The Archmage: Chapter Eight (Patreon)

It was slow work. I had to hide my sheets each time a guard came to give me good – the quality of which had actually improved slightly, presumably thanks to my cooperation. 

The worst part was when I smeared a line, and was forced to wash it out of the sheet. It meant I had to redo hours upon hours of work. It wasn’t as if blood and a finger was especially well known for being exceptionally precise either, so I wound up having to redo sections more than once. 

But as each day went by, I could feel a change starting to close in. The cold iron of the bars became warm to the touch by the second day, which was when I’d managed to form a force spear array, one that called upon the hunter constellation’s magic and mortal force magic to imbue the shot. 

I used the tiny puff of aura to activate each rune, then plugged it into the wards to speed the charging, not unlike what I’d done during the faerie party. 

The following morning, I heard the entire house shaking with the sound of combat, and I strained at the bars of my cell, but I wasn’t done with my enchanting, not enough to slip out the doors. Had Osheen and Tara come to rescue me? Was an enemy attacking? 

Whatever it was, I wasn’t let in on it. The fighting lasted a long time, but eventually faded away, and when I asked the guard what had happened, she just shrugged. 

“Not suppose to tell you,” she said. 

“Please?” I asked. “Just… At least tell me if anyone died in the attack? If it was my crew who attacked?”

She shook her head and walked away. I sighed and went back to working on my own escape plan, though the knot of worry in my stomach was growing worse. Tara might have retreated, but I doubted Osheen would give up so easily. If I’d saved him, only for him to die in an attempt to save me, I wouldn’t forgive myself. 

Three days later, and the iron was beginning to actively sting my skin each time I touched it, but I’d managed to create an enchantment that projected woven a veil of light and shadow around me, as well as the sections of abjuration that should stop the alarm spells from picking up on me, hopefully making me nearly invisible.

I had to leave now. There was no other option, not really. 

When the guard came that morning to bring me breakfast, I accepted it, ate, then got to work. More blood was used to draw on the walls, altering the ward lines and redirecting them. 

I was no Tara, but this would have to be enough for my blankets to take up the slack.

I wrapped myself in the bloodsoaked blankets, tying them into knots to stop them from bunching around me strangely, and then tapped them to the wardlines as well. 

As the blankets connected to the stored power of the wards, magic began to hum through the enchantments. I lifted my left hand and watched as the blue light faded from the bars, then I released a blast of force. 

The door ripped itself off its hinges, blowing open with a squeal of tearing metal. 

Starless Night! 

That had been a lot louder than I’d intended, and output a way stronger offense than I thought. I’d hoped to have the time to maybe steal some books or artifacts, but there was no way that nobody in the house above hadn’t heard that. I needed to get out of here!

I activated the veiling function and watched my vision warp slightly as the light and shadow bent around me, then I sprinted through the illusion and into the cellar. I tried to open the cellar doors, but they were locked from the outside. 

Well, in for a copper, in for a crown. I thrust my hand out again, and with a boom of magic, the wooden doors of the cellar exploded into splinters. I leapt out onto the grass, suddenly very grateful that they hadn’t stripped my boots away from me, and started running towards the front gate. 

Even as I began moving, though, I could tell that there was something wrong. My sheets were beginning to heat up, glowing green, but not the right color. Mine was a rich emerald green, but the glow moving through the sheets was too bright, more like… grass. 

There was a hammering on my skull then, as my sheets evaporated in a burst of vibrant spring fire. Alarm wards started blaring around the mansion, and I felt tears stinging my eyes, even as I sped towards the gates. 

No, no, no. There was no way I could be too late. I had to escape, I had to–

I was cut off by Edward Elide soaring down from the sky and landing in front of me. He gave me a chilling smile and shook his head. 

“What a shame. I’d been planning to offer you a job, too, but it’s clear you can’t be trusted.” 

He leveled a single finger at me, and I saw magic condense around its tip. A moment later, a force beam, condensed down to the size of a needle, lanced through my chest. 

I fed my aura into my fourth arch-star even as I collapsed onto the ground. I heard Edward sigh and say something about a waste of a sacrifice, but it was fading out, the whiteness of near-death slipping over me. 

My… Arch-star? 

My eyes widened. I still had an arch-star!

I was very nearly dead, and I could feel the spring magic start to surge and boil through me, begging to be released. It was strong enough now to corrupt my magic, to stop my foci from working, but it wasn’t completely there. 

In the void of white, arch-stars spun above my head, the last vestiges of my humanity.

I could feel the clashing, roiling power within me, two halves fighting desperately for dominance. 

