B3 C66: Standard Teleportation

How in the name of all that’s holy did this become such a spectacle?

Archmage Xander’Calis went through the exacting motions of preparing the ritual he’d be using to visit his master, laying down the spell circle directly into the earth beneath him. Even that much had taken some preparation, as he’d had to use earth magic to create a space that was flat and stable enough to hold the powerful spellwork.

Considering how involved the task was, he’d chosen a spot well out of the way on the outskirts of the city to ensure himself some peace and quiet. Given his efforts in that dimension, one could be forgiven for being a touch surprised at just how lively the surrounding area had become.

“I am deeply confused by what I am seeing.” Off to the side, one of the forest shadows -- the strange, dark-veined one who controlled souls -- was examining his disciple. Apparently someone had informed her of Tess’s mental breakage, and she’d gotten the backwards idea into her head that she could be of use. Why she couldn’t have tried -- and failed -- that earlier, he didn’t know. Not that he wouldn’t have enjoyed being able to skip the visit to his master, but the notion that the girl would be able to help was laughable. Thankfully, she seemed to be discovering that for herself.

“It’s as if her soul just disappears in places. I keep trying to follow it, and I keep failing over and over again.”

The archmage took a momentary pause from his work to explain, the teacher in him not allowing him to let the girl keep aimlessly bumbling about. “She learned some form of skill that fused her soul with her mind. I believe I already informed you that you won’t be able to help unless you’re equally skilled in mental magic as you are in soul magic.” The girl had barged ahead regardless, seeming skeptical of his claims, but now she could see what he’d meant first hand. “And before you ask, no, you cannot fix her soul damage while I fix the mental damage. You can’t even perceive her entire soul. I assure you anything either of us could do would only make it far worse for her.”

The forest shadow girl started to accept her uselessness, instead choosing to offer words of comfort and apology to his disciple. It was all very sappy, and the archmage immediately chose to ignore it.

If that were all he had to deal with, everything would have been fine. Unfortunately, the shadow girl wasn’t the only one who’d come to harass him. Somehow, a number of others had been made aware of Tess’s impending departure. He identified each one in turn, the information leaving his head immediately as each turned out to be largely uninteresting: Amak, Rock, Nadja, Tuk, Barb, Jason, Kex’Stella, Carpin, Aval’Kethrid, Edgar.

Or that wasn’t entirely fair. If he wasn’t mistaken, one of those onlookers was the Chamber Head’s kid, and that “Rock” fellow had something curious going on with his soul and body. The bug-folk were a minor curiosity as well, and on top of that, Xander’Callis swore he could feel some higher-leveled entity linked to the “Hartha” girl, focusing on him from the forest. Between those few and Hartha’s bizarre soul magic skills, he had to admit the settlement was far more interesting than normal for such a low-leveled area. Still, he would leave studying them all for later.

It was some small miracle that all of the previously mentioned bystanders largely knew to leave him alone.

It was unfortunate, then, that the other girl present seemed to have no such inhibitions.

“I find that I am unfamiliar with such a ritual. Would you mind explaining, Archmage Callis?” The noble brat from the Sylus family stood only a few paces off, carefully examining his work as if she’d be able to spot if he made a mistake. If not for her, he likely would have scared everyone off with a few showy spells, but he made an effort not to displease the nobility more than he had to. All the chamber heads were a bother to deal with, but old Victa was the one he least wished to prod.

At least I don’t mind explaining things, he grumbled inwardly.

“You may be surprised to learn that very little of this spell has to do with teleporting my disciple and me anywhere. That part is actually rather trivial, most of the time. Simple enough that it can be accomplished by something as basic as a recall gem.” Not that the common folk could afford recall gems either, but the magic in them wasn’t all that advanced by his estimation.

“The true issue is finding where we need to teleport to and then punching through any spatial wards. My master, as is true of many high-leveled individuals, has wrapped himself in so many anti-tracking and anti-divination effects as to essentially not exist, and the same is likely true for teleportation blockers.”

