra says. “There’s no telling what could trigger it, so we shouldn’t take any unnecessary risks. Come on, let’s move.”

  For the next few hours or so, we kept following Melindra, as she led us away from the river, and through the thick of the forest, once more. As time passed, the wind that was only a small breeze this morning began to slowly intensify, while the sky was still as dark as ever. We spent most of these hours listening to some of Hadrik’s and Daren’s stories from their various adventures, and not much else, although one thing that I’ve noticed was that Melindra and Flower often seemed to be more preoccupied with their own discussions rather than paying attention to our group chats. For some odd reason, the more these two talked with each other, the more things they found that they had in common, which only sparked new topics of conversation between them that seemed to never end.

  Once it got past noon, we decided to take a small break to eat some lunch. This time around, we didn’t ask Flower to make any food, so she could preserve her magical energy, in case of an attack. Since I wasn’t particularly hungry, I sat myself down on a tree stump, and I pulled a pack of biscuits out of my backpack, to serve as a little afternoon snack.

  “Barry, I thought you had some food with you,” Flower says, when she sees me opening up the pack of biscuits. “If you’ve only got those biscuits to eat, then I could make some proper lunch for you with magic. It’s not that big of a problem.”

  “No, I’ve got plenty of food with me,” I say. “It’s just that I’m not very hungry right now. And besides, I really do love these biscuits. I got them from a shop near my house back in the Western Continent, and no other biscuits that I’ve tried tasted quite like this.”

  “Oh,” Flower tells me. “Well, there was also something else that I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Go ahead,” I tell her, as I take a bite from one of my biscuits.

  “Remember when we found that puzzle piece inside the castle of Thilias?” Flower says.

  “Yeah, I remember,” I say.

  “Well, Melindra told me earlier that she knows where we can get another one of the puzzle pieces!” Flower says. “She said that she had a puzzle piece herself a few hundred years ago, but she didn’t feel like wasting time looking for the others, so she eventually threw it away. But she knows where she took it from. She found it in an abandoned building in one of the poorer districts of Ollendor.”

  “I see…” I say.

  “Anyway,” Flower continues, “so when Daren overheard our discussion, he said that you guys also found a puzzle piece in the ruins where we first met, and that you’re the one holding onto it. Would you mind giving it to me, or are you also trying to collect all the pieces?�
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  “You can have it, if you want,” I say.

  “I can?” Flower says, with hopeful anticipation.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I wasn’t really planning to do anything with it, anyway. Hold on, let me get it out of my backpack.”

  I then finish one of my biscuits, and I reach over to the side of the tree stump, to get the puzzle piece out of my backpack. Once I give it to Flower, she stares at it for a while, and then she squeals with excitement.

  “Thanks a lot, Barry!” Flower says. “I’ll make sure not to waste this!”

  “Sure,” I say. “Go crazy.”

  “Alright, that’s all I wanted to ask of you,” Flower says. “I’ll let you eat in peace, now. Enjoy your biscuits!”

  I take a bite from one biscuit, and with my free hand I do a military salute, as Flower turns around, and she heads towards the others. I continue to eat for a few more minutes, and once I’m done, I open up my backpack and I place the pack of biscuits back inside.

  Before deciding whether I should be taking my notebook out of my backpack to read some more, I take a quick look towards the others, to see what each of them is doing. Kate is currently eating alone, while sitting on the grass, with her back against a tree. Meanwhile, Leila seems to have been coaxed by Hadrik and Daren to act as referee in a rock throwing contest between them. As with most contests that I’ve seen between Hadrik and Daren in the past, the rules appear to be a convoluted mess, and it’s very hard to tell what the actual goal of their game is. And lastly, Flower and Melindra appear to be continuing their discussions about random topics that they started this morning.

  Since I don’t really have anything to discuss with anyone in particular, I decide to take out my notebook, and to start reading from it. After a while, I notice that the others are slowly gathering up and preparing to leave, so I put the notebook back inside my backpack, and I get ready to join them as well.

  “Prepare yourselves,” Daren says. “The rain could start pouring any minute now, judging by the intensity of the wind. Remember to stick together, and to watch out for falling trees.”

  “We’re going this way,” Melindra says, as she takes the lead. “Follow me.”

  We follow Melindra for half an hour or so, and during this time, the wind intensifies considerably. After a while, we start seeing lightning, and shortly afterwards, we get to experience a downpour of rain of the likes we’ve never seen before. It takes less than a minute for all of us to get completely soaked, and the powerful wind spraying the rain drops in our faces makes it feel almost like we’re under a waterfall, instead of simply walking through some rain. As we move forward, the wind starts to blow even harder, and now it really does look like the trees are about to be pulled from their roots.

  “Stay close together!” Daren shouts, in order to make sure that we can hear him through the sound of the wind. “And watch out for lightning. We should always be careful to have tall trees surrounding us, so the lightning will strike them instead of us. Make sure to avoid flying at all costs. Come on, keep moving!”

  As we advance through the storm, the wind finally manages to blow a few trees out of their roots, but we all manage to avoid sustaining any injuries by being alert and by paying attention to our surroundings.

  We keep pressing forward for another twenty minutes, but the storm still doesn’t look like it will be stopping anytime soon. In fact, it’s been getting worse by the minute. Every time we hear a thunder, it feels almost as if someone set off a powerful explosion spell in our vicinity. The wind is now almost powerful enough to push us back while we’re walking, and the number of rain drops has greatly increased as well. Will this storm never end?

  “I’ve had enough of this,” Kate says, all of a sudden, and then a large dome of ice quickly begins to form itself around us, until it covers us completely, shielding us from the wind and rain.

