Boring.

  That was the first thought that rushed through my mind as Kilyriza’s mother screamed at us. It had been entirely expected, at least to Salem and me. Both of us had dealt with fully fledged fae before, and had expected that Kilyriza would try to weasel out of paying us. She’d swapped her tune around quickly when she’d gotten a look at our powers, but her first impression on us had a degree of imperiousness that suggested she looked at us as lesser. Not to mention, handing over samples of the strongest trees in the forest as payment? It was unlikely she’d enjoy doing that, even if she valued her mother more.

  With that in mind, it was safe to assume we were going to be double-crossed. But we were bound under guest rights, meaning that Kilyriza and her kin attempting anything too heavy handed would violate that. At best, she’d be physically incapable of that, and at worst, she’d owe us a significant debt.

  What option did that leave her? Well, her mother of course. She had been trapped in the brain-melting song while fighting a mortal, and upon seeing a bunch of them suddenly in the grove with her, it was natural that she’d react violently, assuming we were reinforcements to the long dead songcaller. If her mother killed us before she could intervene and explain things, then that wasn’t her fault. She’d just need to bemoan the tragedy to our master, and with her strength and her mothers, she doubtless thought she would hand over a pittance in weregild. And that was if he even came by at all – we might have been lying to create the illusion of having greater backing than we did.

  Which was why Yushin and Jackson had been assigned to their share of spellcasting, not in order to protect Salem, but to stop the restored matriarch’s rampage. It was clear from Kilyriza’s words, as well as her multiple affinities, that she viewed magic through the lens of affinities. As soon as Kilyriza’s mother shouted, Jackson swept his amulet out, launched forward, clasped me on the shoulder, and cast a spell that she would have never assumed a fire mage and holy warrior would be capable of casting, but one that I was very familiar with. In the same moment, Yushin’s hands landed on Salem’s black and white hair, and cast the same spell.

  An arcane passage molded around us, and we were suddenly a thousand feet deeper in the forest. All around us, the trees were moving and whispering with the rage and hatred of the mother, but we weren’t done. Jackson and Yushin both reached into their lockers and tapped another paper. Another thousand feet flashed by in an instant, then a third, then a fourth, and more. When we had teleported a total of eight times, both of them grimaced. That was all they had been able to prepare in the days leading up to the freeing of the mother, and even those had required hunting down the remaining diseased dogs and using siphon vitality to stop us from reaching dangerous levels of exsanguination.

  Still, in the matter of seconds, we had moved a mile and a half deeper into the forest, and we weren’t done yet. I fanned my hand out, tapping into multiple spellglyphs of my own, as they cast flyte on themselves. Gravity loosened its hold on each of us and the winds began shift out of our way as we blasted up over the tree line and toward our cottage like an arrow fired from a bow.

  Behind us, birds erupted into the sky, and magic started to form around them. The matriarch’s eye and channeling affinities must have been truly terrifying, as she was somehow directing every other affinity into her, then outward through the eyes of the flock, but she had made one crucial mistake. Within my ethersight, I could only see a single tether extending from her, up into the flock as a whole. Rather than elegantly connecting to dozens of birds through as many tethers, she’d simply made a single channel so massive it encompassed all of them.

  Against anyone but an abjuration mage who had the time to study her spells while she was passed out, it might have worked.

  I whipped my wand down and released a disrupt casting, tuned specifically to destroying a spell built with those affinities contained within them. She was still using massively more power than I was, but as my spell struck hers, it was clear I had the advantage. Between the fact she was using such an inefficient channel to begin with and the fact that I’d tuned my spell to hers, every drop of power I was using to counter her required her to use an entire lake of ether.

  I used a variation on Maugrim’s surge, drawing the power into my fire, and then fueled my disruption with my flames. Her working shattered like fine glass struck by a hammer, and we put more into our frantic escape. I could see her ether surging through the forest, but before she could release a third attack, we were out on the plains.

  For all the rage that she had shown at us, the moles of the plains were powerful, and there were several of them around her. We were gambling Kilyriza might have been able to excuse her attacks so far, but she’d stop her mother from starting an all out war with the moles, especially when there were now a handful of freed moles in the heart of her territory.

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  As ether built at the border of our forest, I wondered if we had gambled wrong. Then the power faded away, and Kilyriza stepped out onto the plains, her regalia on full display. She looked up at us, her eyes burning with irritation, but she made no move to attack as we slowly landed, looking up at her cautiously.

  “My… apologies…” Kilyriza said, her face and tone as if someone had forced her to swallow sandpaper. “Mother was distraught about seeing other mortals, assuming you were attackers as well.”

  A very careful management of the truth. Not an outright lie, but not mentioning how she hadn’t exactly worked to stop the misunderstanding. Salem nodded slowly, stepping forward and meeting her eyes.

