Immovable Mage

– Beginning of Arc 7, Indomitable Bonds –

– Era of the Wastes, Cycle 218, Season of the Rising Moon, Day 3 –

High up in the sky, Terry opened his eyes. His gaze first rested on the bucket filled with water that served as his trusted alarm clock and early warning for his spell running out. Habitually, he refreshed the Immovable Object spell on the tertium slab that served as his airborne bedding.

For a fleeting moment, Terry wondered if he should refresh the spell imprint on the bucket too. Even though he didn’t feel sleepy anymore, he did not feel like getting up yet. Just a few more minutes of doing…

Nothing.

Nothing would be nice.

Just for a bit.

To Terry’s delight, he could see that the spell in the bucket still had enough charge to last nearly half an hour. Evidently, he had woken up early.

Unlimited mana sure did wonders for a cultivator’s constitution. The experience when defending the dungeon had brought immense benefits to his mana pool and regeneration. Both of those translated directly into a reduced requirement for sleep.

The reduced need for sleep was also playing off another benefit. Few mages ever received a chance to practice their spell control by unleashing thousands of spell invocations in a single day. The growth in spell control allowed for better spell compression and that directly translated into longer durations for a single empowered charge.

Both benefits together brought about Terry’s current condition where he naturally woke up before a single spell invocation had run out. He had come a long way from scrambling for whatever bit of sleep he could get when in his shelter in the sky.

Or rather from waking up by being drenched in water and never truly feeling rested.

Terry just continued laying back and allowed himself to take in the bright blue morning sky. He knew it had been reckless to not sleep in a fully closed cube, but that sight was a luxury he could not resist.

That sky.

That beautiful blue sky with no superfluous moons that could serve as a constant reminder of being trapped in a pocket realm with a bunch of battle-crazy lunatics.

That sky that was shared with his accepted family, with his whaka. Somewhere under this beautiful blue sky he would be able to reunite with his friends and family. He just had to persevere and get back to Arcana.

Terry was still gazing upon the vast blue nothingness while his mana was already spreading further and further from him to establish his newly improved detection field.

His detection field confirmed what his regular mana sense had already suggested to him: He was safe. Right now, for the first time in more than two years, he felt safe.

There were no powerful mana signatures in the vicinity. No murderous martialists. No fungus-infested invaders. No Thanatos troops. No oversized white wyverns. No hellspawn champions or spellweavers. Not even a giant horde of undead.

Admittedly, there had been a horde of what appeared to be mostly undead hellspawns, but Terry had distanced himself in time to evade the horde’s path. At one point, he had backtracked slightly to confirm that the horde had passed and there was nothing to be sensed anymore.

As such, Terry was safe.

Still alone, but safe.

Now all he had to do was to alleviate the ‘alone’ aspect without losing the ‘safe’ part of the equation. He had a long way ahead of him if he wanted to return to Arcana, but so what?

In the past, the long distance might have seemed daunting to inspire despair, but Terry felt only anticipation and invigoration when taking in the bright blue morning sky.

He had nearly died isolated in a strange folded space. It was a miracle that he was still breathing. Maybe more than one miracle actually. One slight mistake or one missing step on the path he had walked to even get there, and he would have been dead – or worse.

Terry had to push away the image of a version of himself that was covered with fungus and joined the invasion on his home.

He had been trapped for more than two cycles. First in a mana containment cell for holding coliseum contestants. Then in a folded space for an alleged inheritance site that had turned out to be very much just another form of containment cell.

No matter what further challenges might await on his path back home, right now Terry felt nothing but liberation.

Well, nearly nothing.

Liberation and tiredness.

Tiredness.

Not sleepiness – his mana foundation and bodily constitution prevented that at this moment.

Not physical exhaustion or the mental fatigue of intense studying either.

This tiredness was a pure and unadulterated need for peace. Inner peace as well as a peaceful environment. For a calm that he had lost a long time ago, although the time felt a lot longer than it really had been. Both thanks to the time-dilating dao chambers and his own growing frustration with simply… everything in that pocket asylum.