And it certainly wasn’t as though Xander’Callis knew where the man was. They hadn’t spoken in centuries at this point, and that was how he preferred it.

“Curious,” Verin interjected. “Am I to understand that this ritual is capable of breaking through all of your master’s obfuscation and warding effects?”

Xander’Callis replied immediately and emphatically. “No.” Unless he suddenly gained a good fifty levels, he didn’t even want to know a spell that did such a thing. He’d likely be locked up by some foreign emperor and forced to use it all day long. Either that, or he’d instantly be assassinated by the sort of people who had little desire to be found. “Almost all of this ritual is, in fact, focused on empowering this.” He removed a small, circular metal badge from one of his robe pockets, tossing it to Verin. Hopefully, it would keep her attention occupied for a while.

And indeed, she did go silent for a time as she examined the device with the slightest of frowns. Sadly, his reprieve was short-lived.

“I will confess, I do not quite understand the significance of what I am looking at. My identification skills do not seem to be working properly on it.”

Likely for the best. For his own sake, he didn’t need someone else with a Tess-level identification skill walking around.

“That, miss Sylus, would be a ‘locator badge. A marvel of enchanting. You see, when you cast most higher level wards, you have the option of including intentional weaknesses. These weaknesses are, for all intents and purposes, fully unable to be taken advantage of unless you know precisely what they are. As for why you would do so, if the mage then creates an enchanted object with a divination spell, they can use their intentional weaknesses as a sort of mundanely and magically encrypted ‘key’ which they can entrust to whomever they choose -- like their precious disciples.” Or the long and short of it was: The gem was set to bypass his master’s defenses entirely.

Or at least most of them. For whatever the keyed spells couldn’t handle, locator gems tended to come with all-purpose divination and spatial-lock-busting spells too. As long as the gem bypassed the truly serious spells his master was using, he would just need to pump enough mana into it to handle the rest.

He’d been given the gem as his graduation gift, many centuries back. It should have been a nice gesture, but if anything, it had reinforced his desire to get far, far away from the man. His master had never been known for making friends, and Callis was certain there were many aggrieved parties out there who would absolutely love to take said gem from him, dead or alive.

No matter, though. We’re nearly done, and then I can be finished with all of these headaches.

As if to punish him for his hubris, Verin chimed in.

“Fascinating. But you seem to be laboring under a misconception, yes?” She quirked a single brow upwards as if daring him to correct her.

It was at times like these that the archmage was glad his visible body was an illusion, as he doubted he’d be able to resist the urge to roll his eyes had he had any. Still, antagonizing the girl wasn’t worth it. “Of course. And what would that misconception be?”

In response, Verin went and fetched Tess, linking arms with the woman. “Earlier you mentioned that you needed to power the spell to teleport you and Tess. Quite naturally, however, I will be accompanying you.”

Once again, the archmage was glad that he lacked eyes, as they would surely be bulging outwards otherwise. Just what sort of ego did the brat have that she thought she could decide something like that?

“No. Absolutely and without any room for compromise, no. Under no circumstances am I teleporting the scion of the nobility to a completely unknown and potentially dangerous location.” Or introducing her to my master, for that matter.

“Very well then.” With a slight tilt of her head, the girl seemed to acquiesce. “As an entirely separate matter, I’ve been receiving news updates from Sylum during my stay here.” Verin gently tapped a ring of hers that the archmage instantly recognized as a transponder of sorts. “Things have certainly been interesting lately. I heard you may have been involved in an incident with a number of the chamber heads? And the woman at the center of the recent hubbub happens to be your disciple. It’s quite a shame that such matters are likely to spawn a whole host of inquiries which you’ll need to answer. Of course, I will do my best to speak to my grandmother to ensure all matters pertaining to you are handled appropriately, yes? As it stands, it’s hard to tell whether your issues would be silently washed away, or if they’d explode into a proper headache for you.”