And the human side was losing. Inch by inch, the territory around my soul was giving way, turning into that of a faerie. 

I reached for them, and I tried to reinforce the human side, but it did nothing but slow the crawl, ever so slightly. I was too weak, without the skill or power needed to become a human. But I could delay it, so I did. 

Then, with all of my skill and focus, I split my concentration and reached out for the faerie magic. It was spring, but why should it remain spring? There was a way to change it, I knew that. I’d been offered a method to change it. 

But now, it felt so… simple. Oracle’s magic pulsed to a tune of magic, a beating drum and clarion flute that I had been unable to hear before. Spring was different, its drum fainter, but it was filled with strings and woodwinds. I turned down the woodwinds, turned up the bass, and slowly but surely, matched the tune, pitch, tempo, and rhythm of the autumnal, change-focused magic that Oracle was. 

It was easier than I expected, and I thought the nature of faerie magic was to blame. I wasn’t transforming water into fire, but rather turning a coin over to see the design stamped on the other side. 

Even as it finished, I called upon it. My eyes snapped open, and I hauled myself to my feet, even as my aura continued to thin and disperse. 

I held my hands up, one blazing with the emerald magic of my humanity, and the other blazing with the silvery-brown-red of autumnal magic. 

Edward’s sorcery must have alerted him, because he whipped around… but he was too late. 

I wasn’t a sorcerer, but over the course of the past two years, I’d spent an inordinate amount of time looking at the spell that created aura sparks. 

Changing that spell to be in large part autumnal magic? 

Well, I’d been given knowledge of faerie death magic at Medb’s party. I’d built a spell using some of the principles I was now tapping into, to try and kill the spring queen, and when I’d eventually won, I’d seen how she shaped magic to do the same to her. 

Even with all my knowledge, the spell wasn’t perfect. I think I was too far gone at that moment to make a perfect spell. Even if I wasn’t, could the magic wipe itself out? If so, it was beyond my abilities. 

Not only that, but I wasn’t a sorcerer. I hadn’t put the hours into shaping my aura, so the spell was crude beyond imagining. A broadsword, rather than an elegant scalpel.

But it was enough. 

Death magic lanced through the body of Edward Elide, and his own contingency arch-star blazed to life as he tried to fight the death coming in from all sides. His body magic was strong, and he was able to flood his lifeline, not unlike my own arch-star, but it distracted him. I flipped one hand up and sent a blast of constellations magic – the hunter, one of my favorites – at him. It struck at him, and for just a second, his arch-star flickered, diverting its attention to create force armor and block the blow, rather than putting everything into preserving his life. 

And when you fight against a Faerie King, giving anything less than everything isn’t enough. 

Death magic shot through him, and he convulsed. His aura blazed through the circle of my power, then spiraled into me. 

I blacked out even as it suffused my aura, strengthening it, expanding it, making it more dense. 

Though blacked out wasn’t the right term, because I didn’t black out. I was back in the whiteness of near-death once again, the In Between of the now and death. 

Once again, the war was raging within me. The infusion of a human’s lifeline and a human’s aura had surged my own humanity’s strength greatly, and it was beginning to reclaim ground, but in the same instance, I could tell it wouldn’t be enough. 

The faerie magic had been a part of my aura far longer than the new infusion of humanity, and I hadn’t been able to do the full ritual that Draven had prepared. There had been no total disconnect of my aura to purge it, then replace it with an entirely new one, just the slamming of more power into it. 

The broadsword was a wonderful tool, but I had needed a scalpel, and I hadn’t used one.

For a moment that seemed to stretch on forever, the forces reached a near-perfect equilibrium. The faerie magic was a touch stronger, and it would begin regaining ground again soon if I didn’t do something…

But what was there to do? 

I reached out for the human magic and tried to throw my will behind it, to cleanse it, but while that evened it out more, into an absolute perfect equilibrium… So what? 

I couldn’t stay in this in-between forever. I’d eventually be forced to either return or pass on. Maintaining equilibrium only kept the status quo, it wasn’t a true fix. 

Should I accept my fate, then? Lay down and die? 

I didn’t want to, but I had accepted that it may be needed long ago. But… dying here wasn’t some grand sacrifice to save the people of my country from their tyrannical dictator. 

It was just failure. 

Then again, was that all I was? Was I just a failure?

I’d failed in my first attempt at the assassin’s cloak. 

I’d failed as a foci maker. 

I’d failed to successfully stop Franklin, twice. 

I’d failed to even escape this noble house. 

I might have even failed to keep Osheen alive, in the end.