The Archmage: Chapter Forty-Four

There will be a post about this later, but Mana Mirror is out now, and the Archmage is up for pre-order!

Mana Mirror: https://www.amazon.com/Mana-Mirror-First-Tobias-Begley-ebook/dp/B0CYHQG7L4

Mana Mirror Audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/Mana-Mirror-The-First-Gate-Audiobook/B0D5SB2784

Archmage: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D7J73SRR

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During the time that Osheen and I had been working on the clock towers, Tara prepared nearly everything that the spell would need, apart from the memory crystal itself. That bit was on me, since I’d need to partially incorporate the dreamscape and faerie magic. 

We headed down to my deeproot lab, where I drew out the ritual around me, and glanced at the scripts that I’d produced with the help of the Ligature and Emilia, then tossed them aside. 

“Tara, Osheen, I’m about to do the recording,” I warned, and they nodded, ducking out of the room. Osheen might have been about to reveal himself, but there was no reason to throw him into the public eye too.

I swallowed thickly as I channeled my power into the spell and took several steps back, in order to focus the perspective on me. Then I lit my human aura, revealing the five stars circling my head. 

“Hello,” I said nervously. “You probably don’t know me. My name is Evander Tailor, and I am a commoner who has recently ascended to archmage. This isn’t a dream. I’ve cast a spell that covers nearly all of Paerús, in order to reach out to you. I am sorry to drag you into this, but it’s necessary. I need you all to know the truth…” 

It took me several takes to get a version of the message that I was happy with, and I finally opened the room to find Tara and Osheen playing cards. When I emerged, they both glanced up at me, and Osheen smiled. 

“Have you done it, then?” he asked. 

“Yes,” I said as I held up the glowing memory crystal. Tara smiled and leapt to her feet, bumping the table and sending cards everywhere. 

“Then it’s time,” she said, and helped Osheen wrap up the cards, then we headed up to her room. She glanced around it one last time and shook her head. 

“I’m going to miss this place,” she said. “The tree itself may have been used as a symbol of Paerús’ nationality, and the noble supremacy, but… I’ve lived here since I was a teenager.” 

I nodded my agreement. 

“It’s the first place I got a real, true, taste of freedom,” Osheen said. “I’m definitely going to miss it.” 

“It’s not a place that I can easily forget,” I admitted. “It’s one of the most impactful places that I’ve ever been to. But it’s not like it will be gone entirely.” 

I held up the three seeds that the tree had given me. 

“I don’t know much about aura trees,” I said. “But based on the few words the tree was able to say to me… It’s time for it to go.” 

We stood there in silence for some time after that, before Tara led us into her hidden room. During the time she’d been preparing the spell, she’d emptied it out almost entirely, leaving it strangely barren. As she opened the hidden passage to the deeper, even more secret lab, it was… different. 

Sure, the books, reference texts, and components had all been cleared out, and replaced with the detection spells that would help us track down the people who were still in the tree, even weeks out from the start of a new semester, but that wasn’t the biggest change. 

That honor went to the spellwork.

Rather than the massive network of spells that had once made up her archmage killing spells, she’d completely reworked them into a series of nine pillars for the spells we needed to cast. 

Six of the pillars were dedicated to the sympathetic resonance, which would connect to each of the relays and propagate the spell further. 

One of them was dedicated to a precise heating and cooling spell that was linked to a similar spell she’d put down in the mausoleum. It would destroy the massive aura storage crystal that was needed to power the aura pillar, and then link into the sympathetic resonance, spreading that effect throughout the entire country, shattering any massive aura crystals used in similar arrays. It was actually a pretty clever last minute alteration on her part – rather than directly attacking the crystals along a fracture point, which would be hard to identify, since different aura storage crystals were each shaped at least a little bit differently. The power it would take to explode it with raw force was a lot, but it didn’t need nearly as much energy to rapidly heat and drain heat from the crystals… Especially with Osheen helping out. His own boon from Medb would amplify and enhance the effect, and his magic was compatible enough with that pillar to help activate it. 

Two of the pillars were covered in the tight, linear spell diagrams that I used, and that I’d handed to Tara to get into the spell. The first of those was the slipping spell that would slip the memory packet into everyone’s minds, while the second was covered in the spell that would direct and form that packet. I placed the memory crystal I’d formed into the shallow bowl at the top of that pillar, and Tara spoke. 

“The next part is on you, Evan.” 

I nodded and withdrew some chalk, then started writing on the floor. First, I drew the simple aura siphon that would draw from the tree’s aura and imbue it into a spell, which all teachers were given access to. Of course, it was all strictly monitored, and there were gates and limiters on how much could be drawn at once… but that was why the second thing I drew was the abjuration array that would connect to the spells down below and remove the limit on the amount of aura that I was able to draw with a single spell. 

This was going to improve the spellwork in the long term, by allowing us to start from scratch, with a model that didn’t need aura sparks to work, so I didn’t consider it a violation of the oath that I’d taken with Travis. 

From there, I drew out a spell I was uncomfortably familiar with – the spell that would connect to the lifeline of Yesgol itself. This was where I placed the table, letting it serve as a sacrificial component that would link the life of the tree to the death of the tree, the magic that sprouted the seed allowing the new seeds to be fertilized. 