  “It would not be unreasonable to press that we are owed a debt for the expenses of our escape. After all, had you been faster to fulfill your duties as host, we would not have expended days of blood in our escape.”

  “It would not be unreasonable, but it would also not be unreasonable to rebut that you should have expected as such, and calculated it in your payment,” Kilyriza said, her eyes narrowing as she looked at us. She didn’t ask what we wanted, as that would be admitting wrong, and Salem hadn’t actually accused her of anything – yet.

  “If we were to argue over fault, then it would behove the wounded party to accept the risk of the initial attack, maybe, but there were three, and you only acted in the third,” Salem said calmly. “But we are not arguing, not so long as you remember that we are not, and that we did not press you when we could.”

  “You are seen favorably, but not owed a favor, then,” Kilyriza said, nodding and letting out a breath of relief.

  “Not so long as we receive our payment before the sun sets beneath the horizon,” Salem said. “After that, you will be in violation of our pact.”

  Kilyriza stared at him, then lifted her staff and began to melt away into the trees, saying nothing at all. Once she was gone, Yushin frowned and looked at Salem.

  “Why did you do that? We could have used the favor to gather additional materials.”

  “And we would have been seen unfavorably by the occupants of this plane overall,” Salem responded. “We’ve annoyed the lava fish, the dogs, and maybe the grindylows. Even if those aren’t sapients, and their minds matter less, getting one half of the sapients to also dislike us would have definitely tipped the scales into rending all that dead wood useless.”

  “We do not need the dead wood, spatial rings are far more effective than an Etherius locker,” Yushin said dismissively. “We could have simply sold the wood off.”

  That got Jackson, Salem, and me to stare at her. She flexed her hand where the silver band was sitting, and pursed her lips.

  “Ah.”

  Before she could say anything else, I began to see flickers of ether at the edges of my vision, and a moment later, Kilyriza emerged from the forest, holding four long staves of wood. Within my ether sight, I could see that they were seventh circle materials, and each of them held truly impressive levels of ether in them. She tossed them to the ground, where they clattered, and then she nodded to us before fading away into her forest again.

  I walked over and examined the staves. One of them was made of dark wood, like mahogany, and seemed to radiate shadow around it. I passed that one over to Yushin, who accepted it without complaint. The next one was covered in strange bark, almost like a spiderweb, and it seemed to pulse gently with memory. Not exactly the mind, but close enough that I passed it over to Salem. The next two were an ashen color, and I thought they must have come from the area where the forest bordered on the volcano, as both of them seemed filled with heat, minerals, and water, like they’d been fed by a hot spring or geyser. I handed one to Jackson and took the last for myself.

  With our new materials, we headed back to the cottage, and I knelt down in the room, beginning work on the mage tools ritual, while mentally planning my future. When I learned the fifth circle version of the mage tools ritual, I’d be able to add an amulet, circlet, crystalline orb, or athame to my repertoire. Even though it was somewhat boring, I thought it made the most sense for me to form an amulet, granting me a much larger pool of magic, a decent ability to replace components in spells, and a small boost to spell efficacy. I’d want to check over the other options as well, to make sure I wasn’t losing anything, but I relied enough on my core disciplines of magic that I thought the amulet made the most sense.

  Ideally, I’d construct the amulet with the ether enriched iron and the liquidfire obsidian, but that would create something of an issue with using a great focusing material like the obsidian on something that would get minimal use out of it. Maybe I could use the liquidfire obsidian on my staff? But my current runed cursestone was perfect for Yushin’s ritual, and had immense affinity for me that had only grown with my use of it in the ritual to protect Salem. I didn’t expect to get that level of affinity with the obsidian right away. I could use the ether enriched metal on my wand, but that had the same issue as using the crystal in an amulet. There was just so little benefit to pool expansion from my wand that it would be a waste.

  In the end, I decided I’d wait, and set aside the liquidfire obsidian and ether crystal. Maybe I’d make an athame, circlet, or orb with them, maybe I would wind up making an amulet, but for right now, the only material I’d be integrating was this wood into my staff. As it gave a decent amount of pool expansion, it would be the most immediate boost to my power without sacrificing long term potential.

  I completed the spell, and released the full weight of the wood onto my ether pool, only to find that it was so powerful that it made ether shaping impossible. I eased back until I was at a solid level of shaping skill and additional power, then completed the ritual, watching as my staff shifted slightly in color to represent the new wood. There was a strange melting sensation as the affinity I’d grown with the dappled radiant hawthorne wood transferred in part to my new wood, helping ease the burden on my spirit some.

  I swung my new staff onto my shoulder and walked out to reinforce the defenses, just in case anything happened during the last night in this realm.

  Patreon Here!

  Discord Here!