[Omen of the Witchblade] Chapter 96 — The Hat Makes the Leader

Finally, Mel thought to herself as she studied the gorgeous, wide-brimmed crimson hat. She lifted it up to the light, turning it around to view the leather band that girdled the crown. The conical tip was appropriately floppy, weighed down by a polished copper tip.

Runes and sigils stitched in dark thread gave the hat an otherworldly appearance.

[Elphaba’s Witch Hat]

(Copper Rank, Armor)

(Legendary)

The grandmother (or bogeywoman, depending on your views) of the greatest magical feats performed since Merlin and Godwin. This hat is a mere replica, but even a replica aspires to the greatness of the original. Your Blue deeds have further enhanced the power of this item, lending it an air of legitimacy.

Imprint: Greatly increases magical resistance. Raises parameters of spell type aspect skills.

Imprint(Spell Slot G-Tier): Can be infused with a G-Tier ritual spell or lower.

Imprint(Spell Slot F-Tier): Can be infused with an F-Tier ritual spell or lower.

Unsurprisingly, the other two Magi grew very excited at Mel’s new hat.

They both warmly smiled at Mel when she put it on. It felt absurdly comfortable, like she had been naked without it. Not that being naked was a bad thing, but it was the difference between being exposed or comfortable.

Mel suddenly felt as if it always should have been there, and its absence had been felt ever since the beginning of the Convocation.

“Aw, she looks so cute!” Heath cried.

“Excuse me?” Gwen demanded. “Mel appears fearsome, impressive, and stylish!”

Heath frowned, clearly confused. “But it’s a witch hat…”

“Exactly!” Thomas said, his voice thick with envy. “I wish I found one.”

Gwen patted his golden locks comfortingly.

“Is a witch hat really that big of a deal?” Heath asked carefully.

“It’s a sign of an accomplished Magi,” Mel said. “You wouldn’t ordinarily accept one unless the Shard or another Magi gave it to you. Buying your own is…kinda gross.”

“Unless you were already awarded one,” Thomas added.

“Right,” Mel agreed. “If you have one, you can buy another or upgrade.”

Heath still looked confused.

Mel took a deep breath. “It’s…like a class ring or a sweater from an ivy league college, y’know? You could buy one, right? But that doesn’t mean anything. It feels cheap and tawdry. If you’ve already got one, you can go out and get another though, no problem. You’ve already earned it.”

Heath still didn’t seem like he understood completely, but Mel chalked it up to cultural differences. It was one of the biggest milestones for any Magi.

As a Dragoon on Aldim, there was no way Mel would have earned herself a witch hat. Not easily, in any case.

“I’ve never earned one,” Gwen admitted, adjusting her [Wolven Hood] over the chainmail coif. “Not even when I was a book nerd on Almora. You’d think being a librarian apprentice might have done it! Still, I’d prefer one styled after my father’s culture.”

“Sometimes a Magi’s witch or wizard hat turns out to be slightly different,” Thomas said. “They’re unique to the Magi in question, and not everybody wants one.” He noticed Heath’s deepening confusion. “It’s complicated. You don’t need to worry about it until you’re a Magi.”

Heath started. “I could…be a Magi? Like Mel?”

“Sure,” Thomas said. “If you didn’t have the potential, you wouldn’t be able to keep up with us.”

Heath’s eyes sparkled with ambition.

“As if it’s not more obvious than ever, Mel has clearly been accepted as our leader,” Gwen said. “Even by the Shardrune.”

“Even though she’s so small?” Heath asked.

“Hey!”

“Sorry, Mel.”

Gwen shook her head. “Appearances can be deceiving.”

“The hat chooses the Magi, Heath,” Thomas explained. “It potentially puts her in charge of all the Magi here. Assuming there isn’t another Magi with a witch hat. Seems unlikely.”

“So it is a crown,” Heath realized.

“You’re not getting it,” Mel said. “Just…don’t worry about it, okay?” She adjusted the wide, slanted brim of her hat. “Man, how did I ever deal without having one like you hatless plebs?”

“There she is,” Thomas said dryly. “Didn’t take her long, did it?”

Gwen folded her arms and shook her head. “Nope.”

