Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (50 page)

Al examined my work, making adjustments where needed and correcting my equations. “It’s sloppy, but it’ll work in a pinch.”

“Good,” I said. “Now apply these changes to the other spells we have. Don’t worry about the subtle stuff or anything too fancy, I just need some artillery.”

Then I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, I was standing in a crater. Dorne was lying on his back. Beside him was what I presumed to be the burnt remains of a Kira Nui.

My wand was in hand, the end glowing brightly, and everything was on fire. Memories flooded into my mind.  As I watched, the Arcus unraveled, allowing another world to bleed into this one.

Nidia.

I braced my feet, waiting.

From the dissolving Aether that was now this world’s sky, I watched as Nidians rained down. I had never seen anything like it, had never contemplated or theorized anything like this. I saw the Black Monger fall to the earth, a cluster that could only be the Thousand Young Fed On Blood And Anguish. I saw the Fiddler Clans, the Wolves of the Underwood, the Spotted Monarchs, the Flyweavers, the Spinner Sisters. Lastly, I saw the hourglass symbol of the Widow Queen’s army.

I shuddered. We had to get out of here and fast. If I was right, this world was doing the reverse of the Walter Cloud. The last thing I wanted was to be here when Nidia absorbed it.

A Nidian, a flesh and blood nightmare, rose up from the Arcus. It was covered in black carapace and a red hourglass was emblazed on its abdomen. It spotted me, mandibles clicking, dripping green venom.

Without hesitation
, I threw up the wand. A cloud of red-orange mist swirling around my hand, filling the wand and sending out a beam of fire. It scorched the air, sucking the oxygen from the air (water?) and struck the spider head on. The curse ripped through the creature’s body, incinerating it. It hissed and screamed as it burned up, curling like a newspaper held over a fire, until it blew away in the wind.

Oh yeah, it felt good to have that again.

I hurried over to Conrad, sending out two more blasts to chase away two large Nidians. He was conscious but only barely. I got my right arm under him and lifted him. He was doing his best to help, but he was a big guy to say the least and it was all he could do to keep hold of his staff.

An islander dispatched a giant wolf spider, than turned his spear toward me. He held up his hand, channeling power into a spell. Just like that the spell fizzled out, the islander
’s magic failing as the collective mind that fueled their power began to disintegrate.

Before he realized the spear was his best bet, I flicked my wrist, sending a bolt of white hot fire that exploded against the hillside, killing th
e islander and taking a good bit of the hill with him.

Nidians were drawing closer, swarming around us. My skin prickled, unpleasant memories fighting for purchase in my head. I needed to keep them at bay long enough to get Dorne out of here.

I pointed the wand again and sent out another lance of fire, running it along a semi-circle in front of us. A wall of fire leapt up and the Nidians hissed with fury.

The islanders had abandoned the temple, a foolish decision which spoke volumes of their true grasp of magic. Half the crew had been killed but James was still alive, along with several others. They were all crowded into one side of the room, cowering. What the-

“Virgil! Look out!” James shouted.

Then
a lightning bolt hit me, throwing me off my feet and against the wall. I struggled to right myself, my whole body numb. Dorne was sprawled on the floor, his staff nowhere to be seen. I had dropped my wand as well.             

Arne was standing before the mural, hands raised, his vest and shirt removed. As I watched, the murals were dissolving, the very walls being reduced to Aether.

And he was…He was breathing it in!

“What the hell is going on?” I asked, stumbling forward.

He spun around, lenses focusing on me. His chest had been open, but now it was closing, the last vestiges of Aether wafting into him. “I see you are still alive,” he said. “Pity. You did provide a more than adequate distraction.”

Confusion and horror assaulted me. I looked around. Several of the islanders, and even some of the crew had burn marks.

“You killed them,” I said, shocked.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “And I quite enjoyed it. I admit, it was an unexpected, but not unwelcome, sensation.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It is why I was sent,” the machine said. “To acquire this world. The crew attempted to stop me
, so I eliminated them.”

“You’re going to breath in the whole world?” I asked, horrified. “That’s impossible.”

“Quite the contrary,” he said. “I was specifically designed to absorb the vast amount of knowledge and resources the natives have acquired.”

“You’re crazy,” I said.

“Quite the contrary,” he repeated. “The Kira Nui themselves developed the method, as we saw in the Walter Cloud. I am simply the perfection of that procedure.”

“Aberland,” I said
, Arne confirming the suspicion Ectan had planted. I guess it wasn’t the Tuatha that had set off the runes. “He’s their traitor. That’s what this was all about. He escaped but that wasn’t enough. He wants to have his cake and eat it too. What could he possibly hope to accomplish with all this?”

“In their thousands of years of research and acquisition these natives have grafted hundreds of minds and
clouds into this world. The Aether here is priceless. And to think, they have tamed it to the point of being able to control it. It is quite remarkable.”

“Do you have any idea what they did to
accomplish that?” I asked. “They didn’t just graft prisoners or worlds into this. They grafted themselves. They emptied their minds into this cloud, abandoned any semblance of humanity. It was no wonder they couldn’t survive in the real world. Everything that made them alive, they left here.”

“Regardless,”
Arne said, “This is my mission, and now you are impeding it.”

“You better believe it,” I said.

Before I could get a shot off, the fucking toaster threw a spell at me. A bolt of purple lightning arced from his hand straight at me. I didn’t even break my stride as I grabbed the bolt and threw it aside. It carved a gouge in the wall, and I lost all feeling in my fingers, but it was worth it to see the hesitation in the machine’s motions.

I picked my wand up off the ground, dusted off a sleeve and asked, “Want to try that again?”

“It would seem that you have received an upgrade since this morning,” he said.