The audacity of the girl’s words nearly stunned the archmage. A thinly veiled threat to bury him in interrogations and pull him into Sylum’s political landscape? He would rather take a fireball to the head. Surely the girl must have known better. Had it been so long since he’d last given the chambers a reason to remember why they didn’t push him too much? His thoughts immediately went to several darker options for how to impress upon the girl that she was not to threaten him until he remembered precisely why he was here in the first place.

I imagineTess is unlikely to be happy with me if I deeply traumatize her friend or chop off a few of her limbs. And he supposed the girl had a point, too. Now probably was not the time to be chopping limbs off the noble scion.

Sylum is growing to be something of a pain for me, isn’t it? As much as he’d put his own energy into the place, perhaps it was getting to be time to move on.

“Fine. I take no responsibility for your potential death, though. I have no idea where my master is or what he’ll be up to.”

The noble brat seemed eminently pleased with herself. As for the archmage, he would still be fine as long as there were no other interrupt-

“Oh, nice, me too.” Without warning, a girl in a quintessential rogue’s outfit suddenly popped into existence, holding onto Tess’s other arm. He realized he even knew this one -- it was that girl, Calilah, who’d led him from the battlefield to Tess.

“No! Gods, where did you even come from? The noble is an exception. I’m not bringing you along because… Frankly, I don’t even know who you are, so I’m not sure why I’m not bringing you along. But I’m not, because I don’t want to. Understood?” Why were children so vexing?

Calilah shrugged innocently. “I mean, fine with me. I was originally planning to just go invisible and hug onto her so that you’d teleport me without realizing it, so if you say no, I’ll just do that again.”

She was… Blasted girl, do you have any idea how variable spatial magic works? That was more likely to get her killed than anything else, if not get Tess damaged along with her. Feeling no need to treat this random addon as gently as he did Verin, the archmage absentmindedly threw off a binding spell at the girl.

Only to feel it slide off of her as if she weren’t even there.

“Immune to all targeted spells right now,” she confessed. “Sorry. You can study it when we get back if you want, though.”

The archmage could feel it as the face of his illusion nearly started to twitch. Mana started to pour off of him as he used it to engulf everyone currently present, applying pressure to them all.

“Fine!” he shouted. “Anyone else want to come along? Since we’re treating this like a spectator sport and me like a glorified coachman, is anyone else going to tell me I have to bring them with me?”

Thankfully for all involved, everyone remained tight-lipped at his questioning, save for Hartha. She seemed to consider the proposition for a moment as if he’d actually meant it seriously. Ultimately, though, she stepped back from Tess.

“I should not be leaving the forest right now. I will entrust her safety to you.”

The one with scales and a polka-dotted hat seemed to be about to say something too, but the chamber head’s boy wisely slapped a hand over his gator-like snout.

Melodramatic children. As much as he was selling how dangerous the trip could be, the most likely scenario would be them visiting his master in some peaceful wizard’s tower, getting his disciple fixed, and then immediately teleporting back.

“Good. Then everyone else, back up. I’m beginning.”

The collected onlookers shuffled backwards, none of them wanting to get on his bad side right now. The only four who remained within the circle were himself, Tess, Verin, and Calilah. When he was well and truly sure that everything had been set up properly, he activated the ritual.

The air stilled. Even the faintest of whispers died out at once. Each and every one of the others recoiled as if sucker punched. To those of them that could sense mana, the cause was clear, too.

In short order, the ritual circle hummed to life, greedily accepting the mana from the environment, the reagents he’d given it, and the archmage’s own mana pool. The end effect was spectacular even to him.

Only a few days prior, the entire city had been gawking at the amount of mana he’d used to cast a simple ice spell. With a carefully laid out ritual and the spell components to power it, however, the mana around him ballooned to several times what he’d used for his spell, and it only grew from there.