“Don’t hate,” Mel said, striking a pose. “You know I look fab.”

Heath reached up to his hood, feeling around self-consciously.

Mel reached out and gently patted his cheek. “It’ll come to you, eventually. If you wish and hope and dream hard enough. Take it from me, I’m–”

“Okay, Mel!” Thomas said, interrupting Mel’s well deserved, self-aggrandizing speech. “We’re all very happy about your accomplishment, but maybe we should get a move on?”

Mel shifted the brim of her crimson witch hat and glared down her nose at Thomas. He didn’t flinch. “We shall depart,” she said regally. “But only because We choose to.”

“Oh gods,” Gwen muttered.

“Is she going to refer to herself in the royal third person?” Heath asked quietly.

“We heard that!” Mel said haughtily.

Thomas looked at Heath. “That answer your question?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Come along, loyal subjects!” Mel shouted over her shoulder. She had found a stick somewhere that looked regal enough and was using it like a scepter to guide her followers.

“My innate defiance is kicking in,” Gwen said quietly, not moving.

“I feel a strong urge to usurp,” Thomas said softly, but more than loud enough to be heard by Mel.

“Shall we overthrow the crown and smash atop the throne?” Gwen asked him pompously.

Mel heard Thomas making choking sounds.

“Aw, man,” Heath said. “Wimpley’s are natural royalists! Our spines are extra bendy so we can bow and scrape better than other peasants.”

Mel turned around and threw down the stick. “All right, fine. It’s like herding cats with you lot.”

For a moment, Mel thought about putting her only ritual spell on her hat, but there was no telling if it would be permanent. The last thing she wanted to do was stuff a crappy spell in there and not be able to remove it later.

Now that they were up, she didn’t want to waste another minute getting everything set up. Besides, she would need Thomas’ help.

More time than I have to spare, Mel decided.

They made good progress reaching the base of the mountain. A halo of colored storm clouds ringed the peak. Lightning flashed and crashed against the side of the gargantuan mountain, sending an avalanche of stone and snow to sweep away the contestants crawling across its surface like ants.

“Any ideas?” Thomas asked, looking up at the mountain. The ground was precarious even at the base. Large rifts had been made by errant strikes of the manastorm. Black chasms separated the various paths that wound their way to the base of the mountain.

Even down here, they saw several other groups of people. They eyed each other, but nobody bothered to start a battle in such a dangerous location. Boulders rumbled and bounced down the hill like 10-ton bowling balls.

“I can use [Condensate] to push us up a little, but it’s not much,” Mel said. “Fifty feet is the farthest I can put it.” She pointed up the mountain. “I could get us to that ledge there, maybe further before needing to wait for the cooldown.”

“That’s over a hundred feet away,” Heath said.

“I can put a nail fifty feet away,” Mel told him. “Then I can continue to push on it. The farther I am though, the weaker the force. I don’t know exactly how far I can push on the nails, but it’s not more than double.”

Gwen studied the mountainside. “I can get up there just fine. But it’d be costly.”

“I could use [Float] and bring us up, but it would be slow, and we’d be easy targets,” Thomas suggested.

“What if we used [Float] with [Condensate] and [Fenrir’s Frozen Chains]?” Gwen asked. “Will those disrupt your aspect skill?”

Thomas studied the brown rock of the mountain. He tilted his head to the side curiously. “Probably not. Since we’ll be riding the face of the mountain, [Float] should work just fine. I can roughly control it. So long as somebody can provide propulsion, we should be able to ascend quickly.”

“But we’ll be targets,” Mel reminded them. “We won’t be moving erratically. It’ll be a solid rise. I can’t make us go very fast after the first push. The best I can do is slingshot us by putting one nail beneath our feet, and two more at the fifty-foot mark. Push and pull at the same time, then launch us higher. After that…” Mel shrugged.

“We could move up the mountainside in sprints,” Gwen offered. “Scale fast, find cover, and fight anything after us, then repeat. My chains are intended to pull in targets, but if [Float] is working on me, then it’ll just pull me to them.”

