Ends of Magic

Faline pointed up at the highest tower with a colored nail, indicating the very peak of the Ascendent Academy. “That is where Badud is. It is not a place we can reach.”

Nathan tilted his head back to look up at the central tower. It skewered the sky, surrounded by its shorter peers. It was hard to tell if it was ‘empire state building’ tall or ‘burj khalifa’ tall because he was lacking a frame of reference.

“We cannot go into the Academy.” Faline said with an air of old frustration. “Magic beyond mana bars entry to those who should not be there, and ancient golems stalk the passages. The graduates speak of shifting walls and stairs that move to facilitate access to those acknowledged by the Academy. Students may only reach a certain height, and the tallest towers are restricted to the archmages and their slaves.”

She chewed on her lips, sharpened teeth standing out against pink flesh. “No assassins have returned from entering the Academy. We cause problems outside, then strike those who leave the building to enforce their will. Badud and the archmages are unassailable in his stronghold.”

Damn, that’s not great to hear. It’s probably powerful wizardry. It also sounds like the building itself might have some degree of intelligence. I need to be careful about that. I’m mildly regretting not taking [Antiwizard]. If I'm going to infiltrate the Academy I'm going to need to learn everything I can about Giantsrest, and rank up my stealth skills.

His brows drew together, thinking about the obstacle posed by the giant Academy. "If it’s so protected, why don’t all of the mages live there? It looks big enough.”

“Access to the Academy is a privilege.” Faline replied. “Mages learn there, train there, but the graduates are pushed out to grow the empire. Only archmages and teachers may live within the Academy. The lecturers are marked with orange robes, and that status is sought by many who enjoy the safety and luxury of the Academy. Most archmages have rooms in the towers but maintain compounds in the city, where their households live. But many of the lecturers have not left since they first entered.”

Her attention dropped down to the city that sprawled underneath the massive edifice of the Academy. “Our target is there. The Academy is closed to us, but the city holds many foes. It's much easier to hide in.”

Nathan almost hadn’t noticed the city underneath the massive edifice, but three-and-four story buildings stretched for miles across the rolling hills, illuminated as much by the glowing magic of the academy as by the sun. Nathan caught glimpses of parks and walled compounds interspersed throughout the city. The entire city was huge, many times larger than Halsmet, though still only an tenth of the size of Old Gemore.

Nathan frowned at the line of thought and his attention landed on the gates that were their next obstacle. High walls stretched around the city, built from a light stone and studded with tall towers. The towers were squat constructions and clearly magical, each surrounded by an aura of enchantment that betrayed powerful weapons.

This place would be a nightmare to attack conventionally.

The gates were spaced frequently, giving access to rings of rich farmland that stretched out in all directions. There was a short killing field directly in front of the wall, but the next ring out was a series of dense gardens, then orchards of trees and finally expanses of fields. It looked like it had been meticulously planned by somebody with a birds-eye view, and a desire to place labor-intensive crops closer to the city gates.

“Well, at least we’ll have our pick of gates.” Nathan said as they started towards the city, soon entering the expanse of fields.

The assassin at his side didn’t answer, instead studying the fields and the walls beyond. After a second she swore. “Stalker shit, they haven’t opened the gates. We won’t be able to enter.” She looked around. “We should find a place to camp outside until they lift the lockdown. I’d have bet stalker teeth to dragon bones they’d have opened up the city by now."

Nathan blinked at her. “You can’t get into the city if the gates aren’t opened?”

I would have thought that the most elite assassin of Gemore would have an entry point that wasn’t just ‘walk through the gates,’ but I guess with her skills that’s the most reasonable thing to do. Especially if they have powerful enchantments preventing entry everywhere else…

She turned to him, eyebrows drawn down in annoyance. “My skills are myriad, but I do not have the Insights of flight.” Then she blinked in realization “But you do. Can you bypass the wards over the walls?”

He nodded. “Almost certainly, and at the very worst they'll just know that somebody busted thorough them. Let’s go.”

She assented quickly, and they diverted into the tall stalks of grain alongside the road.

Nathan mused on the crops around him as they moved through the available cover to approach the city. The vegetation wasn’t quite wheat but it was close, clearly a few thousand generations of selective breeding derived from wild grass. It was also lush and verdant, dense without a trace of weeds. The crops were planted in rough rows, which indicated they’d likely been planted with by hand means and not by magic.