The bulk of it was siphoned directly into the locator still held within Verin’s hands, but even so, a vast amount of it escaped, thick tendrils of condensed mana whipping about. The weaker amongst the bystanders collapsed, a few of them even puking as the densest mana they’d ever encountered passed directly through them.

On and on and on the ritual went, sapping more and more mana from the reagents he’d supplied to it, and-

In fact, it’s draining things a good deal faster than expected. Shouldn’t we at least have a location lock by now?

As if to assuage his concerns, a sharp pop sounded out from the locator.

Wonderful! It’s found him then. Now comes the easier part.

The complex enchantments in the badge shifted purpose, now all focused on breaking through any spatial locks which would bar them from teleporting. Considering how costly such locks were to implement and maintain, this second half of the ritual would likely go by much faster than the first. Even as the mana raged and threatened to flatten the surrounding children to the ground, the archmage calmly waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And… waited?

Another glance at the circle’s reagents confirmed that they were nearly gone. Only then did the archmage start to get a bit nervous.

As a matter of principle and habit, Xander’Callis wasn’t one to leave things to chance. Knowing roughly how much mana the ritual would take, he’d thus supplied it with five times the necessary amount. The fact that they’d almost gone through all of that signaled that something was going very notably wrong, a fact which the raging tempest of mana was happy to impress upon him.

It’s probably fine. Right? There was still a little left, after all.

Until, quite suddenly, there wasn’t.

With its easiest source of mana depleted, the ritual began to draw from its next best option: Xander’Callis. Centuries of leveling had rendered his mana pool truly prodigious, and even so, the spell circle was sucking it out of him at a frightening and unsustainable rate.

Worse yet, even had he wished to waste his resources and cancel the spell, it was too late. The enchantments in the locator gem had set the process in motion, and forcibly stopping it would damage the gem at best or result in a massive backlash at worst. Doing his best, to pretend everything was normal, he dumped his mana into the spell as fast as his aching mana core would allow him to.

But the ritual was still hungry.

Seeking more mana, it ripped it from the very air, the previously still environment growing chaotic as strong winds began to blow against them. Indiscriminate in taste, the ritual sucked the dark mana from the earth, and finding nothing else, sank into the various onlookers, now unwittingly caught in its grasp.

Shouts abounded as it quickly became clear to all that the ritual was malfunctioning, but just as quickly, half of them died out as the less magically inclined collapsed to the ground, unconscious. Only barely did he note his disciple to his side, Verin and Calilah gripped tightly to her arms as she stood there blankly, mutely. None were spared as the mana was torn from them.

The droning hum of the mana grew deafening as still more it took, the mana more than enough to level a city at this point.

Gods. This low on mana, can I even protect everyone if this backfires? I can’t. I need to… I’m going to have to-

Barely heard above the chaos, the locator popped for a second time.

The ritual, having done its job, settled down. The remaining mana was funneled into the badge.

And blissfully, the teleportation sequence began.

Leaving behind a ravaged area full of unconscious well-wishers, the four of them disappeared. Having teleported countless times in his life, Xander’Callis knew well what to expect.

Or, at least he thought he had.

ACK! Shit. AGH. Despite no longer being fully physical, the archmage hit something. Hard.

Ripped from his teleportation, he rebounded backwards until he was lying down on the original spell circle sporting the magical equivalent of a concussion. Hells, he’d almost even dropped his illusion, so bad was the backlash.

What in the hells was that? The only explanation was some sort of monumental spatial lock that the locator had somehow failed to break through. If his master was behind something that powerful, though, there was no hope of reaching him.

“My. What a colossal waste of time and resources.” Slowly, the archmage pulled himself from the ground. “Apologies. It appears we’ll have to find some other way to fix your mental damage, Tess.”

He turned to where his disciple had been only moments ago, only to find nothing.

Xander’Callis scanned every which way, searching for where the other three had ended up only to repeat his earlier finding.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

With a mounting dread, the archmage could only think of one thing to say.

“Oh dear.”