The Archmage: Chapter Thirty-Nine

It was always fun to watch an archmage approach, and I was curious to see how someone who Draven notably looked down on would manage it. Of the three that I’d seen, I honestly thought that Frank’s had been the most impressive. For all that he had been an abusive father, callous murderer, and conniving worm, he had certainly understood style and presentation. 

It was also, like we’d all figured out, a good test of my skills. I maintained the three hovering circles around me, and felt them swirling away a tiny bit of my aura to sustain them. Since it was designed to alter the perceptions of those who could see an aura, it wasn’t too much of a drain – yet – but it was a strain on the brain, needing to keep the divinatory parts of the spell constantly whirling around, checking for perceptions. 

Honestly, that part of the spell confused me deeply. I thought I understood change magic well, but this made no sense at all to me, despite that. 

The air started to darken above us, and I looked up into the sky. Lightning rolled through the clouds that were gathering, and I sighed. 

When Eira had called her clouds and lightning, it had been real. Oh, I was sure that she was using some sort of trick to it – she was noted for adding rituals into her magic, after all, which was one of the reasons Frank’s ambush had gone so well for him. She’d never been able to prepare the territory, while he – and his witch – had. 

This… wasn’t that. 

This darkness, clouds, and lightning? 

It was all a trick. Light based illusion, judging by the thousands of light runes that I was able to see in the air. 

It was impressive, sure, and if he’d been a light sorcerer, I’d have found it impressive. But for a druid?

The illusory clouds ripped apart as a massive feather, easily eight feet long, and forged of metal, landed down on the ground and slammed into the center of the arena. 

I leaned back. Now that… 

That was an actual metal attack. It was clearly dissapating as it stood there, so I thought it must have been called from the elemental fields as a part of a boon or, but… it was cool. 

Another feather ripped through the air, and then a third, forming a triangle. Metal bands shot from the rachis of each of the feathers, and within moments, they’d formed into an actual metal triangle. The rune for metal began to appear in the center and glow bright orange. 

Then it began to rain steel feathers, each one of the tiny points tearing another small hole in the clouds above. 

They swept over the audience, barely missing us, and I was forced to push myself down so that none of them shattered the spell I was holding. 

The feathers sunk into the ground, then dissolved into a massive puff of orange smoke. 

The smoke began to swirl and rise until it formed into an orb, and the runes for mist began to spin around its outside, top, and bottom. The orb exploded, driving over the audience, and I had a moment of panic where I thought that it might still have iron in it. 

Thankfully, however, there wasn’t, only mist. This was also real, rather than illusory, and I felt a bit thankful for that. It was getting warm enough to drive away the snows, so the burst of mist felt nice on the skin.

As it dissipated, I got an answer to my questions. 

Justin Hastings floated in the center of the arena, fused with the metal bird that I’d seen once already. Its entire metallic beak extended from his face like a medical mage who was three hundred years out of date trying his best to fend off the plague. 

I flicked open my third eye and studied him – just in case. There were ways to fake most of the arch-stars in some lesser degree, after all. Maybe this was just a strange boon or familiar power. 

Under my third eye, I spotted the multicolored aura filled with boons that I associated with druids with a core of orange flowing around him, complete with five arch-stars – power storage, one I didn’t recognize too well, the same position-swapping one that Draven had, contingency, and familiar fusion. 

A surge of relief shot through me, and I glanced at the guards that were flying in. most all of them were first to third arch-stars, and none set off my spell. I didn’t let it fade entirely, but I did relax. 

His power would have once been intimidating to me, and even now, I wouldn’t want to take him lightly. Weak or not, an archmage was still an archmage. 

But compared to some of the powers I’d seen, he wasn’t much. Even Draven’s aura was far better organized, while also being filled with more boons. 

I leaned back and mostly tuned him out as he lectured about the power and majesty of our country, and his own time at Yesgol, only tuning back in to determine the structure of the tournament for my students. 

“For our lovely first years… What better way to do it than the same forge from which my own first year was cast!” 

I blinked at the strange metaphor. 

“Your first round will be simple. You will be split into two groups, and each be made to assault a pair of warded fortresses. The group to conquer their fort first will be the winner!”

That wasn’t unlike my own first round, then. Given the spells they’d had, I was confident my students could reasonably contribute.

“Your second round will consist of a massive battle, a true free for all in the vein of archmage of the hill. At the very top of each of the ten hills will be a sword locked in a stone, and the first to stand and hold the top of a hill alone for a full minute will be able to draw it out. Once all ten swords have been pulled, then and only then, will the round be concluded.”