The last time Terry had felt truly at peace, he had set out on a trip as a Guardian from Arcana City. A multi-mission trip with his own group and the groups of his siblings. A trip that had eventually led him onto a path of dungeon shenanigans and death.

Way too much death.

Terry was not sleepy at all, but he was so damned tired.

He was plainly fed up with constantly being surrounded by death in all its various forms.

Terry had always dreamed of becoming a heroic mage of legend like his idol. He had always looked at the historical figures in the Path of a Mage as role models and up at the Veilbinder most of all.

Terry had failed so often to measure up against his own aspirations. Well, in the folded space, he had succeeded, even if only a few battle-crazy muscle-brains knew about it. However, he was aware that this heroic feat was achieved with borrowed powers instead of with his own. In his judgement, his failure would have been inevitable if not for the dungeon’s intervention.

Dungeon shenanigans.

Despite his belittling thoughts, Terry knew he had succeeded in something remarkable. He had helped vanquish an invasion of mana-cursed beings that had been threatening to overpower a dungeon for who knew how long.

If Terry thought calmly about it, he knew that he should feel at least a sliver of pride.

And yet, right under his feeling of liberation, Terry felt like… crap.

He simply felt like crap.

Perhaps it was the forceful confrontation with the limits of his own ambition. Limits that required a miraculous dungeon intervention to bring up to par for the challenge.

Perhaps it was one near-death experience too many. A person could only bleed out so many times before starting to question their life choices and doubting their own path and ambitions.

Perhaps it was simply the accumulated fatigue of moving from one excruciatingly exhausting situation right to the next. If this was the path of a hero, then it was even worse for a person’s mental health than the time-dilating dao chambers and those were already far beyond unhealthy.

Terry had always aspired to become like the Veilbinder. He understood very well that the Veilbinder had gone through so much worse. It was not the first time that Terry wondered how the mage of legend had possibly managed to persevere on his path that wrote legends.

As a young child, Terry had not held the slightest doubt that he was destined for greatness. Regretfully, that pleasant state of unquestioning self-delusion had not survived the Arcana Academy.

As a teenager, Terry had been confronted with his own limiting inadequacies and yet his mind had still always felt… separate. Somehow. As if his mind had been betrayed by his body. As if his character had been destined for greatness only to be pulled down to earth by this constricting impairment.

The thought had felt despairingly unfair, but at the same time… comforting. Somehow. A comforting conviction that he would have been able to become like the great mage of legend if only it hadn’t been for this one limiting aspect that was entirely beyond his control. Again, not a sliver of doubt about it.

The only problem was his aspect impairment. His mental fortitude was beyond question.

Another sheltered delusion that had now been shattered.

Terry was not sure anymore if he was cut out to follow the path of a mage. When he had flunked out of the Arcana Academy, he had questioned if his aspect impairment would be the breaking point. He had questioned the potential of his own abilities.

In the folded space, the dungeon had shown him a possible future for his abilities that was beyond anything Terry could have ever imagined or wished for before. He knew that this should cause his ambition to grow instead of shrinking away. He had even promised himself that this power would one day be his own.

However, after the exhilarating rush of liquified mana had vanished from his veins, Terry was left with something else. He was left with the realization of how many things could have gone wrong. How easy it would have been to die or to miss the moment. How his victory had been completely uncertain and how uncertain the exact puzzle pieces for its achievement still remained.

Above all, how much struggle and pain had been associated with acquiring most of the known puzzle pieces he had required to bring about victory.

No fiendish crystal egg without slaying a gigantic wyvern and escaping from lizan loonies.

No knowing about the nature of the crystal without being captured by Thanatos. No mana touch or enhanced parallel casting either. No unstoppable shift which would have meant no king spear…

Without the dungeon shenanigans that had led to Terry being stranded in Tiv, he might never have learned the divine hammer inscription or gotten the inspiration for his eccentric disruption discharges or ranged mana naturalization.

Terry involuntarily recalled how Damian had once called the Veilbinder an impractical role model to take inspiration from. One epithet the Thanatos politician had used to describe the legendary mage was industrious.

‘…help everyone everywhere to increase your chance of randomly stumbling across powerful magic while saving someone’s kitten from a tree.’

