Oblivion's Crown

by M. H. Johnson

  And accept that with just Rank 1 in Conjuration and no skill in drawing Sigils per se, he’d be a fool to try to mess with it. There was always Greater Valorious Disjunction, but his objective was to free the terrified captives, not kill them by wrenching apart the spell matrixes and unleashing all their pent-up energies in a heartbeat.

  “I’m sorry. Breaking those wards is beyond my skill. Just stay where you are,” Val soothed. “Alwin and the others should be here soon.”

  One dirt-stained woman's violet eyes widened at those words, her face alighting with sudden hope. “Alwin. My Alwin, he still lives?”

  “Yes he does,” Val soothed, still holding a shaking Monica who was conversing frantically with her father via their Spirit Link. Fortunately, the girl knew better than to leap for her mother’s arms with Val’s mental image of her being torn to bloody chunks if she tried. Not that he had wanted to hit her with anything that horrid, but his mind had automatically flashed the danger, the little girl freezing on the spot.

  The woman who had spoken gazed at her terrified kinswomen, naked and shaking with dread. Those who had surviving children held their sobbing little ones close, even as others shrieked and sobbed for loved ones lost.

  Monica’s mother cleared her throat, apparently chosen by silent consent to act as the group’s spokeswoman, gazing up at Val with imploring eyes. “Please, honored mage. We are grateful for your intervention, and will serve you all our days! Could you but hand me my daughter?”

  Monica shook her head sadly. “He can’t, mommy. Not until the wards around you are broken, or we’ll all blow up.”

  Her mother, quite beautiful despite her ragged blood-stained state, shuddered at those words. “Then stay right where you are, darling. We shall wait for Father. He will know what to do.”

  “Ghetta!” sobbed a frantic Alwin, along with the near dozen surviving mages of the Christos clan. “Thank all the heavens, you live!”

  Ghetta immediately broke into tears. “We have lost so many, my love. Those monsters butchered our children before our very eyes!”

  Alwin trembled with rage, glaring his hate at the two surviving Ormur mages, still bound, begging for mercy under Alwin’s fearsome gaze. “The things I will do to these monsters!”

  Val scowled, but gave a slow nod. “Eventually, both those bastards will be made to pay.”

  The two mages began to wail desperately. “But first let’s rescue the survivors and make sure our territory is free of those bastards entirely.”

  Alwin’s nostrils flared as his fellows gazed around in desperate relief, seeing their wives and children, or despair, as other sobbing women mourned their fallen little ones.

  “They will pay,” Val assured his men. “Once we claim this keep and recover ourselves fully, we’re wiping the Ormur holdings off the map!”

  A dozen roars of agreement erupted at those words. Val smiled bleakly. “Those Ormur clansmen who refuse to surrender will die by spell and blade!”

  “We should just kill them all,” muttered Zelawin, his brother nodding in agreement.

  “Then the Dominion will win,” Val snapped, the crowd of wizards suddenly silent with those words. “They have been playing you all for fools, encouraging your intrigue and petty self-destructive jealousy in the hopes you’d all destroy each other. The Ormur clan has already lost dozens of mages. Who knows what secrets, powers, and talents are forever lost to us now? And the irony of it is, Malice had been fooling them all. That bastard goat had planned on the death of everyone in this tower as a grand sacrifice for the sake of his own power alone. And that selfish idiocy is just the kind of thing the Dominion adores inspiring!

  “So if you want to play their game and wake up one day as just one of a ragged handful of survivors, the final remnants of what had once been the mightiest force this world has ever known, soon to be locked in chains, enslaved, and eventually butchered, then by all means, refuse to unite. Let your grudges consume you. But if you want a free South no Dominion soldier would dare to set foot in, we must unite and fight together!”

  Deception skillcheck: Success! You’ve managed to spin your own suspicions and guesswork into a convincing tale, and your heroic actions and unquestionable power has influenced mages who normally wouldn’t fall for such basic rhetoric!

  You now have Level 1 in Influence. You are beginning to intuitively sense the lynchpins in conversations that make all the difference in persuading your friends and enemies to see things your way! All Charisma, Reputation, and Darkpoint modifiers apply!