  “Kate, what are you doing?” Daren says.

  “We’re taking a break,” Kate says. “As it stands, we’re only getting ourselves tired for no reason. We’re barely moving forward with this wind pushing us back, and at this rate, half of us will wear ourselves out before we even get into a fight.”

  “Even I am forced to agree with the ice mage,” Melindra says. “Trying to walk through this storm is a complete waste of our time. We’re better off just resting for a while, and resuming our journey afterwards.”

  “Well, if everyone else is also okay with this…” Daren says.

  “Yeah, I think we all could use a little break, right about now,” Hadrik says.

  “I’ll dry everyone up, then!” Flower says.

  She then conjures a few dozen small flying balls of fire, and she sends several of them towards each of us. The balls of fire quickly begin to circle around us, coming very close to our clothes, in order to evaporate all of the water.

  “Whoa… watch out, there…” Hadrik says, as he sees one ball of fire approaching his face.

  “Don’t worry,” Flower says. “I’ve been drying up like this since forever. You’re not going to get burned.”

  “I most certainly hope so…” Daren says, as he looks suspiciously at one of the balls of fire circling him.

  Once we’re all dried up, Flower dismisses her spell, and the balls of fire each fade away, into the air.

  “Alright!” Hadrik says, as he claps his hands together, loudly. “Well, it looks like we’re going to be here for a while, so how about we find something to talk about, before we all get bored out of our skulls?”

  “Like what?” Daren says.

  “Like… for example Barry could tell us his progress on finding Eiden’s loopholes,” Hadrik says. “That’s something that everyone is interested in, right?”

  “Or maybe we could avoid giving away our strategies in front of someone who has openly admitted to being Eiden’s friend,” Kate says, with a cold tone in her voice.

  “Come on,” Hadrik says. “It’s not like she’s going to tell on us. Didn’t you see how Eiden was ignoring her two days ago? “

  “And yet she still considers him her friend,” Kate says. “She said so herself. What is to stop her from telling Eiden all of our strategies the first time she meets him again?”

  “Really?…” Melindra says. “Would you like me to take an enchanter’s oath for that too? Because I’ll do it, you know. Maybe at least then you won’t feel the need to lower your voice for every little thing you say when you are within hearing range of me.”

  “There’s no need for you to take another enchanter’s oath, Melindra,” I say.

  “Oh?” Melindra says. “So what would you rather have me do, then? Plug my ears?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “Because I haven’t really discovered anything new about Eiden’s loopholes, yet.”

  “Damn…” Hadrik says. “So, I guess we still don’t know any of Eiden’s weaknesses, then.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that we don’t know any of Eiden’s weaknesses,” I say. “It just depends on what you’d be willing to call a weakness. For example, do you remember that time when Eiden teleported us all to your location, after you turned into a giant and challenged everyone to a brawl?”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember!” Hadrik says. “It was on the second day of the tournament.”

  “Well,” I say, “the thing is that Eiden teleported every tournament participant in the vicinity, including me, Daren and Kate, but he didn’t notice the three of us until later. This means that even if he has the ability to monitor everyone on the island with his magic sense, he still can’t concentrate on everyone at once. Which shows that even with all his power, he still has some weaknesses that a normal person would have. He can still be distracted.”

  “Well, as far as weaknesses go, this one isn’t really all that useful,” Hadrik says.

  I shrug.

  “It’s a start,” I say. “When you’re up against an enemy of this caliber, I’d argue that every little bit of information helps.”

  “Fair enough,”
Hadrik says. “So, what if we tried to uncover stuff about his past, instead? Or his motivations. Maybe that could help us fight him somehow. Like, for example, maybe we could find out the reason why he’s filling the whole continent with those weird invisible spells.”

  “Good luck finding that out,” Melindra says. “I’ve known him for most of my life, and even I have no idea what he’s trying to pull.”

  “Maybe he’s trying to win back the fox’s heart,” Arraka says, in a mocking tone. “I heard they had a bit of a falling out after that stunt he pulled in Olmnar. And I don’t think they were exactly on the best of terms before that, either.”

  “Their relationship had been slowly degrading for a long time,” Melindra says. “I think it all started when the cities in Eiden’s care began to introduce the concept of slavery, and it all went downhill from there. The fox had always blamed Eiden for all the messed up things that ended up happening in his cities. She kept saying that if he would have reined them in and imposed stricter rules on them, it wouldn’t have gotten to this point. But back then, Eiden had this naive belief that all humans are inherently good, and that as long as they’d be left to their own devices long enough, they would find the right path. He thought that as long as people were given everything they needed, without having to work for it, and as long as they were given no reason to fight each other, they’d all live like one happy family. Well, we can all see how that turned out.”

  “So, are you telling me that he just gave up?!” Daren shouts, all of a sudden.

  “Oh, no, he didn’t ‘just’ give up,” Melindra says. “He tried to reason with them for a long time. Much longer than your lifespan. And he did manage to lead them back on the right path a few times. But the more his expectations got betrayed, the more he stopped caring. I think it was when the people he trusted the most betrayed him that he finally lost it. I don’t even remember their names. The king and queen of one of the cities. They seemed like such nice folk too… until it was uncovered that they were secretly running an underground show where people were getting eaten alive by dogs. I remember that after Eiden found out what they were doing, he organized a whole arena event just to have the king and queen eaten alive by the very dogs that they were using in their own events. It was shortly after this whole episode that Eiden told me he was finally giving up, and it was also around that time that he began closing his eyes.”