Keiran

For two years, I’d devoted practically every waking moment to a singular goal. I’d made compromises, I’d sold my skills, and I’d begged favors to keep the mana I needed coming in. I’d sacrificed time with my family and secluded myself away to stay focused. And now, finally, I was ready to reap the rewards of that dedication.

I stood in the middle of a forest, in a clearing that had been made when a local druid had decided to relocate his home, treehouse and supporting trees both, to escape the encroaching stone. Rather than plant new trees to replace the ones he’d left with, I’d decided to turn the site into the ritualistic center of my plan. I’d used magic to smooth out the ground into flat, bare stone, and spent endless hours carving runes into it. Now I stood in the center of a circle of a million runes spread out fifty feet in every direction.

Surrounding me were a hundred thousand trees, every single one of them petrified from their roots to their crowns. It was a forest of living stone, what would have been a natural wonder of the world if not for the fact that it was all artificial. I’d made it, along with the help of that druid and his assistants.

Mana hung thick in the air around me, probably the second densest place on the planet next to the demesne of my greatest enemy. That tower was sunk directly down to the world core, providing him with an unconquerable advantage when it came to sheer quantity of mana. It had also broken the rest of the world, leaving it with no mana at all.

We’d disagreed strongly on the best way to solve that the last time we’d met.

Despite promises to find me, and soon, I’d managed to keep myself and my sanctuary hidden while I prepared for this ritual. And now, unless that evil old lich managed to interrupt things in the next half an hour or so, I was finally about to form my genius loci and advance my mana core to stage six.

I put those thoughts out of my head to focus on the task at hand. Every single tree was producing mana, and I needed to tap into that. I stood in the center of my ritual circle and began pumping mana into it, runes lighting up in a rush around me, line after line until, finally, the whole thing was glowing.

The ritual wasn’t a long one. My mana reached out into the area around me and laced itself through the entire valley like a net. More and more strands wove themselves through, reaching for the far-off border of my domain and for my hidden underground labs underneath it. They stretched until they touched the line of ember blooms making up the east and west borders, all clippings from the original I’d found years ago and had carefully cultivated over the last eighteen months.

My awareness merged into the ritual magic. This was the most dangerous part, where the sudden influx of information threatened to overload my mind. If I failed to hold the ritual together, everything would fall apart and months of mana would be wasted.

So of course that was when the ground started rumbling and plumes of dirt shot up into the air.

Thanks in large part to my new awareness of the entire valley, I already knew what was happening. I’d had a few problems with these creatures over the past year. They were some sort of enormous worm that ate rock, and they were extremely interested in the petrified forest I’d created. More than once, I’d had to exterminate a colony of the beasts.

They generally stayed underground, but I’d embedded explosive spells at a depth of about fifty feet all over the forest floor, just waiting for something to run into them. These ones came from about half a mile to the north, meaning the worms had come in from under the mountain and just reached the edge of the valley’s floor. It wasn’t particularly surprising. I’d been dealing with them on a weekly basis for months once their colony had discovered the valley, but I’d just killed the last group yesterday and I’d been expecting a few more days of peace.

Normally, I’d use various divinations to get a visual on the intruders, then head over there directly and destroy them if my various automated defenses couldn’t get the job done. Rock worms in particular were hardy enough that they tended to survive my countermeasures and aggressive enough that they didn’t even consider retreating.

Now that I’d begun to establish my bond to the genius loci of the valley, I could dispense with the surveying and travel portions. Though the bond wasn’t yet permanent, it was still a bridge between my mind and my home. An act of willpower was all it took to get a sense for what was happening at the northern edge, and another to form the spells from where I stood that sent pressurized jets of water to cut through dirt and stone.

All six of the rock worms fell to pieces in a matter of moments, and I felt something akin to smugness come from the genius loci. It wasn’t a sapient being, but it was… aware, and it knew that I was its partner. We’d protect each other for as long as the bond lasted. And that would be a very, very long time.

The interruption dealt with, I returned my full attention to the in-progress ritual so that I could solidify the bond.

* * *

Ironically, one of the first things I did after bonding my genius loci and advancing to stage six was leave the valley. It wasn’t happy about that, but no genius loci ever liked when its mage was absent. Unfortunately for it, I had places to be and things to do.

That was why I’d teleported to New Alkerist, the farming community my father had designed and built with my help. Over the last few years, I’d rarely seen my family. This was in part because I was extremely busy and in part because I did not want an assassin tracing me to the village and killing people in a bid to get to me.

