Tom and the Moon

This story is set one week after the end of The First Gate.

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Tom – or if you insisted on using Titles, The Fortress – strode down the hall, his heavy footsteps creating resounding thumps.

As he walked, he checked the wards he’d personally inscribed over the entire complex.

In theory, they should be the next best thing to unpassable and unbreakable. In practice, the Knowledge King was slippery, and if they personally decided to intercede on the lesbian’s behalf, things might go sour.

Satisfied with the work, Tom opened the door and strode into the room.

His scientists scattered, looking up at Tom. One of them, a gangly practictioner who had only reached second gate, stepped forwards.

He was one of the weakest people in the room, though not the weakest. After all, you didn’t technically need to be at a gate to design a spell or enchantment for it. It just helped, since you had the ability to actually test it, rather than just relying on the theory.

Tom focused his full attention on the kid who’d decided to speak to him, and was plesantly surprised. The twenty-something year old had potential, so Tom decided to grant him a boon.

Tom’s hand lashed out and struck the kid in the chest. Abnegation, Telluric, and Physical mana all twisted together into a symphony and tore through the kid’s chest, ripped into his soul, clawed its way into his soul. There, Tom left the smallest droplet of Tom’s own true power.

The kid began to violently convulse, eyes rolling back, body dropping out under him, blood pooling from where Tom’s enhanced strength had ripped into his chest. His mana was in even worse shape, running like wild to try and repair the damage, all the while the drop of power caused more.

“Bring him to a healer and spirit healer,” Tom said, his basso voice filling the room. “I have given him the smallest measure of my true strength. If he can take control of it, it will grant him enough power to advance until the end of his fourth gate.”

Tom wasn’t heartless. He’d used his well and his three pearl treasure to ensure the kid would live, and be able to turn the power into an advancement resource, so long as he could master it.

If the kid failed, he’d spend a few months in pain in the hospital, after which he’d be fine.

Tom turned to the rest of the room.

“How does the project go?” he rumbled.

Nobody moved, and Tom had to suppress the urge to sigh.

Eventually, a sixth gate Arcanist stepped forwards.

“Well, sir,” they said. “The alchemic thrusters in particular are coming along smoothly. The trouble is that we can’t get the abnegation spells to shield from the conditions of space. The sheer presence, and more importantly, the unique arrangement of so much desolation, solar, and lunar energy… It’s hard to shield against.”

Tom knew that – he’d flown out to space before on a whim, and nearly died. Only his unshakeable will and utterly impregnable defenses had saved him.

It wasn’t a matter of power. It was like plunging into an ocean, after only ever living on dry land. It didn’t matter how tough you were, if you didn’t know how to swim or have spells to breathe water, you’d drown.

Then there were the things that fell to Ddeaer in meteor showers, or even as the odd shooting star.

His wife had loved to study those oddities.

She had theorized that they were what had allowed the Sepulchers to defy the laws of magic.

She had theories that an artifact from the stars was how the Title of Knowledge King was passed from person to person, and perhaps the strange things were even how the first Knowledge King had cast the grand monolinguistic spell.

After a moment, Tom realized that he’d drifted off from the conversation, caught in his own mind, and he felt a spike of anger.

Tragedy was supposed to grow more distant with time, but he had never gotten over the Porońiec’s attack.

Magic was supposed to do anything, but Orykson had confirmed that, despite being the unquestionably best death mage on the planet, even he couldn’t fetch back a soul once it had fully slipped out of this realm.

He was drifting again. Tom shook himself and glanced at the scientist.

“Apologies,” he rumbled. “My focus was cast away, diverting the attention of the Spider. The last thing I remember hearing is that the shielding is not working well.”

There. That should at least hide the fact he’d been lost in his own thoughts again.

“Not a problem, sir,” the arcanist who had been speaking said. “The other problem, behind that of the shielding, is the transmission array. Space seems to degrade the spell, even in our short range tests. Some of our spies in Elohi have reported similiar issues. They aparently have a shielding solution, but their propulsion is still relying on – get this – fractured solar mana cores.”

Good. It seems the lesbians wouldn’t be any closer to landing on the moon than he was.

He needed to beat them, but more importantlty, the countries under his control needed this.

Elohi had been growing too quickly – the lesbians, the spider, and the bird-healer-thing were all magi. They had an abundance of occultists too – both real and cheat ascensions.

After that, the other countries had scrambled to adopt the social policies and updates that they’d once scorned, but Elohi still had a huge headstart.

Worse, in the last Elysian Mastery Tournament, they’d taken home no less than fifty medals, including the jade and silver medals for the combat tournament, locking in two of the top three spots. Their growth just wasn’t slowing.

If it wasn’t shown that they were able to fail, then Tom shuddered to think of the consequences.

“Do you need another sample of space, to test the spells against?” Tom asked.

The arcanist hummed and hawwed for a second, before shaking his head.

