CC5 ~ 53!!

~ 53 ~

Joe had been getting some overly-wide smiles from the Legion as he got closer to the front of the line. He was sure that they were waiting for a chance to ‘broaden his horizons’ by whaling on him for annoying them so thoroughly, but they would just need to wait their turn.

The Reductionist internally admitted that he might have been going overboard with his new skill, but there was something so freeing about shooting through the air in a perfectly controlled motion. This had naturally led to him angling his leaps so that he arced over the formation, springing back and forth. It only made him a little slower, but it had made people chuckle. A few had even halfheartedly taken swings at him as he went over, but even the most angry Legionnaire only grumbled quietly. One of the great things about living in a ‘nice’ society; no one wanted to call you out for non-harmful silliness.

Joe could finally see Havoc’s outline, just as the sun was starting to rise. He knew it was the Dwarf he sought only because the Major General’s voice was reverberating across the open space as he shouted at the advance party that was with him. The Dwarf was encased in a massive golem, which sported four spinning drills on each hand—each of which also spun—and had overly bulky pistons for elbows.

“Are ya ready, Dwarves?” Havoc howled at his troops; their reply was almost incoherent screaming.

“Aye, aye, Major General!”

Havoc slammed his construct’s left ‘fist’ into the mountain, sending a spray of torn-out stone flying into the air. The other fist came down as that one retracted. “I can’t hear you!”

“Aye, aye, Major General!”

“Ohhh!” The fists started moving four times as fast as they pulverized the rocky surface. “Elves in a bunker, under this rock!”

“War crimes, war crimes!”

“What will we do, when we pull them on top?” Havoc bellowed as rock chips flew everywhere.

“War crimes, war crimes!”

“Is bloodshed and razing something you wish?”

“War crimes, war crimes!”

“Then come over here, and gut 'em like a fish!”

“War crimes, war crimes!”

“Ready?” Havoc popped out of the golem as it vanished into the tunnel it was rapidly digging, and he no longer needed to manually control it. “War crimes, war crimes…”

“War crimes, war crimes!”

“War cri~imes…! Here we go~o!” Havoc screeched as the golem broke through and a wash of hot air blasted from the tunnel. The Dwarves flooded in, following his charge, and Joe sputtered to a stop; knowing he was too late to be helpful to that first wave.

For one thing, the ritual he planned to use was at the Expert rank, and he would need a few hours of work to get it ready. Still, most of the leadership was near the middle or end of the formation, and he was hopeful that he could have it ready before they arrived.

Joe moved out of the way and got to work as another breach point was established, allowing the Legion to hopefully flank the hidden fort when the tunnel was completed. He got to work right away, setting up a Field Array and reducing the top layer of stone—entirely Trash Aspects—to make the area perfectly level. Next came the difficult part: creating an Expert ranked ritual diagram. As per usual, the circles from Novice to Journeyman were fairly straightforward to create. When it came time for the final circle, Joe began struggling mightily.

“I need this to spin, abyss it!” Joe sighed as he scowled at the interlocking sympathetic links that connected the Novice circle to the Journeyman circle. “Where's a good gyroscope when you need it? Well… I've seen rituals that are free-floating, so why can't I do that? How would I do that, though?”

The answer was not forthcoming, and Joe grumpily almost gave up. “What if I just draw it out? I’ve already seen that sometimes the ritual circles will form out of energy and lift out of the ground. Why did I never think of that before? Every time I have put it on something that was going to rotate, it was a ritual that I wanted to use long-term. Maybe most of the time, I don't even need to do that!”

Hoping that his assumption was correct, Joe pulled out an aspect jar that was shining with a dark indigo light. Adding the jar to the array very carefully, he held out a hand and allowed the dark flames to waft out of the jar and coalesce into a beautiful quill. He added embellishment after embellishment, hoping to make a truly unique inscriber.

Joe gripped the ethereal inscriber, hoping it wouldn’t blow up in his face. It seemed that he had succeeded, and after patting himself on the back, he quickly checked how many aspects he had to work with.

Unique aspects: 1,719 split between proper and improper storage devices.

Natural Unique Aspect (Uncommon) Jar: 1,224/2,150 Unique aspects. Current rate of collection: 4 Unique aspects per hour.

Natural Unique Aspect (Unique) Jar: 193/9,558 Unique aspects. Current rate of collection: 7 Unique aspects per hour.

“The rest of the flames are in my codpiece, huh? Should I think about spreading them out among a few friends?” he hummed out loud, getting a reaction right away from someone he hadn’t seen approaching.