Mel paced back and forth. “So we can float up at the mercy of the wind and whether Gwen can lash her chains onto something, but we’d be totally screwed if the manastorm caused an avalanche to crash over us.”

Mel was reminded of that train analogy. Gwen could move very fast in a particular direction, destroying most of what was in her way. Even when they escaped the horde that the Stolst gang turned into, she had achieved something similar by shouldering aside boulders.

She looked at Gwen. “How long are your chains?”

“Same as [Condensate]. Fifty feet exactly.”

“That’s uncanny.”

“Could be a Copper skill limitation,” Gwen said with a shrug. “Whatever we do, I won’t run out of stamina anytime soon. My [Primal Mantle] grants me another stamina bar. You probably don’t remember because most of my attacks drain it considerably.”

“The price of unbalanced high strength?” Thomas asked.

“Feels like it. Not sure a High Copper body is meant for Grade 15 with modifiers.”

Mel grumbled to herself whenever she was reminded of how much higher Gwen’s strength was. She cleared her throat when she noticed the others looking at her. “Sounds like our best plan is to use you like a…” Mel blanked.

Gwen stared. “Go on.”

“Tugboat,” Mel said diplomatically. Totally not a sled dog. “You give the chain to me or Thomas, whoever has higher strength, and we hold on while you haul our floaty asses up. Stop whenever you need a breather, but otherwise we go for broke.”

“That’d likely be you,” Thomas said. “My strength is only Grade 3.”

“Better than my arcane,” Gwen admitted.

Heath looked from one to the other. “That’s not far off from my highest stat…”

“We’ll try not to get you murdered here,” Thomas told him sympathetically.

“Maybe I should just–”

Mel’s sharp glance was enough to cut off the flow of cowardly words from Heath’s lips. “No. You’re coming with us. I’m not leaving anybody behind.” Not again. “Stay close and we’ll do fine. We’ll watch each other’s backs, right?”

“Always,” Thomas promised.

“Been doing it since day one,” Gwen told her.

“I’ll do my best,” Heath said, trying to puff out his scrawny chest.

Mel looked at Gwen, holding out her hand. “Let’s get to it then.”

Aspect Skill: [Fenrir’s Frozen Chains]

Two icy chains erupted from Gwen’s [Primal Mantle], plunging past everyone down the mountainside, then clinking to the ground. Looking over her shoulder, she manipulated the physical size of the chains, shortening them slightly.

Mel grasped both firmly, wrapping them around her wrists and forearms. “Chilly.” Frost gathered across her armor, but it wasn’t too intense with a High Copper body.

Thomas made a gesture with his hands. Power flowed out from his shoulders down until he lifted off the stony ground a few inches. He reached down and looped one arm each under Heath and Mel’s shoulders to support them.

As soon as he touched them, their feet left the ground. Mel stared down. If she focused, she could see a faint translucent platform beneath her feet.

It didn’t feel like she was flying. Her feet were still on what felt like solid ground. Mel pressed into the “ground” firmly.

Okay, more like standing on a very tightly stretched trampoline.

Still, when they started to rise higher, it felt more like going up in an elevator than flying. “This is the lamest flying I’ve ever experienced. My jumps used to be more like flying than this.”

“I could drop you,” Thomas offered, loosening his grip around her.

“I would stab you three times before you did, then Gwen would maul me to death while Heath fell to his. You want to play this game of chicken, big man?”

Thomas thought about his prospects for a moment, knowing full well how far Mel was likely to go when pushed. He shook his head. “Because of the hat.”

“Damn right it’s because of the hat,” Mel grumped. She gripped the chain tightly and couldn’t help lashing it like you would to a horse. “Giddyup!” The words were out of her mouth before she realized what she was doing.

Better than saying “Mush!”.

Gwen still glared at Mel anyway.

“She’s going to remember that,” Thomas said.

Heath held onto Thomas with both arms.

“Crushing…ribs…Heath.”

“Sorry!” He loosened his grip a little.

[Blindbeast Claws] were summoned to Gwen’s outstretched hands. With a growl, she climbed up the side of the mountain with a surge of speed.

The bladed claws dug into earth and rock as easily as soft clay. Gwen didn’t need any handholds. She made her own, breaking through everything in her way.