This time he sent a thundercloud at me, a dark purple haze that
crackled with blue lightning. It surged against me, pushing me across the floor. It was a powerful spell. I could feel the static playing across my skin as the storm surged with energy. It was elegantly built, I would need to remember it.

Then I flexed my mind against the spell, ignoring the impending sense that it was just building up for one strong bolt, and blew the whole damn thing apart. I gathered everything I had, a volcano worth of flame, and it exploded outward in a ring of energy that tore apart the storm cloud. The temple shuddered from the impact and cracks formed in its walls.

“This is pointless,” I said. “Look.” I pointed at the murals, what was left of them.

Black inkiness was seeping over the color, absorbing the images.

“What have you done?” the machine asked.

“Checked your mate,” I said. “This world is dissolving, draining into Nidia. It’s game over, toaster.”

“No!” the machine roared, lightning playing over his metal skin. “You are ruining everything!”

He sent another bolt at me and I deflected it. I deflected the second pretty good too. The third one slipped through, the fourth sent me against the wall. I’m pretty sure the next couple were just because I called him a toaster.

Stars filled my vision. I felt myself lifted off the ground. Arne looked me in the eyes. “If I lose this information, I will hurt you.” Then he slugged me in the jaw with a mechanical fist, making me wonder how he defined pain.

Arne was well built. And thorough. He slammed me into the floor, kicked my wand away and stepped on my hand for good measure.

The plate reopened and he began to pour Aether into his chest.

I wasn’t going to fail in this. I didn’t appreciate being sent into this shit storm just for a lousy patch of Aether. Not uninformed.

I focused, channeling my magic. Same source, different method. I motioned with my right hand, spoke, and summoned forth the spell I had been given.

Purple mist, spotted with orange and black, swirled in my hand, coalesc
ing into the old matchlock the pilgrim had called Oath Maker. It coiled in my hand, forming from the grip to the tip of the barrel. I pointed it at Arne and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell, there was a crack of silence, and the ball drilled through Arne’s chest, throwing him against the wall.

“What do you know?
” I asked, standing up. “The gun reloads automatically. Magic, right? Gotta love it.”

I limped over to the wand and picked it up.

Arne was dragging himself to his feet, bluish purple mist forming in the palm of one hand. He was swaying though. One lens dangled from his head. “I have a mission to complete, Sorcerer. Leave and I will allow you to live.”

“Funny how the terms change once you have a hole in you,” I said.

“Very well,” he said.

He threw another storm at me, bigger than anything he had thrown at me yet. He hadn’t been bluffing. It surged forward, a cloud of mist and lightning, enough motion and energy to make sure whatever was left of me would have to be cleaned off the ceiling.

I was ready this time.

I threw my wand up and a fireball leapt forward. It hit the storm head on and exploded, throwing all the energy back toward the machine.

I kicked my way through the debris.

He was pressed against the floor, a quarter sized hole in his chest, one ar
m missing, both legs mangled. His other hand though already had a spell in it.

I tackled him, lifting my right arm over my head, channeling power into it. Mist poured over me hand, forming a molten shell of fire and stone over my fist, all the way to my elbow.

“I will destroy you…” Arne gurgled.

I brought my
fist down.

The ground buckled, the shockwave sending a ripple through the coral. The walls and ceiling shifted, a column fell behind us.

And there was very, very little left of Arne.

I pried open the plate that made up his chest. Inside was a mess of gears and cogs, all kinds of moving parts I didn’t understand.

But I understood the thing that was its heart, the core of the machine. It was a purple crystal, quartz probably, a bit bigger than a fist. It glowed with purple light and smoky figures danced under its crystalline surface.

I looked Deeper and felt my body convulse at what I saw. Beneath the crystal was a whole world, tattered and torn. It was being used to power the machine and his magic. Probably a storage tank for all the Aether he was supposed to take in as well. I had never seen anything like it.

Which wasn’t true, not entirely. Because though I didn’t recognize the craft or technology, the flavor, the essence of the magic was very familiar.

I had seen it weeks ago in the shattered mind of a redheaded nun. Whatever it was that had been done to her, it had been done to complete this.

She had said she was trapped in glass, and she was right, at least partly.

I stood, horrified. They had tried to create an artificial mage, had stolen everything that made that woman, murdered her, so that they could funnel this world into it. On one hand it was genius. This type of phylactery could remove the need for mages, make Aetherial goods more affordable and remove much of the danger associated with working the Aether.

But at what cost?

Did Aberland even know what he had done to make this? Had this been what he made or was this something from R&D? If so, for someone who hated the Guild so much, he sure did think like them.

I didn’t know if I could do anything, but if there was a chance, I had to take it. Of course, I had never done something this big. Finally, I picked up Arne’s body and wrestled it into my coat pocket. Whole thing, just shoved it in there.

“James!” I said. “Get the crew and Conrad out of here!”

They filed out of the partition. I wouldn’t be far behind, but I wanted to make sure what I thought was going to happen did. The murals were disappearing, fading from the walls, and with them all the minds and worlds they had enslaved, used for their twisted experiments. The walls were cracking. Before long the partition would come apart, the whole world drawn back into Nidia. I had possibly just provided Nidia the raw potential to bring about a full recovery.

“That just figures,” I said to myself.

“Oh, yes,” I heard behind me. The voice was strong, but delicate, forceful yet seductive.

I spun around and was face to face with a nightmare. She was taller than me, slender but curved of breast and hip. She had skin like oil, sharp, gorgeous features, and long, silken
red hair that flowed all the way down to her thighs. She wore simple silk scarves that did nothing to cover her body, and intense red eyes glared beneath fine red eyebrows.