“No, I don’t think so. Our current ones are quite stable, and while having one more will always help, it won’t be the critical differece.”

“What do you need, then?” Tom asked. “I am prepared to grant you almost anything within my power.”

They talked for a while more, and Tom promised to get the researchers more materials.

Magical metals and stones for shielding were easy to locate. They were the most normal item on the list, after all, and were of massive import for many enchantments and wards.

A lushloam seed, to create a sphere of liveable conditions… That was harder. Only a couple hundred were found each year, after all, and most people who found one didn’t sell it.

Still, one of his intellegence officers eventually found one for auction in the uncivilized city of Notrith, on an island south of the Redsummer Isles.

He used a gatekey he’d purchased from Orykson and teleported there, purchasing the Lushloam before one of his rivals could act.

Instead of opening a gate back, however, Tom decided to fly. Once he was over deep ocean, he cracked a waterbreathing charm, wrapped himself in defensive spells, increased his gravity, increased his mass, and cut off his flight spell.

Tom plummeted like a stone and struck the ocean hard enough to kill someone not wrapped in his defenses.

Instead of dying, Tom just sighed as he sunk deeper into the water. He passed ocean estragon, slipsharks, and horned fish swam past.

As he went deeper, he felt the lurking power of a Livyatan.

The huge whale rushed up at him, its mouth opened to rip him into shreds.

Every tooth was over a foot long, some of them as long as Tom’s entire arm, and shining magic swirled around them.

Tom drew back his fist.

The Livyatan slammed its teeth down.

The first layer of Tom’s shields actually cracked, and Tom gave the overgrown whale credit. Not many people could actually crack one of his shields, let alone while fighting up several gates.

Then Tom’s fist slammed into the whale, and the building sized creature shook like a leaf in a windstorm.

It released its jaw’s clamp on him and fled, and Tom just rolled his eyes.

When he landed at the bottom of the deep trench, however, he froze.

There, looking as right as rain, was the water lesbian… Moon Queen, he thought.

She was short, with dark, wrinkled skin and white hair, but her eyes were sharp as ever.

“You,” he said, his voice warped underwater.

“Me,” the Moon Queen said. Unlike him, her voice came out smooth and clear.

“Of all the trenches that can produce a Depthgem, you just happened to be in the same one I am?”

“Yes,” she said. “I was shadowstepping to reach the Lushloam, but you got there first. So I stepped to the nearest trench instead. I’m guessing you flew here on your way back.”

“Yes,” Tom grunted, annoyed. If he was the man he’d been when his wife was alive, he would have fought her for the gem.

Now?

He just couldn’t bring himself to care. Even if he won, she’d just find another trench deep enough to make one. If he lost, he’d just have to go find one anyways.

“Why do you even care about going to space, to the moon?” Tom asked instead, and the Moon Queen blinked, surprise registering on her face.

“Are you not curious?” she asked. “Magic sources that blend power in strange ways, rarely or never seen on Ddeaer. Even a few creatures, like the Stranger that Darius captured! The world has so much more than just our small planet.”

That sparked something in Tom. His wife had said so much like that, but enchanting had been nowhere near ready to carry them into the stars.

His wife was dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

He lashed out with his power, compressed magical nullification that flowed inside blades of force trying to tear apart the spells that kept the Moon Queen alive at the bottom of the sea.

But the Moon Queen was no modern mage, with hyperspecialized spells. She was a true generalist, and she countered with her own magic.

She let her spells fail, but turned herself into ice, shattered, and reformed behind him, her spells intact once more.

No offense or defense. That would trigger his legacy.

Clever.

But not clever enough.

His elbow drove backwards all the power of his bound full gate spell backing it, and her chest exploded outwards in a ripple of bright crimson blood in the water.

In the same instant he used his magic to tap the spatial ring she wore, where she no doubt had the gem. Its defenses were good, and if he was trying to safely nullify them, it would take weeks of work.

But he wasn’t Orykson, to cleverly work his way through.

He was an abnegation mage.

Even as the Moon Queen reformed, her creation magic and peach of immortality doing the hard work of reconstructing a body for her, Tom cast with one of his most powerul spells – Absolute Mundanity.

The ring’s power vanished. The extraspatial pocket it connected to ceased to be, and then everything it held was tumbling out into the water.

The Moon Queen used water to pull them towards her, but Tom matched her with ropes of force, then unleashed dispelling waves.

She was good at mana control, though, and only lost a handful of objects to him.

Then he felt a sudden spike and looked down.

Shadows that he hadn’t even noticed had engulphed them in a massive wave, and curses began to sing through the air.

With a sigh, he pulled out his gate key and went to find another trench. After that, he’d keep working his way down the list.

If nothing else, the Moon Queen’s disrespect to his wife had done one thing – he did realize she would have loved this project.

And so he would see it through, for her memory.

He’d win the race to the moon, collect the resources there.

And then… He wasn’t sure.