Ends of Magic

The Heirs were marching alongside the Drakefish river north of Bridgeguard, following a path that snaked along the bank.

The Drakefish was broad and placid, flowing sluggishly southwards to the ocean. There were places where the bank was dominated by thick reeds, and others where the murky waters lapped up against a muddy beach. The forest here wasn’t as dense as the area near Tenby had been.

The path traced a narrow line of turf that separated the river from the woods. Nathan was curious about why the path existed, but it probably wasn’t important.

They walked for a time, alert so as not to miss their quarry. Then they came around a bend in the riverbank to see the place the book must have washed up. As Farist had said, it was quite obvious.

There were blue-glowing crystals sprouting in a rough circle about fifty feet across, some standing nearly Nathan’s height. They spanned the riverbank, with some standing barely above the waterline while others were positioned a short distance into the forest.

An ethereal fog rolled out from the crystals, lit with some kind of inner glow. The fog was low to the ground and occasionally roiled with inner movement, as if hidden things were scuttling along the ground.

The Heirs stopped as one, looking over the crystals.

Aarl was the first to comment. “Now that’s a message to stay a bowshot away if ever I saw one.”

Stella was frowning at the circle, drawing her eyebrows down in thought. “I think some of those crystals are arranged at the nodes of some kind of ritual diagram. That’s probably not a good thing. But there are more than there should be… the shorter ones on the edges don’t fit? Some kind of wall?”

Nathan squinted to try to see what Stella had. He hadn’t been educated on magical rituals, and so couldn’t understand the exact patterning, but he could at least tell there was a magically-significant diagram there thanks to his skills. He tried to focus and use his antimagic to see past the fog, but nothing became clearer.

I think it’s just normal fog, and something in it is glowing.

Sarah snorted and pulled out her rifle. “Should I break one and find out what happens?”

Khachi looked at Nathan. “Our goal here is to learn how to engage with strange magics. I say we see if shattering the crystals from here kills the problem. Likely better to do it without magic. And it will be safer to be farther away if a terrible defense activates.”

Nathan shrugged, nodding. “I’d agree. If we can interfere with whatever is happening from a distance that’s probably for the best. But we do it safely. I’ll stay here, you should all retreat to the cover of those trees and prepare for retaliation.” Nathan pointed to a small stand of sturdy trees a short distance behind them.

The Heirs nodded, talked over a few more contingency plans and then retreated. Nathan handed his spear to Aarl - he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be useful here.

Nathan stood a bit to the side, ready to dive into the cover of the riverbank. He darted a glance into the river. He couldn’t see very far into its muddy depths, but nothing seemed out of place. The blue-white arcane crystals disrupted a scene otherwise dominated by the green of the forest and the brown of the river.

Nathan looked back, seeing the Heirs setting up behind the trees. Stella conjured a force barrier that reached diagonally from the ground to a large tree, with a small gap close to the ground. Sarah lay down and pointed the rifle out of the gap, aiming towards the crystals. Khachi stood nearby, ready to block any attacks with his shield, while Aarl and Stella hid behind the trees.

Sarah raised a hand signal, asking if Nathan was ready. He signaled affirmative, and Sarah leaned over the rifle. Nathan turned back to the crystals, and after a moment a loud crack sounded out. The top third of one of the taller crystals shattered and fell to the ground, and the glow of the crystals faltered for a moment.

Then a low whine started, and a dome of force started forming. It was faint at first, but over the course of a few seconds it solidified into a nearly-opaque opalescent barrier that completely encased the crystals. The dome touched down just beyond the outermost circle of crystals, which were now glowing brightly.

The whine intensified until it was almost painful to the ears, and Nathan noticed that tiny crystals were spreading out from the outer edge of the dome, creeping across the grass and up the surfaces of trees.

That would look like Tiberium if it were green instead of blue-white.

No other response was immediately forthcoming, and Nathan looked back to see Sarah leaning back over the rifle. She fired again, and Nathan saw the huge bullet bounce off of the shield right over one of the glowing outermost crystals. The shield rippled around the impact point, but soon stabilized.