Terry didn’t feel like this accurately described his own path. He did not remember volunteering to save many kittens lately. Nevertheless, he was beginning to understand one part their paths had in common: Stepping up required options.

Like a fiendish crystal.

Like an external mana pool.

Like so many other things.

Some of the options Terry might have also developed in Arcana, but what about the rest? Certainly, he would not have remained idle, but would the things he would have gained instead lent themselves to a similar success?

No way to tell.

As such, Terry was left with the lingering feeling that collecting the right pieces to put together required more than effort. Even more than luck. It required an opportunity for luck and effort to manifest into an applicable new option.

Terry believed he understood how his latest opportunities had arisen. He had stepped up to gather the four-leaved blood tulip. He had actively worked to escape the lands of Thanatos.

Choice by choice.

Step by step.

The only problem was that Terry was not sure anymore if steps like those would form a path he was able to walk on.

The dungeon had shown him a possible destination of where his path might lead. A possible version of his future abilities. A promised reward if he only managed to persevere.

However, Terry knew that this was not as simple as training up his mana foundation. He knew that he required stop-gaps to survive until he had a chance of reaching the heights of the Immovable Mage.

Other skills.

Other tools.

Other options.

Somehow, after the dungeon defense, a location had been etched into Terry’s mind. He could feel its presence. It was a location not further away from his current position than Arcana City.

Getting back to Arcana didn’t seem that daunting under this beautiful blue sky.

Continuing just like the past few years, however, seemed more than daunting enough. Not just tiring. It was outright terrifying.

It made him flinch.

Terry had seen a vision of who he could become if he followed the right path, but he had also gotten a glimpse into what was required to actually walk along it.

Honestly, just thinking about it made him feel tired and so, he chose to refrain from thinking about it.

Not the time.

Focus.

One step at a time.

Terry sat up and collected the alarm bucket into his storage bracelet. Whatever he chose for the future, he knew what he wanted to focus on for the present. No matter what, he would first return to his family and friends. He did not walk his path alone. His choices affected more than himself. He had scared them enough already and he had a promise to uphold.

‘Even if I ever get whisked away again, I won’t stop until I’ve found a way home.’

After the dungeon shenanigans, Terry had been unable to promise to never disappear. Instead, he had basically promised to always return. He did not like lies, so he should better act true to his promise.

Remembering his risky choice to stay in the folded space and to refuse to leave with the exit ticket in his possession, Terry could not help but note that he had nearly turned himself into a liar.

Pushing away his conflicted thoughts, Terry stood up and gazed on the horizon underneath that beautiful blue sky. He swiveled his head to take in the sight in all directions before fixing his eyes on a single one.

Whaka…

He wanted to go home.

His first step onto a translucent golden layer of mana was firmly into the direction of Arcana and with time, his steps only accelerated subconsciously. Never could he have imagined how great it would feel to start running again…

Just running.

Running and running.

Over the coming weeks, Terry had a good, peaceful run. He slept well. He easily acquired provisions for himself by hunting and gathering. His improved senses, cloaking abilities, and instincts were doing wonders for his self-preservation. He easily side-stepped any potential threats.

The only cause for unease was the slight purple layer that sometimes popped up in Terry’s eyes, both on himself and on other beings he encountered. He still had no idea what to make of it. Ignoring the color, it resembled what he saw with active mana sight, but sometimes there were discrepancies.

In the folded space, he had seen a blue tint without any purple. Out here, he sometimes caught beings with weak layers of purple and without any blue. A lack of blue in active mana sight was the well-known appearance of manaless beings, so the purple definitely appeared separate from mana.

Even more confusing were the moments when Terry spotted spots of purple without anything to match. Just vague shapes of purple moving over the ground or along the trees. Whenever those sights forced themselves on him, he suppressed the urge to sit down and scribble in his notebooks.

Not the time.

He wanted to go home.

He stayed out of sight and avoided anything resembling folk signatures, especially larger clusters. After being trapped with backstabbing battle-hungry martialists, Terry recoiled at the idea of chatting up random strangers. After glimpsing into the political scheming in several different empires, he was also very hesitant to make contact with any foreign country.