They snuck through the rest of the fields without issue, passing underneath the dense cover of well-established orchards. Nathan grabbed a fruit he recognized, biting through the red skin into the juicy innards. It was like a single pomegranate seed, but scaled up to the size of his fist.

Faline shot him an amused look at the munching sounds. She chuckled deeply, then reached up to grab another of the ripe fruits dangling directly overhead. They came to a stop under the canopy of green.

A gentle wind rustled the trees, and Nathan looked back at the beautiful woman as she cocked an eyebrow at him and grinned, reddish juice running down her chin. He chuckled in return, smacking his lips as he finished the delectable fruit.

It’s ridiculous, but it feels like we’ve struck the first blow on their territory. By stealing fruit.

Then she wiped her face and started pulling disguises out of her bag. Her own robe was the yellow of an artisan mage, while his was the green of an enslavement mage. “There will be slave-soldiers on the wall, but if we move quickly and do not attack them then my skills will hide us.”

Nathan changed into his robe, turning his back while Faline stripped off her own clothing.

She gave an amused grunt. “Our Paths will run parallel for some time. We should become comfortable with one another.”

Nathan merely shrugged as he turned around, seeing her finish fastening the robe together over her upper body. Her very shapely upper body.

He looked away, judging the distance to the wall and deciding that this was about the right place to start from. They were still a few hundred feet away, but he’d practiced [Airwalking] back in Halsmet. It was much easier to ascend at an angle rather than go straight up, like climbing a staircase versus climbing a cliff. “You should take off anything enchanted and hold it against your stomach.”

She pursed her lips and then shrugged, tugging off various pieces of jewelry and then pulling a dozen knives from various locations, carefully sheathing the blades before sliding the enchanted items into her dimensional bag.

Nathan could tell she didn’t have anything else magical on her, so he simply scooped the assassin up in a princess carry and leapt into the air, aiming for the top of the wall. He focused on speed, trying to minimize the amount of time they spent obviously visible.

Faline squeaked slightly as Nathan picked her up, quickly throwing one hand around his neck while the other held the dimensional pouch tight to her chest. She started giggling, the high-pitched noise startling as it came from the deadly assassin.

He looked down at her as they flew up towards the top of the wall. Faline’s long hair blew in the breeze, the streaks of color looking like sparks as they fluttered at the speed of their passage. She wasn’t looking up at him, but instead watched their ascent with glee, lips parted and eyes still wide with surprise.

Wow. She’s gorgeous.

Then she caught him looking and her lips curving upwards into a smirk as she wriggled teasingly in his arms.

Nathan jerked his attention back to where it belonged, guiding their path over the wall. He could feel eyes sliding off of them and bolstered the effect with his own skills, spending Focus to deflect attention away from a pair of people zipping up and over the top of the wall in broad daylight. He tried to merge his efforts with Faline’s, to layer them so that anybody who saw through her barrier dismissed them as a pair of mages flying home. Even if flying over the walls was certainly not allowed.

High-tier Noticeability 3 achieved!

Then he detected the magical defenses on the wall, and Nathan’s attention was fully consumed in figuring out how to bypass them. He’d done this sort of thing a few times before when sneaking around in Halsmet and breaking through the wards around the army camp, but these defenses were on a different level.

An invisible sheet of interwoven mana stretched up in a cylinder all around Giantsrest, merged with the crenelations on the wall to ensure somebody couldn’t slip underneath it.. The barrier contained a half-dozen different ways to detect anybody passing through it, as well as mechanisms to detect tampering or magical hacking. There was also a layer of wizardry enmeshed throughout the spell, and it seemed to make the mana more stable and less malleable. Harder to mess with.

Wizard Senses 3 achieved!

Nathan spent Focus to help him pry a hole in the net. He slipped a thin spike of his aura through a gap and weakened the local wizardry. Then he pried apart the weave, splitting the spike into thin tendrils that weakened and teased apart the strands of magic in the detection web without fully breaking them.

Mid-tier Aura Manipulation 4 achieved!

It was an exercise in precision, and it would have been significantly more difficult without Nathan’s newest utility skill. He could also feel the benefit of [Antimagic Stealth], calming the spell and guiding his actions to interact with the magic without setting off alarms.

They arced about thirty feet over the head of the slave-soldiers standing guard and straight through the hole Nathan had cut in the detection spell. He released his hold and the magic started sealing shut behind them, the wizardry flowing back in to reclaim the local space as if nothing had happened.