  “Damn it, he’s right,” Zelawin cursed. “The Dominion’s played us all for fools.”

  Alwin nodded. “That they have.”

  “Those bastards killed my daughter! I will have their heads!” roared one incensed mage.

  “And you will,” Val snapped, his icy gaze and cold assurance instantly chilling the heat of his mage’s wrath. He glared down at the pair of captives mages, kicking one savagely. “After these bastards spill all their secrets. After their arcane masteries become our own. After that? They will indeed pay the ultimate price, and I will let every man and woman who lost a loved one to these bastards wreak that vengeance.”

  “Please, master, if we reveal what we know, Malice’s curse will burst our hearts!” sobbed one of the men.

  Val flashed a cold smile even as he received a dozen begrudging nods. “I will rupture his Oathbindings even as I seal you with my own. How long you last depends on you, worm. Every nuance of your arts that you reveal will earn you an extra day of life. Every spell you perfectly impart to my mages and scribes will earn you mercy on the executioner’s block.” Val turned to meet the gazes of several dozen furious parents and smirked coldly. “Who knows? Perhaps those you wronged will actually let you die as peacefully as if you were drifting off to a good night’s sleep.”

  “Really?” snarked Alwin, bending down to take a closer look at the wards.

  Val smirked at Alwin’s skeptical thought. “Probably not. But Alwin? The three girls you captured...”

  “Will remain unharmed. We’re not fools, my lord. They have surrendered and know their lives hang on strings of goodwill alone. Three of our youngest mages will serve as their chaperones, nominally there to extract as much arcane information as they can and judge if the girls are redeemed and worthy of a second chance at life, one year from this day. The lads I have in mind are good-natured, free of the malice that effects so many with a shard of power in their grasp. If things work as I suspect they will, we will have three more pair-bonds who will bring new life and hope to our clan by the end of the year.”

  Val nodded. It did make sense. Stockholm Syndrome and a young man’s natural desire to play knight in shining armor and rescue or redeem a fallen woman was far too common a phenomenon to simply shrug off as dysfunctional. A psychologist might cringe, but Val wondered how many wartime couples formed bonds of love strong as steel under such dynamics. To say nothing of captured hostages eventually being embraced as full members of countless tribes over the hundreds of thousands of years humanity had evolved on Earth, and perhaps here or elsewhere in this universe as well. Modern society was only an eyeblink in the overarching history of man, after all.

  Alwin smirked. “My wife, who I love with all my heart, was not born a Christos mage.”

  “Silence, husband,” snapped his wife, sharing their Spirit Link still. “Now free us, so I may comfort our daughter.”

  “Yes, my love,” Alwin said aloud, bending down alongside half a dozen of his intently focused fellows, smiling with genuine admiration when Val found himself able to synergize his Find Weakness skill with the arcane cords before him. “How odd. And how useful,” Alwin remarked, and Val could feel how the man subtly redirected the ward energy through the weakest points of the enchantment, all the magic draining harmlessly into the ether over a period of minutes before he at last got to his feet with a satisfied nod.

  Congratulations! Warding is now Level 1! Warding synergizes with Conjuration an
d Necromancy! Your lesser summonings are more likely to be docile and obedient before a master of both arts. Both arcane arts are prerequisites for greater summonings and bindings! Val felt a shiver of wonder, gazing at the remains of the ward as it all began to make sense, like a complex maze of circuits and power that he was finally beginning to grasp the fundamentals of. He could see how they could be used to contain or trap both humans and extradimensional beings, but knew he was a long, long way from mastery of anything but the very basics.

  “It is done, my love. You and the others should be free to step over it,” Alwin declared, but only after he took the first risk himself, stepping over the barrier to hold his sobbing wife in his arms, Monica pressing herself tightly to them as the entire clan celebrated the survival of those who had made it, or mourning with heart-wrenching sobs those who had perished.

  A relieved and grateful Alwin broke away from his wife, though he held her hand still, the pair of them bowing formally to Val, their daughter solemnly following suit. “We will follow you for all our days, my king.”