He pressed on without getting distracted by whatever appeared around or underneath him. He had a destination. All he needed was to run there. Continue running.

Just running.

Running and running.

Terry was starting to lose track of how long he had been running. During his stay in Thanatos confinement and even more so in the strange folded space, time had turned into a funny concept. When the days became longer while the years became shorter, it was hard to prevent time from blending into itself.

Days became weeks…

Running.

Weeks evolved into months…

Running and running.

All with a single destination in mind.

The running even seeped into Terry’s dreams when he slept, which ranged from bad to bizarre. The dreams tended to all follow the same theme of him running. Running away from hordes of enemies. Fungus-invested elves and beasts. Undead. Hellspawn. Undead Hellspawn. Even martialists, cultists, and soldiers.

Once, the dream had Terry flee from a group of people dressed like the ministers at the Preacher’s reception in Tiv. The army of politicians had chased him around a giant plate of appetizers. Oddly enough, he had slept through all of the nightmares featuring monsters but the pursuing politicians woke him up.

Woke him up for more running.

Terry only managed to stare dazedly when his path was eventually blocked by something he could not simply circle around and evade.

There was no more beautiful blue sky in that direction.

No stars either.

The sky was drowned in chaotic clouds of dense grey ash that rose from a glowing sea of orange. Snakes of yellow white or violet blue were dancing with furious thunder. From the swirling mass of blazing death, the stench of sulfur and ozone was invading his nostrils.

Terry naturally knew about volcanoes and he had also heard about volcanic lightning that sometimes appeared in the ash clouds before. However, the sight in front of him was a concoction of violent mana raging completely out of control.

His mana sight left no doubt in his mind about what he was looking at…

Forbidden zone.

Crap.

Terry maintained his distance and followed the edge of the ferocious forbidden zone but quickly suspected that this would lead nowhere. He might have to backtrack the whole distance. As if the time spent running had never even happened. Naturally, he felt more than reluctant to increase the distance to his destination again.

It felt like a loss.

Failure.

But what else could he do?

The ash clouds were nothing he could simply power through. His mana touch had felt no end of them. His mana sight confirmed that there was no way above either. There was no helping it.

Running.

Running and running.

Until eventually, a strong mana distortion caught Terry’s attention in a particular direction. A mana distortion that indicated some kind of anchored spatial transfer. A dimensional gate or something very much like it.

Terry would have worried that this was a hallucination created by his own subconsciousness, a manifestation of wishful thinking. However, the large cluster of mana signatures matching folks in the vicinity of the dimensional gate did definitely not fit his own personal wishlist. The very idea of interacting with folks was already inviting the beginnings of a headache into Terry’s head.

***

The doors to the tavern opened and a short hooded figure entered. Underneath the hood, a few strains of pure white hair were showing. While she approached the barkeep, her eyes darted around the room.

Her appearance outed her as a foreigner. The white hair was too noticeable for anyone to miss such a sight among the locals. However, her mannerisms did not stand out to anyone. Barely anyone realized how her eyes were taking stock of all the crimson uniforms, every single other armed guest at the tavern, the exits and windows… Her eyes never lingered for longer than a natural glance.

“Two fingers wide of the house specialty.” The dwarf stepped onto the raised edge on the platform to be used by dwarves to reach the high seat and table.

“First time?” asked the human man behind the bar. “Or one of our repeat customers?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t ask for a refund.” The dwarven woman placed two paper notes in the Thanatos currency on the counter. “You can keep the change.”

The barkeep took the money. “We’re not really a liquor region. The products from the local distilleries are, shall we say, more of an acquired taste.” He poured a drink from an unbranded bottle. “The people ordering this swirl are mostly locals themselves. Have you visited our town before?”

The dwarven woman did not reply to the question. She gulped down the drink in one go without showing any reaction on her face. No one could tell if she liked the drink or if its flavor came as a surprise.

“Many reasons to be here.” The dwarven woman grinned at the barkeep and glanced at the wanted posters plastered on the wall behind him.