The city beyond the outer walls was dense, and they fell towards it quickly as Nathan stopped running and let gravity take over. This was where he missed [Slow Fall], which would let him precisely modulate the speed and direction of his fall. He could still do something similar with [Airwalking], but now it required him to push off the air with his muscles. The Talent required subtlety, and he hadn’t had that much practice yet.

As a result their descent was jerky, and Faline’s arm tensed as she clung to Nathan. She pointed with one hand towards an alley behind a warehouse “There. Flying is not allowed in the city, and we must move away from the wall.” The traffic on the roads was sparse, but it seemed like Faline was nervous being so exposed.

The pair of them dropped like a thrown rock, with Nathan occasionally kicking out to guide their fall towards the alley. Faline sucked in a breath as they approached the stone cobbles at bone-breaking speeds. As soon as they ducked below the level of the roofs Nathan braced himself and kicked downwards a few times, bleeding off momentum and straining to keep his passenger stable.

Then he slammed to the stone alley, shock running up his knees as his legs absorbed the impact. He gently deposited Faline on her feet. “Welcome to Giantsrest.”

Magekiller has leveled to 119! Congratulations, you have bypassed the defenses of Giantsrest to enter the city undetected!

The assassin spun gracefully away as if he'd just dipped her, then bowed to him slightly. “I thank you for that performance. We should have begun this plan the day after the battle. That would have delivered a prophecy of fear on our enemies.” She turned for the mouth of the alley. “Follow, we should spare no time now that we are here. We strike at the Hedonists first, then move to my safehouse. I must have some chatter in order to confirm an exact target.”

She looked him up and down, stepping close to tug down the sleeves of his robe where it had ridden up when he’d carried her. “If names are needed, I am Fala dha Asna and you are my husband, Natad dho Asna. We have moved back from Skargess with wealth. We seek to open a specialty slave business, but are cautious about saying so. We seek an audience with the Hedonists to court allies and pay our respects.”

Once his appearance met her approval she fiddled with her own, losing the streaks in her hair, but keeping it long and dark. Her nose squished in and some fat puffed out of her cheeks and figure. She also lost a few inches of height, overall appearing somewhat younger and less striking. Instead of an elegant beauty, she looked more like a friendly girl-next-door.

From her lower vantage point she frowned up to Nathan. “Your Path doesn’t let you make yourself shorter? The height makes you stand out rather blasphemously.” She imitated a higher-pitched, younger voice. “Yes master archmage, he was taller than an orc! Just look for the man who hits his head on doorways and you’ll find the assassin.”

“No. Well. Maybe.” He said with a chuckle. “It would take a while, a lot of Stamina and then I’d have to get used to the new height. I would have to do the same thing to change back. Anyway, I’ve got a skill called [Forgettable] that makes people forget details about me.”

“That hits the target, so long as you are over level 100 in the class.” She responded, linking her arm with his and guiding them towards the mouth of the alley. “Such skills are worth their weight in adamant for an assassin. My bard Path would never allow such a skill. My deeds are to be remembered.”

She flipped her hair back, settling into the act of a mage out on the stroll through the city as they walked through the market square inside the gate. Most of the stalls were closed, detritus and signs indicating that this was usually a place to buy fresh produce from the gardens outside the wall. There were other open shops around, all managed by slaves selling everything from prepared food to ceramics.

Faline - Fala - wasn’t quiet, constantly gossiping about their surroundings. She critiqued the consequences of the lockdown, then started to pull Nathan in various directions seemingly as the whim took her to look at various stores or explore different directions. The diversions never bent them far off course, and she deftly steered the pair deeper into the city.

It was easy for Nathan to fall into the role of Natad, the tolerant husband walking his flighty wife around the city. All he had to do was look amused at her antics and gently tug her back towards the path whenever she seemed about ready to hare off in another direction. They didn’t have much of an audience for the performance, but this wasn’t about impressing the audience. This was about Faline testing Nathan, seeing how he responded to her cues and adapted to a situation without prompting. Apparently he passed muster, and she calmed down with the distractions.

Low-tier Disguise 5 achieved!

They continued deeper into the city. There were very few slaves in the streets, and the ones who were wore a magical badge that seemed to indicate their right to be out and about during the lockdown. However, the mages didn’t seem to share that limitation and walked the city without worry. There was nothing reminiscent of the detection spells of Halsmet that searched for mage-marks.