  Immediately everyone present fell silent save for the two pleading captives, bowing their heads as one.

  Val couldn’t help grinning with a fierce sense of pride. As horrid as the day had been, it was sweetest victory to have mastered the field of battle and earned the respect of his men. “At ease,” he said. “There’s a lot to do, and I will trust Alwin to assign what tasks are needed to see to the manor and clean the tower. But before anything else, I need to make sure we’re safe.”

  He closed his eyes, taking slow deep breaths, and smiled as his Dominion Matrix map showed no traces of any red near tower or manor, though he did see a small cluster some distance away, at the very edge of his territory. He frowned in concentration, but could sense nothing further.

  “There are a handful of reds at the eastern edge of our territory. They’re not pressing further. Put a scout on them, Alwin.” Val smiled. “If you really can commune with foxes or ravens like a wizard out of my favorite stories, by all means, have them scout. But whatever you do, don’t put anyone in danger. We’ve lost too many as it is. Just report back to me. If those reds push further into our territory and I’m unavailable for whatever reason? Take your clan through the gate and ask to speak to Christine or Julia Highblood.”

  Alwin bowed. “It will be as you say, my lord.”

  Val took a moment, gazing around at the massive domed chamber that made up just the tiniest portion of his tower’s underbelly, awed anew by this magnificent building that he had somehow managed to bring back from the brink of oblivion. Sensing what a tremendous prize it was, and how easily it could fade off to realms of dream and legend still. Halcyon Restoration had brought it back from realms of myth and legend, but it was not truly of this world either.

  He would have to sacrifice a bit of himself if he wished to permanently anchor it to Jordia once more. And after everything he had been through, nothing would stop him from claiming this tower as his own, no matter how much blood he had to spill.

  Even his own.

  17

  Slowly Val made his way up the spiraling marble staircase, passing numerous grandly appointed floors reminding him of palatial residences as much as anything else, smiling at the exquisite bas-reliefs along the stairwell walls depicting what must be the history of the tower and the mages that had found it, and somehow he could sense the tale it told as he wound his slow way ever upwards.

  It had been intended as a place of wonder, wisdom, and endless potential. Forged with the help of beings that could have been angels or simply other, it was a bastion that somehow crossed dimensions. A treasure trove of secrets and endless wonder that defied the normal limits of space and time.

  Val smiled as his communion with the tower grew, willingly surrendering a bit of himself to bring the treasures within fully to the world once more.

  You have accessed Tier 1 communion with the tower! You can sense all inhabitants and activate security wards at will!

  You have accessed Tier 2 communion with the tower! You are beginning to sense its innermost secrets, amazed by the arcane insights Jordia’s ancient masters brought to bear!

  You have accessed Tier 3 communion with the tower. Time itself heeds your gaze! You may now lose yourself in lessons of the past, investing territory points for Arcane Potency! There are risks, but all the recorded knowledge of the ancients is potentially at your fingertips!

  You have accessed Tier 4 communion with the tower! 4 Territory points spent, 0 remain! Congratulations! Your Claimance upon these lands is absolute. Tower transcends entropy! Tower cannot be destroyed! Tower will stay anchored within this reality for so long as you or Avelina, your firstborn child, embrace this cycle of your immortal existences! Note: You lack the aptitude to commune deeper with your tower at this time.

  Val shook his head with awe. He could feel it, the incredible heights and depths to which his tower ascended, only a tiny sliver of it truly anchored to Jordia. An ancient wonder that amounted to a Tier 10 Arcane Academy, presently boosted an additional 85% with his combined Overlord bonuses.

  He chuckled softly, finding himself in a pristine bedroom with walls of translucent crystal, gazing down upon an incredible city of crystal towers floating upon fleecy clouds, noble gryphons soaring between impossibly tall buildings with graceful Fae riders beyond what any tale could hope to capture. He shook his head, wondering if his reverie had transformed to lucid dream, realizing that it didn’t even matter.

  Awake or dreaming, he and the tower, and at least some of its secrets, were now one.