Stella stepped out from behind the force wall and cast a lightning bolt that narrowly missed Nathan, impacting the same point of the shield. The shield took this attack with even more aplomb, and there was barely any indication of strain from the clearly powerful barrier.

There was barely a moment of warning - a crystal just inside the outermost ring suddenly shone brightly, then a beam of bluish energy shot towards Stella. Nathan shot out a hand like a soccer goalie, managing to interpose his limb in the path of the beam.

The blue light collected around his hand and a large crystal started to form from nothing. The crystals started growing into his flesh all the way up to his shoulder as larger chunks started forming from empty air and sticking to his arm.

Ahh what the hell!

Nathan calmed down, feeling out the magical process. The magical crystal was already starting to disintegrate from contact with his flesh, and it was similar to something Nathan had experienced not too long ago.

This feels a bit like the ‘salt’ mana that I found in some of the conductive quartz that Dalo gave me. Crystal mana? I guess there are weirder mana types.

Crystal mana felt like dozens of edges poking into Nathan’s skin in a regular pattern. The spell was trying to keep growing a giant crystal around Nathan’s hand even as his [Magic Absorption] siphoned the power from the spell. Crystals kept forming on the surface of his skin, protruding both inwards and outwards.

You know, growing crystals into people’s bodies is a pretty scary attack.

Then another beam shot out, targeting Nathan directly. It hit him in the chest and the crystals tore open his shirt and started growing into his heart and lungs. Nathan focused, throwing his attention into figuring out a countermeasure to this new spell and mana type.

This crystal is growing in orderly patterns. One layer on top of another, made of magic. I can attack the crystal surface, poison it against future growth to prevent it from growing into me.

Nathan smashed at the growing crystals with his antimagic, not directly trying to absorb the mana so much as prevent it from forming a structure. The approach immediately bore fruit, with the crystalline growth halting and the remaining mana quickly absorbing into Nathan’s stamina. The cavities left behind quickly filled in with new flesh.

Another beam hit Nathan in the face. It was incredibly uncomfortable to feel crystals trying to grow in his eyeballs, but Nathan kept his focus and shattered the spell again. It was becoming more and more automatic each time as his Talent adapted to the attack.

Another beam hit him in the gut, and this one was even easier to disrupt, barely slowing him down. Nathan was starting to feel the overcharged feeling of Stamina overload, and looked back at the Heirs. They’d beat a hasty retreat behind the trees, which sported a few nasty crystal growths. The beams appeared to have penetrated Stella’s force barrier and marked the ground beyond, which made sense since they could leave the force-dome.

Nasty spell.

Nathan’s Rage wanted him to charge that dome. To bash down the barrier and come to close-quarters with whatever the hell was going on in there. The inside of the dome was filling with glowing mist, and Nathan could see that the crystals around the dome were quickly growing to ankle-height.

He didn’t activate his Rage. Instead, he turned and ran back towards the Heirs. He needed advice on this. He needed not to go off half-cocked and without a plan. They were trying to learn how to counter this sort of thing, and “Nathan charges it without a plan” wasn’t a good counter.

High-tier Focused Mind 9 achieved!

Nathan rounded the corner and saw the Heirs crouched a ways back from their tree barrier. Aarl was crushing some crystals that had landed on the ground and started to spread like some kind of spiky slime mold. A bite had been taken out of Khachi’s shield, but he wasn’t paying much attention to it. Stella used a force construct to grab a spike of crystal that was sticking out of Sarah’s shoulder. She yanked out the spike, then vaporized it with a burst of fire.

Sarah gritted her teeth as faint slivers of crystal continued to form in the wound, looking like a frost pattern on skin. Nathan leapt forward and seized her shoulder, doing his best to break the spell on his teammate. It was hard, since he wasn’t the target of the spell. Nathan spent a dozen seconds trying to exert the influence of his antimagic beyond his skin and into her wound before giving up and sticking a finger into Sarah’s shoulder with a quick word of apology.

She nodded and held back a scream. Nathan wriggled his finger around to ensure that there wasn’t any more crystal mana in the wound before stepping back and allowing Khachi to heal the injury.