While I worked on that, Tara started threading her aura through the runes of one of the sympathetic pillars and chanting, while Osheen did the same with the heating and cooling crystal. I joined them after a short while, activating the gauntlet and running aura through it to convert my faerie magic into the same type as the hag’s, then starting to chant out my own spells. 

It took us a while, but eventually aura began to swim through the air of the room, sinking into the massive ritual. I dusted my hands off and headed to the divination spells on the spare table, Osheen joining me. 

“Thirty nine people in Yesgol,” I read aloud. “Seven spots to hit…” 

“Really? So many?” Osheen asked. “And the spots… That’s to trigger the wards and emergency alarms, right?” 

“There’s the cooks, the summer janitors, other maintenance staff… Probably about five students and two other teachers?” Tara said. “None of us are counted in that number, by the way. The staff is about ten times that during the year, though. It’s not just us teachers. And yes, it is.” 

“That does make sense,” Osheen agreed, bobbing his head. “Alright. Evan, do you want top or bottom?” 

There was a moment of silence in the room, and I coughed. Osheen rolled his eyes, and I chuckled. 

“I’ll start from the roots,” I said. “I’m more familiar with them than you are, since that’s where my lab is, and the access to the tree’s rituals.” 

Osheen nodded, and I picked up half of the divination papers, while he took the other half. Tara gave us a nod, then turned to the charging related arrays that I’d just added. As she started pacing around them, making sure she was ready to cast the spell, I activated the flight enchantments on my cloak and started zooming away. Osheen did the same. 

Finding the first janitor wasn’t hard, I found him cleaning up in the normal rented spellwork rooms, and I came to a stop, floating in the air behind him. 

“You need to evacuate the school,” I told him in my most imperious tone possible. “There’s been a spell issue. Get to Hallowbrooke.” 

“Yes sir,” he said, then glanced at the cart he had been wheeling around. “Should I…?” 

“Leave it,” I snapped, then blasted past him to go find the next person.

The staff were very easy to convince, thankfully. They were so used to taking orders from entitled noble mages that none of them even questioned me, and soon I started noticing the numbers dropping off the divination papers from Osheen and my efforts, but Osheen had already gotten three of the spots we needed to hit to target the wards. 

I sighed and began flying down the hallway again. Eventually, one of the divinations pointed me toward a flat part of the wall. Not wanting to bother trying to find a specific hidden switch, I raised one of my knives and unleashed a powerful force spear into it. The wall shattered, and spellwork behind it started glowing a bright red color. The counter on the paper ticked down one. 

Huh. that had been easier than I expected. 

When Tara completed the aura siphon spell, I could immediately tell. Power began rushing through Yesgol, bolting upwards in a frenetic scramble unlike anything I’d ever seen before, and I redoubled my speed. I struck another ward target, and then… 

Blaring red light erupted through Yesgol, as a voice rang through its empty halls. 

“Emergency. Please evacuate. We are under attack. Emergency. Please evacuate. We are under attack…” 

It continued to repeat that, and within minutes the number of other people in the tree dropped down to one. I cursed and bolted up the stairwell, before flying out at an entrance, heading for something that was too familiar – Elaine, the headmaster’s office. 

She was standing outside her office, but she wasn’t running. Instead, she’d opened a panel in the wall to reveal a suite of spellwork, and was frantically pouring aura into various spots. 

“Elaine!” I shouted. “We need to get out!” 

“Go,” she said. “I have a duty to the king and country!” 

With a sigh, I drew one of my knives. 

“Your life is worth more than a tree.” 

“Not this tree,” she said, but she didn’t form her force armor as I expected, instead channeling power into another part of the spellwork. “Evander, please, I–”

I raised my knife and fired. 

Not at her – at the spellwork. It shattered, and she whirled around, rage in her eyes. 

“You can be angry at me when we’re outside,” I said. “Let’s go.” 

Osheen appeared in the hallway, bright wings alight. 

“Elaine,” he said. “Let’s go!” 

“Fine,” muttered Elaine. “Is Tara out?” 

“Yes,” I said. She should be, at least. She was going to activate the siphon and run. 

Elaine swept her hand, and a force disk appeared under her, then all three of us were flying down the halls. 

We burst out of Yesgol and shot over the forest, headed toward Hallowbrooke. 

Then light started forming around us. I paused and turned around. 

For the second time in my life, I watched as a massive pillar of light exploded into the air from Yesgol. I let out a slow breath, and Elaine swore next to me. 

Then other pillars of light began to appear. 

Our elevation wasn’t that high, but the pillars of light shot upwards into the sky like the wrath of Titania or Medb, so high that we could see them. We couldn’t see all the way to the capital, of course, but within Hallowbrooke, the clock tower lit up with its own pillar of light. Where Westmarsh should be, there was a distant pillar of light. Further on the horizon, more and more pillars of light speared forward. 

I couldn’t be sure, not on a logical level, but on another level, I somehow knew that every single relay was releasing a pillar of light, just like the one beaming up into the sky from Yesgol. 

A moment later, the light faded away.