The barkeep smiled and nodded. He had been one of the few people in the tavern to notice the subtle glances when the woman had gauged the guests and environment. It did not surprise him that this dwarf was a practitioner of the trade. He shrugged and began cleaning a used glass. “No rest among the wicked and plenty of wickedness to go around.”

“Mind if I look through the stack?” The dwarven woman pointedly moved her eyes from the wall with bounty posters to a bunch of copies stacked on the counter.

“Naturally not.” The barkeep pushed the stack of copies to his guest. “We’re always welcoming people willing to earn some coin.”

“...or to spend it, naturally,” quipped the dwarf while her fingers were already moving through the bounty posters. She studied several of them.

The sight was familiar to the barkeep. The woman seemed more thorough than most of the usual bounty hunters. He appreciated the sign of professionalism. Although this dwarf might take it a bit too far. She did not only read carefully through all the provided information. She even fingered through every single copy available for the bounties. They always printed duplicates so that interested hunters could take a copy with them.

After some time, the dwarven woman had selected a handful of documents for some of the highest bounties. She casually spread them out on the table and shot the barkeep a meaningful glance.

“Anything not in the documents?” She placed another bill on the counter and waited for the barkeep to react. It was quite the generous ‘tip’.

The barkeep accepted the money without comment and then pointed at one of the posters. “There are rumors that the issuer is not good for the money. It’s the owner of a large merchant house, but apparently bankrupt.” He moved his finger to another bounty and only shook his head without speaking before continuing to the last noteworthy poster. “This scumbag is a real piece of work as far as I’ve heard. If you’ll go for that one, be prepared to deal with hostages.”

“What about this one?” The dwarven woman pointed at the second poster on which the barkeep had evidently some unspoken thoughts.

“Well…” The barkeep took a deep breath. “I would just advise against taking it, honestly. I know the bounty is high, but…”

“Any information missing?” prodded the dwarven woman.

“No, not quite but…”

“Part of the rewards comes from cults…” The dwarf muttered as if thinking out loud. “I would have to travel to collect, true.” She caught the barkeep’s gaze. “I also see that another part of the total bounty had been promised by the Tiv government before the dissolution of the state. Those aren’t the only sponsors though. Rewards promised from individuals in Thanatos and in the Martial Sects.” She waited for the barkeep to jump in. “Anything I’m missing so far?”

“No, it’s not about the bounty itself.” The barkeep shrugged, shook his head, and sighed. “I know it sounds silly, but that bounty is simply cursed.”

The dwarven woman maintained a deadpan expression and then slowly raised an eyebrow with skepticism. “Cursed?”

“Silly, I know, but people going after the Whetstone Arcanian have been dying everywhere. It’s bad luck, I tell you.”

“Is that so…?” The dwarven woman pushed forth her lower lip and looked at the face on the bounty poster. A younger Terry was motionlessly looking back at her. Wordlessly, she pushed the posters together into a single stack again and pocketed her selection of bounties with Terry’s still mixed in.

“See? That’s why I didn’t want to say anything,” grumbled the barkeep.

The dwarven woman’s eyes glinted and she grinned. “First time?”

“I wish.” The barkeep rolled his eyes. “Just last week I gave the same warning and just like with you, it was ignored.”

“And?” teased the dwarven woman. “Did the curse strike already?”

“No, but I stand by what I said,” grumbled the barkeep.

“Oh?” The dwarf licked her lips and paused pensively. “I’m not sure I want to step on the toes of another bounty hunter for this one.” She shrugged. “Perhaps we can work something out. A bit of cooperation to defeat the curse.” She winked at the barkeep.

“Ha-ha.” The barkeep sarcastically mimicked a monotone laugh. “Well, you can try. That group usually stays at the Silver Sparrow and they haven’t departed yet.”

The dwarven woman nodded. She continued looking through the stack of remaining bounty posters one more time and only stopped when she heard the tavern’s door open. Seeing the figure of the dwarven man with pure white hair in the door, it was time.

“Thanks for the drink.” The dwarven woman knocked on the table and left. When she caught up with her companion, she whispered. “Three targets, I already know the first…”

***