Then Nathan looked back at the Heirs. “Well. We learned a lot and didn’t die. What do we do now?”

Aarl looked back from where he was examining the trees they were hiding behind. “I don’t think we can approach. Or even get into sight. I think this is your nemesis to slay.”

Khachi nodded, grinding out a response. “Agreed.”

Nathan stuck his head out around the tree, studying the area and ducking back to dodge another crystal-forming beam. The dome was still up and the mist inside was roiling. The crystals surrounding the dome had grown up to knee-height and the creeping edge of the growth was starting to approach them.

He looked back. “I don’t know if I can get there. The footing is nasty and I don’t trust there to not be another trick to the crystals or the dome. I can probably handle any surprises, but I don’t like probably.”

Stella finished vaporizing another patch of crystal that was spreading over the ground. “We need to think in more dimensions. It’s building a barrier, and there are multiple layers of crystals to pass through to get to the center. Or I can just throw Nathan at the center of the circle, bypassing all the other layers. Almost certainly the book is there. Breaking that should stop everything here.”

Nathan eyed the short Mage as she started to work to form a solid platform from the muddy ground. “There’s some assumptions there. That the book is in the center of the circle, and that breaking it will stop this. Can we wait until it runs out of mana?”

Khachi almost looked around the corner of the tree. Then he stopped himself. “Waiting for it to run out of mana would be the most uncertain option. We would be relying on our opponent making a mistake. This all started from a single artifact, and it seems the single artifact is the key. Stella’s plan is a good option to take it out quickly. Do it.”

I guess throwing Nathan at the problem is how we’re going to solve this. At least I’ll come in on an unanticipated vector.

Nathan nodded, waiting for Stella to gesture him onto the platform. After another twenty seconds of careful manipulation, she did.

He stepped onto the hard-packed mud. “Throwing me high is more important than throwing me accurately. I can fix the accuracy.”

Stella acknowledged his point, and counted down with her fingers as they’d practiced. Nathan crouched, and pushed off the platform as Stella hurled him skywards.

He shot upwards on a trajectory to overshoot the force dome and land in the river beyond. Nathan tried to use his new Talent to adjust his trajectory, but nothing happened. There was a moment of panic before Nathan figured it out. He wasn’t falling yet. The Talent only worked when he was falling, and he was still going up.

Nathan studied the landscape under him for a scant few seconds as the wind rushed past his face. The crystal growth was spreading in an arc directionally towards the Heirs. From above, Nathan could see the shape of the ritual symbol delineated by the crystals more clearly. There were conduits in the fog that burned with arcane energy, marking out a complicated symbol whose nodes were crystal obelisks shining brightly through the shield.

The center of the circle was clear - but an area just to the side seemed to be the locus of the ritual, with the brightest glow. Nathan tried to squint past the magical light, but couldn’t make anything out through the shield and the glare.

Then he hit the top of his arc and started to fall. Nathan immediately increased his fall speed, cutting short the arc that would have sent him into deep water. He laughed maniacally as he aimed right for the brightest glow and felt the Talent shift his trajectory to match where he wanted to go. It burned Stamina quickly, but not nearly as quickly as [Regeneration] did.

His Rage activated smoothly as Nathan descended from the sky. It felt like a natural extension of his adrenaline, the thrill of battle as Nathan flashed towards the ground. He wasn’t angry at the crystals, but he was looking forward to the thrill of tearing them apart with his bare hands after falling out of the sky.

I'd be a shoo-in for a Red Bull sponsorship with these stunts.

Crystallization beams shot at Nathan and had no effect beyond messing up his clothes. Nathan increased the speed of his fall farther still, remembering the effect of his [Antimagic Momentum] and [Juggernaught’s Inertia]. The faster he was moving, the harder he was to stop.

Broken legs? Who cares! They’ll get better.

Then he slammed feet first into the dome, which had been reinforced with glowing filaments of crystal forming a fractal structure just inside the surface. The dome wrestled with Nathan’s momentum for a split second, trying to remain an impenetrable barrier. But against Nathan’s antimagic and the skills that synergized off his speed, the force construct was helpless. It exploded, sending crystal shards zipping in all directions at high speeds.