“You should see an alchemist or a healer if that’s the case, human.” Surprised, Joe turned regard the Dwarf walking toward him, an Officer with a raven-dark mustache. He saluted, and the Dwarf nodded in reply. “At ease, Candidate. I’m Major Infraction. I’m here because I’ve heard some troubling reports on your activities. Then I get here, and you’re talking about spreading fire from your nethers, and I’m worried for entirely different reasons.”

“That’s not… I can explain this really easily…” Joe mumbled with a beet-red face.

“Why not go over why you’re making a giant magical circle out in the open?” Major Infraction demanded, not a hint of mirth on her face. “I’m happy to explain that magic makes my soldiers nervous. They might have to fight it, or think about it, and I don’t like my Legion to think; I like them to act.”

“That’s a terrible shame.” Joe sketched the very first symbol carefully, letting the Unique indigo flames travel along the Field Array and into his inscriber, then onto the smooth surface of the stone. “Taking the thinking out of your soldiers and only letting it be done by the most powerful of your people… it makes the powerful into cowards and soldiers into fools.”

“You dare insult the Legion? The very Oligarchy itself?” Major Infraction glowered darkly, and a few Dwarves outfitted in an armor style that Joe hadn’t seen before walked forward to flank her. The Dwarven guards were covered from head to toe, not a single part of their hair or skin showing. “I’ll have you torn apart twice for those words!”

The Dwarves around her moved smoothly and perfectly in sync, which tipped Joe off to what they were. “Oh? You’re a necromancer? You practice on your own troops? I didn’t think that was allowed.”

“No fear at all?” Major Infraction grinned, breaking her stoic expression for the first time, and the undead at her side stopped closing in on Joe. “It isn’t allowed. Unless, of course, you earn your position by using the forbidden magics for the glory of the Dwarven Oligarchy. Then you get named based on your deeds. I broke the rules. Almost all of them, when I could. Hence my moniker. Now, what are you doing?”

“Setting up a counter to Elven illusions. I need to make sure it gets to the people that most need it, but I don’t even know who that would be, except myself and Major General Havoc.” Joe traced the next symbol on the ground carefully, but it wasn’t enough: he made a slight error. The aspect flame burst from that symbol and consumed itself and the one Joe had already made. “Oh, great. Now I don’t get a chance to make corrections?”

“Just be glad it didn’t cascade downward and take the whole magic circle.” The Major commented dryly, indicating that there was some personal experience in that statement. “Higher order materials have more catastrophic effects in direct proportion to their position on the rarity charts. You’re Candidate Joe, then? Hairless, magical, insufferable… yup. You fit the description.”

“Hey!”

“No backtalk; you don’t have the rank for it. Yet.” She chuckled, waved, and a few undead walked off. “I’ll gather a few Majors and above that are willing to participate. Need anything else?”

“Now that you mention it…” Joe cracked a lopsided grin. “A protection detail would be lovely. I was educated on what a failed ritual can do recently, and I wouldn’t like to blow away half the mountain. At least, the half with the Dwarves on it. Oh, and anyone that can channel large quantities of mana. I’ll need help with this one.”

Joe refocused on his ritual circle, needing far longer than he’d estimated to finish it. He looked up only once, finding an entire platoon arrayed around him, before turning his eyes to the ritual once more. By the time he finished the sixth circle—the Expert circle—the day was almost half over. “Okay… that one was a lot more… intense than I expected.”

No mistakes allowed meant perfection was mandatory on the first attempt. Luckily, he was working with an actual diagram instead of going by memory, else he would have had to start over and over. Joe decided then and there to create his own personal grimoire; he needed notes, helpful hints, and tricks! These dry schematics were useful, but… not his style. “Who’s ready to power this puppy up?”

The platoon around him stayed silent, but Major Infraction took a step forward and shouted at the Legion that was still queued up to delve into the volcano. “Anyone who can’t use mana is a weakling!”

“What?”

“Dude! Did you hear what Major Dudette just said about you?”

“Bro! She was totally talking about you, I can totally use the mana. I use the mana all the time!”

A veritable flood of volunteers came over and got into position, as directed by Joe. The Major introduced Joe to the commanders that were good candidates for illusion breakers, but they had no characteristics that made Joe remember them. Most were ‘Bros’ or ‘Dudettes’, Legion members that had become high-ranking through years of service instead of accessing the Officer track.

Joe started arranging them, getting each of the one hundred and twenty-seven conscri—volunteers, to stand where he needed them. After they were organized in the correct positions, he placed his hand into the initial start point of the ritual and allowed an influx of mana to-

You are unconscious! Calculating… time remaining: 30… 29…