  “So my king has awoken,” teased a soft voice as Val, wearing raiments regal and fine, turned around to see Phoebe herself in all her glory, wearing the gown of a queen.

  Val gasped, awestruck by her poise and beauty, falling to his knees, humbled by the power and majesty radiating from a being that had transcended mortality long ago.

  The goddess smiled. “And you have saved our tower. Well done, Valor.” Her hand stroked his scarred cheek. “It is good you refuse to forget bitterest folly. It only adds to your virtue in the end."

  He shuddered as her hand, infinitely graceful and utterly undeniable, took his palm in her own. “Come, Valor. It is time.”

  Wordlessly Val followed as the goddess led him past chambers filled with music, golden light, and laughter, catching sight of endless forests somehow trapped between tapestries; of Nymphs, Dryads, and countless races of Mer and Man frolicking gaily upon endless worlds glimpsed only in the corner of his eyes, his poor mortal brain forgetting so many scenes of transcendent glory even as he glimpsed them. That was, until he found himself in a magnificent library, bookshelves of translucent crystal holding treatises and tomes well over a thousand years old, each and every one as pristine and perfect as the day they had been written.

  Wordlessly she seated him at a table, her brilliant eyes meeting his own. “Once more a fork on the road is before us. You must choose which path you will take.” With those words she splayed out books that glowed with a golden light, figurines holding blades or slinking in shadows or gripping unnamable concepts within their bejeweled fingers.

  Val blinked. “What are my options?”

  Phoebe smiled. “You have seven points with which to bend fate to your will. And this level alone I can offer you a treasure most profound. My thanks for rescuing that which had been nearly lost to an Arch Duke of hell, the White Tower’s endless potential now your own.” Sad tears streamed down her cheeks, yet her smile was serene. “Ever do you redeem yourself, my Valor. For had you not stopped Malice, the results would have been beyond horrific.”

  Val winced, knowing how close they had come to absolute folly. “So much depended on happenstance! What would have happened if I had not arrived when and where I did?”

  Her smile only grew. “My children knew when it was time.”

  Val’s jaw dropped. “The dwarves. You… you really are their goddess? But...”

  A soft, bemused chu
ckle caressed his ears. “But you thought me human? Look closely, Val.” Her queenly raiments disappeared. Val, no longer prejudiced by expectation, gazed at the beautiful woman before him with awe. Graceful features and piercing blue eyes just a tad larger than the human norm, with wide, powerful shoulders and a thickness to her brow that did nothing to detract from her striking beauty.

  She looked as much Dwarf as Human.

  Exactly what Val thought his Avelina might look like one day, save for Phoebe's hair of moonlight and silver.

  The goddess just smiled and pointed to the tomes and figurines before Val. He suddenly understood the priceless boon before him. All the wondrous secrets of the tower were his to embrace, for this moment in time alone, perhaps.

  “Seven points… that’s 35 Territory points! And I can invest it all in these tomes as if they were skill points?”

  A soft whisper sent shivers down his spine. “Choose, my king. Even in this timeless moment, our enemies move their pieces forward. Children of man alone seek prizes once comfortably locked in quantum flux. But with Terran adventurers in the mix...”

  Val felt a cold chill. “The Dominion. They’re going to try to seize the dwarven ship!” He clenched trembling fists. “I need to know. Just how far am I allowed… will you accept me going?”

  Her eyes blazed, and for a heartbeat, Val feared being consumed by darkness and flame forever more. “Save my people, Valor. At all costs.”

  Val bowed his head. “I will. You know I will!”

  Her hand brushed his cheek. “Then may the scars of your folly be echoed in the strength of your resolve.”

  Val gazed at the tomes before him, awed at the knowledge at his fingertips, and made his choices.

  You have chosen to embrace Blood Magics! This ancient art allows you to consume the vitality and potency of your enemies! Heal yourself while you harm your foes! Arcane Wards do not protect, unless used with Blood Magic prerequisite! Requires basic Tier 3 mastery of Healing and Necromantic arts! Prerequisites overridden with Arcane Reaver Overlord class!