Tiny shards peppered Nathan, slicing his skin and penetrating deeply in a few places. The pressure wave washed over and past Nathan, trying to blow him away from the dome. But Nathan’s momentum and control of his fall won out, and he thumped to the ground right next to the brightest crystal.

High-tier Slow Fall 3 achieved!

His neck had been sliced open by a flying crystal shard, and blood gouted over the crystal in front of Nathan as he slammed his elbow into the tall object. There was a crack as the magic inside gave way, but the glow of the bottom half redoubled and the crystal started growing at an incredible rate, seeking to entomb him.

Nathan stepped forward on a broken ankle, getting in closer to the crystal to give it a bear hug. The crystal’s growth was inhibited by his blood - though he wasn’t sure if that was because it held residual antimagic or because blood inhibited the clean surfaces that encouraged crystal growth.

Then Nathan was surrounded by crystals growing from every direction. Many of them just seemed to spontaneously form from the air, encasing him in a rapidly forming glassy prison.

There was a moment where Nathan was fully encased in crystal and it was trying to invade his body, poking at his skin and limiting his breathing. Nathan’s neck had healed over and the shocky feeling of blood loss waned. He checked his Stamina.

Stamina: 624/680

My antimagic should be winning. I can break this spell, let's just push harder.

Nathan flexed his muscles, cycling his antimagic along with his movements. The crystal around him cracked, but rapidly reformed and continued its constricting advance. His Rage was limiting his ability to think, so Nathan dropped it and swapped to [Focused Mind].

It’s adding magic to an existing lattice structure, and rejoining the layers whenever I form a crack. The spell is quickly conjuring new material into the same lattice structure, using the surface that’s already present to grow quickly. If I only make a hairline fracture then it’s very simple for it to realign and keep growing.

Nathan’s spellsense told him he was correct.

So how do I break it? I need to do something to the overall lattice structure or cause gross damage. I can’t build up enough momentum pinned like this. Can I poison the internal lattice with my antimagic, not just the surface? Make the microscopic structure unstable multiple layers deep?

Mid-tier Identify 7 achieved!

Nathan couldn’t extend his antimagic very far, but he slipped streamers of it into every piece of crystal around him, trying to integrate the antimagic into the organized structure of the magical material.

When he flexed again, the crystal around him shattered like sugar, absorbing into his skin and evaporating to nothingness.

Magic Absorption 7 achieved!

It took conscious effort to keep the effect going, but Nathan closed his arms on the central crystal to the array. The blue glow lessened by inches as Nathan crushed the structure. As the glare lessened, Nathan finally spotted his target.

It was a great tome of a book made of faceted gemstones, resting on the ground. This central crystal had grown out of it. Nathan bent down, pushing through the crystals as they redoubled their attempts to stab through his eyes and skin.

The book was entombed in crystal, but its translucent pages were turning regardless. They stilled on a complicated diagram. The crystal growth stopped, and an enormous force tried to push Nathan away. It was a combination of force and gravity magic, both of which Nathan had had prior experience with. He struggled with the spell for a moment, sinking his weight in Davrar’s non-magical gravity to avoid pinwheeling away through the suddenly shattered crystal.

Then he broke through the spell and grabbed hold of the book, slamming it closed.

Status of Nathan Lark:

Permanent Talent 1: Magic Absorption 7

Permanent Talent 2: High-tier Regeneration 8

Talent 3: High-tier Slow Fall 3

Class: Spellbreaker Juggernaut level 55

Stamina: 650/650

Juggernaut's Wrath

Antimagic Momentum

Raging Thrill

Juggernaut's Inertia

Unarmored Resilience

Utility skills:

High-tier Focused Mind 9

High-tier Earnestness 2

Mid-tier Sprinting 5

Mid-tier Spellsense 10

Mid-tier Notice 8

Mid-tier Identify 7

Mid-tier Dodging Footwork 4

High-tier Enhanced Memory 2

Mid-tier Lecturing 2

Low-tier Tumbling 10