Faline guided them towards a higher concentration of mages and they quickly found themselves in a more residential area centered around a small park, lit in golden tones by the glowing haze overhead. To the side of the park was an idyllic little cafe, where mages gathered to talk and gossip while served various drinks and pastries by attentive slaves. They walked up and took a table set between a few other groups. A slave dressed in a skimpy outfit hurried up to them, and Faline ordered curtly. Less than a minute later they had cups of hot cider in front of them, tasting like they’d been spiced with basil and a faint touch of cayenne pepper.

The three men next to them had been comparing brothels in loud voices while they destroyed a platter of meat and cheese drizzled with fragrant sauce. “... I disagree, I find eagerness more important than sculpting. The Verdant Flower’s girls are creative and eager, often suggesting delightful ideas.” One said, responding to his companion.

The other man was busy chewing, and Faline turned and deftly inserted herself into their conversation. “You must have Insights to share. Tell me, where would I find the best specialty slaves in Giantsrest?” Her waggling eyebrows left no doubts as to exactly what specialty she was referring to.

“Uhh.” One of the men responded eloquently, glancing over at Nathan uncertainly. The glance seemed to ask 'are you ok with your woman asking these kinds of questions?'

Nathan smiled back indulgently, nodding his head slightly to indicate that the question should be answered. Inside he felt a sense of dissociation, as if what was happening wasn’t real. It wasn’t a profound disconnect from the world, but he was successfully pretending that all of this wasn’t his problem.

Yet. It will be my problem, but I’m going to be smart about it. I won’t fly off the handle at casual shit, because that would interfere with doing things that could actually make a difference.

Another of the artisan mages picked up the conversational slack, leaning in. “Ah, new to the light of the capitol? What is the weight of your budget, my dear?”

Faline’s smile grew wider, normal teeth showing a smile that carried an edge of depravity. “Weighty. The best specialty slaves in Giantsrest.”

The last member of the trio guffawed and wiped foam from his mustache, setting down a mug of beer. “Go see Tharra dha Stedst. Her husband Lang builds the mental magic unique for every slave, but she trains ‘em and sells ‘em. You’ll need more than treasure. They require weighty favors for every sale. They’re in the Silver Square, look for the sign with a crimson dart. But get an appointment first.”

The second mage smirked and smacked his lips. “They sell to archmages and brothels. Don’t expect to weave that magic.” He shot Nathan a challenging glance before looking Faline up and down, making no effort to be surreptitious. “I could take you to see the best brothels after, if you would like?”

Faline just smiled and tilted her head towards Nathan, prompting him for a response.

He snorted in reply to the man’s deliberately provocative comment, shaking out his robes and standing upright. “A fine proposal, but I fear we must decline. We are to visit my uncle, a teacher at the Academy. We can visit these merchants tomorrow, if you wish a treat.” He offered his arm to Faline expectantly, gaze calm and intentional.

I think a reference to a connected family and calm confidence are enough to communicate that you don’t want to mess with me.

Low-tier Disguise 6 achieved!

The disguised assassin rose with an aggrieved sigh. She dropped a few coins on the table for their drinks and then took his arm to depart.

Status of Nathan Lark:

Permanent Talent 1: Aura of Antimagic 9

Permanent Talent 2: Perfected Body 9

Permanent Talent 3: Airwalking 3

Class: Void of Magic level297

Deepened Stamina: 7490/9210

Void of Feeling

Antimagic Momentum

Raging Thrill

Implacable Inertia

Unarmored Resilience

Magic Anathema

Airborne Agility

Hand-to-hand Expertise

Voluminous Aura

Denial of Wizardry

Mana Severance

Class: Magekiller level 119

Regenerative Focus: 976/1290

Catastrophic Blows

Battle Stealth

Mage Infiltration

Forgettable

Unsuspecting Strike

Antimagic Stealth

Spell Redirection

Lethal Index

Utility skills:

Battle Meditation 10

Inspiration 1

Acceleration 2

Wizard Senses 3

Alertness 4

Wizard’s Intuition 3

Effortless Dodge 1

Mental Fortress 6

Tutoring 2

High-tier Tumbling 10

High-tier Noticeability 3

Low-tier Disguise 6

Mid-tier Battle Cry 7

Mid-tier Aura Manipulation 4