Having the attention of a stage nine archmage—who also happened to be a lich—focused on me was not pleasant. I’d expected him to make a serious effort to find me, but so far, I’d only had to deal with his agents twice. Both times, I’d intercepted them before they could cause damage and sent them on their way, their knowledge of the island altered to believe that what they sought was elsewhere.

Twisting their minds left a foul taste in my mouth, but there wasn’t a better alternative. Options were the privilege of the powerful, and I wasn’t one of them, not yet. I absolutely could not afford to be found. In two years of pondering, I’d determined that I was faced with an impossible situation. Prying a lich out of his demesne when it produced many, many times more mana than my own wasn’t a possibility. The only option was to regain my former strength so that it became equally impossible for him to defeat me.

I appeared inside my room in my family’s home. I’d built the house for them using stone shaping magic, and even though I had no plans to live there, both my parents had insisted I carve out space for myself. Two chairs and the scrying mirror I’d gifted them years ago were the only ornamentation in my otherwise empty room.

The mirror itself had a teleportation beacon woven into its enchantments, making it easier and cheaper for me to appear in front of it than anywhere else in town, and despite my newfound advancement to stage six, it was impossible to have too much mana in this desert of a world to be wasteful. I could walk the last twenty feet with no complaints.

I exited my room into a hallway with four other doorways, those of my other family members and a bathing room. At the end of the hallway was a kitchen, currently empty, and beyond that a parlor where they were all gathered.

Father sat in a chair at the far end of the parlor and studied a map of the village mounted on the wall. Senica had made it for him last year, and its magic allowed him to continually update it as he saw fit. He used it to keep track of crop rotations in the field, which seemed a waste to me, but everyone else was happy with it, so I kept my opinion to myself.

My sister was at a desk, flipping through a book and jotting down notes of her own. Ever since she’d managed to put together her mana lattice, she’d been progressing by leaps and bounds. It was unfortunate that I wasn’t able to spend more time with her, but we’d spoken regularly over the last few years, so I wasn’t completely out of the loop.

It was Mother, holding my new baby brother on her lap, who noticed me first. “Gravin!” she said in surprise. “I swear, you need to announce your presence instead of just sneaking into the house.”

At one and a half years old, Nailu was exhibiting none of the signs of being anything other than a normal, happy, healthy child. I’d plied my mother with quite a few alchemical concoctions throughout the pregnancy to ensure that he had all the advantages I could grant him, which at this point weren’t much. When he got a bit older, though, I had high hopes for his ability to control mana. If Senica was any indicator, we had the pedigree to be a powerful mage family.

“Hello,” I said, pausing to conjure a small illusion in front of Nailu. He giggled and swished his fingers through it, causing it to break into little streamers of light that spiraled out and vanished, only to reform a moment later. With that accomplished, I claimed an empty seat and relaxed into it.

“You’re different,” Senica said.

“Stage six,” I told her. That was all the explanation she needed, having studied the topic of core advancement extensively. My parents, still sitting at stage one and showing no desire to go further, knew only the broad strokes.

“So the valley is all stone now?” Father asked.

“As of about a week ago, yes.”

“That’s too bad. It was beautiful the way it was,” Mother said. She touched Nailu’s head and added, “We had some good memories there.”

“Ewwwww,” Senica groaned. “I don’t want to think about that!”

Our parents exchanged looks and simultaneously rolled their eyes while I laughed softly and Nailu let out a stream of incomprehensible babble. “That’s right, Nailu,” Mother said. “Your big sis is just so dramatic.”

“Don’t listen to them,” Senica pleaded with our baby brother.

My laughter just got louder. Of all the things I’d missed, these moments with my family were at the top of the list. Unfortunately, the mood wasn’t meant to last.

“The traders came back this morning with news about a group of strangers in the towns up north,” Father said soberly. “Three different places so far. They weren’t being obvious about their intentions, but we don’t get strangers often enough for it to be a coincidence.”

“Ammun’s men,” I agreed. “Were they pale skinned?”

“Yes. Very obviously foreign.”

“They have good timing, I suppose. I’ll have to intercept them tomorrow and send them on their way.”

Not for the first time, I wondered what life was like for the civilization that lived in Ammun’s tower now that he’d resumed power. Perhaps some of them had fled, but I doubted it. In life, he’d been some sort of minor nobility, presumably schooled in the skill of ruling. Assuming those skills hadn’t completely atrophied, I’d expected him to smoothly step into the tower’s ruling class and begin making whatever changes he desired.

As I was making plans to track down Ammun’s people, a rapid knock came from the front door. Without waiting for anyone to answer, one of the farmers burst in. “Sellis,” he said, addressing my father with a shaky voice. “Intruders on the platform, all armed.”