I narrowed my eyes. That left plenty of time to track down and steal the sword from those who had pulled it early on. Interesting.

“And our final round shall be bracketed duels, as is fair and proper!” 

I sighed. Fair and proper? Yeah right. More like the best way to rig it. Still, if my students made it all the way there, I was confident that they’d do better than anyone expected.

We spent the rest of the day helping the mages get the massive spells set up for pulling the students out of safety. I’d never seen it from this side before, so it was definitely interesting, and I recorded as much of it into my journal as I could – just in case.

That evening, however, we slipped out, using Draven’s portals to enter the same city where we’d met Liam’s parents. Once there, we activated our assassins’ cloaks and started visiting clock towers.

Osheen held onto my whispering wind bracer, hovering in the air above the tower, while Oracle winged high in the sky above, far enough that anyone who looked up would likely just mistake him for a star of some sort. 

Bridgette had tried to help, but during the first night, it swiftly became apparent that despite the fact she was much stronger than Oracle in a direct fight, her night vision was far worse than that of an owl’s, faerie owl or otherwise. 

I used the key I’d been leant to open the maintenance door, then floated inside, unwilling to even disturb the dust on the floor with my footsteps. I shut the door behind me, then waved my hand to produce a light glyph in the air. I didn’t feed much power into it, since I didn’t want it to be seen outside, but unlike Oracle, I couldn’t see in the dark.

As I was looking for the central gearbox, I heard something. 

“Someone’s coming to the left,” Osheen’s voice whispered into my ear, carried on a breeze. “I’ll let you know when he’s gone.

“Keep me updated,” I whispered back, snuffing out my glyphs. A short while later, I received the all-clear from Osheen, and relit my glyphs, searching through the room until…

There. 

I floated over to the large metal box, and just as Liam’s parents had suggested, there was a fine layer of dust over it. The screws anchoring the lid on were actually even slightly rusted from disuse. 

I raised my hand and sent a spark of aura into the glove, holding it only a hair’s breadth over the box, right in the center. The artifact churned and spun, but there was no visible change on the outside of the box. 

I let out a sigh of relief as I counted out ninety-nine seconds, which was about how long the spell took to finish its engraving, then I trickled my faerie aura through the gauntlet to convert it into the sample from the nightmare hag, spinning it out to the runes within and starting the chant. A third of the way through the spell, I stopped converting, using just my change aura, and then the final part of the spell was cast using naught but my human magic. 

I was practically sweating as I chanted out the spell. This was the most dangerous part of the spell. If someone walked by and heard me chanting, our entire game could be up. At the same time, I had to chant, or the spell simply wouldn’t work. 

I let out a sigh of relief as I finished the relay’s chant, then paused as I debated with myself. 

I decided not to sink my first arch-star into the spell. As convenient as the faster charging was, the relay needed to ensure that it only drained ambient magic within the clock tower, and not anything that a passing archmage would notice from the outside. 

Sure, it meant that in such a low-aura environment, it would take weeks – I was guessing two or three – to charge, even though it was just a relay to extend the range of the central spell, where the real power would be required.

But it was better to take a bit of extra time than to risk discovery. 

With that, I slipped an aura crystal from my cloak and channeled power into the glove’s recharge. Adding that function had been Osheen’s suggestion, but I agreed – without it, we’d only be able to enchant one tower a night, and that would be far too slow. 

Once it was charged, I floated up into the sky and touched Osheen where Oracle’s third eye indicated the bobbing sphere of veiling runes was. He jerked, but a moment later, his voice came over the whispered wind. 

We managed four more towers that night, then turned in to sleep, and since there were still a few days until the actual tournament began, we slept in until eighth bell in the morning. 

The following several days all passed in much the same way, and it was oddly relaxing. Despite the tension of having to slow and quiet my chant when the odd person passed by, and the near-constant fear of discovery, I’d was making headway in the single greatest piece of magic that I would ever have the chance to cast.

Once this was all over, I wanted to settle down some. I did genuinely enjoy teaching, so maybe I’d look into doing that full time. I might not be the best person to teach a foci oriented class, but I was confident I’d be able to teach at least up to journeyman level artifacts and probably intermediate witchcraft.

It took us just over three nights to finish enchanting all of the clock towers in the smaller city, and after that, we moved onto towers in the other major population centers like the Capital and Northguard.

Of course, we hadn’t actually struck every single tower. We only had a key to about a third of them, and of those, we were able to skip several that were too close together. A bit of overlapping radius was good, but in cases like West and Central, which had four clock towers at the corners of one central square, it would have just been a waste of time.

The following day, though, the first round of the first year’s tournament began.