The Archmage: Chapter Thirty-Four (Patreon)

It took a while to wrangle the class back into working on artifacts, but once we did, I passed out aura crystals to each of them. They were the smallest on the market, low quality, and not particularly expensive, but I’d had to purchase them out of pocket. Still, I wanted to get my students used to wielding artifacts and foci both, as that would give the best possible grounding in enchantment that I could give them. 

Once everyone had their stone, I headed to the board. 

“I’m going to go through the basic techniques of anchoring twice,” I said. “Since this one is using the universal anchor, there’s actually a lot of overlap from when we practiced with Foci, we just also need some extra linking into the stone, so that we can build a source of power. Once I’ve run through the demonstrations, I’m going to put three new spells on the board. I want each of you to pick one, and then do your best to anchor it in.”

I went through showing them the subtle shifts of the anchoring that needed to be done, before I wrote three spells out on the board. 

“Up until now, I’ve provided each of you with a choice of spells, and that continues into the artifact portion. Where this changes, however…” 

I turned and faced my students. 

“The tournament is coming up, and I’ll not have you all fail out because of a bit of bad luck. I want to give you the tools you need to succeed. I fully support those of you who want to avoid combat. But until things change, this is a school that requires combat. It is worth thirty percent of your grade, and I cannot control that. So for the artifacts section of the class, I’m going to give you options that will let you hide, fight, or flee.” 

I tapped each of the spells I’d written out. 

“All of these are intermediate level spells, but if you want to stretch your skills, it’s better to do it here with me, where I can check over your work, than do it alone in your room.” 

I gave them a wry smile. 

“Trust me, I made that mistake myself. The first spell is a simple light veil. It won’t prevent someone with mind magic, scent magic, sound magic, or any other methods from tracking you, but it’s valuable nevertheless. The second spell is a basic body enhancement, focused around the legs, lungs, and heart. It can make you a bit stronger with your kicks too, but it’s intent is to allow you to run for longer and sprint with less effort. The third is a force beam. You won’t get much time with the beam active – I didn’t have infinite money for the crystals – but it’s worthwhile.” 

I paused, trying to think if there was anything else, then snapped. 

“Ah, you should include a list of components and mark where you’re going to place each one. I struggled with using components at first, but now that I’ve wired my brain to use them, I’ve come to realize just how much help they can be. I’ll look over the list and give you my opinions. I think that’s all!”

The class got to work, and I let them at it. This was similar to foci, but it was still different enough that it would take them a while to get something up to standard. 

That evening, I ventured down into the depths of Yesgol, continuing to note how things could be improved. Without stripping them bare and rebuilding them, I wasn’t sure that I’d actually be able to do much, though. There was so much power bound up in the spells that trying to redo them was like trying to restructure a forge from the inside – you just wound up burning to death. 

Worse, for all that the spells sustaining the growth of the tree had been well designed, they clearly hadn’t been designed for the tree to grow this large. The tree produced a massive amount of power every second – and given the siphon spells I could see, I thought that Yesgol was only getting about thirty percent of it. Of the remaining seventy percent, half was dedicated to patching over the old enchantments, and the other half was going to the east. I wasn’t sure where, since it cut through the Wandering Path to get there, but somewhere. 

The trouble was, for all the power it produced, the tree absolutely did not want to survive here. The soil was wrong, the air was wrong, the temperatures were wrong, the light amounts were wrong, even the humidity was too low. Every single thing had to be accounted for, just to stop the tree from dying, and some of the original designers hadn’t expected it to be this much of a burden. 

Recycling some of the tree’s own aura into the spell was their original solution, but it had only been a patchwork. Even now, if all of the aura that the tree produced was put into maintaining itself, it would be a net loss. 

So the aura sparks and imbued enchantment, drawing power from other realms had started. All stopgaps, each one slowly needing more and more. 

When I’d first looked at the problem, I thought the growth spell would be an easy solution, and I did still think that it could be used, but it wouldn’t be quite so easy. 

At the end of the day, the growth spell resembled a directory. Within my abjuration spells, it allowed them to remember and gradually improve its effectiveness, and thanks to the divination spells, it could even add more to the memory banks and improve on those too.

But it didn’t add power or expand on functions. Eventually, my cloak would reach a point where the memory banks were full and optimized to their maximum, at which point someone would have to go in and add more themselves. 

Someone – it wouldn’t be me. I’d made the banks large enough to last a lifetime, probably several. 

It also wouldn’t somehow expand on how much power it had. It could improve efficiency of that power, but it didn’t just add more capacitor or inductor runes. 

It was still a fabulous spell – Osheen’s tattoo used it to continually improve the efficiency of his force spells, for example. 

But this was another matter of raw power, which I wasn’t the best at. If I found a way to…

“Why?” someone said. The voice was ethereal and ephemeral, and I almost thought that I’d imagined it.

But no, that couldn’t be right – Oracle had also heard it.

I turned around and looked for the source of the voice, but I saw nobody there at all. Oracle and I both already had our third eyes open since we were doing enchanting work, but we immediately started looking around the room, trying to figure out the source of the voice. 

There was nothing. Not a single rune out of place. 

“Who are you?” I demanded, flaring my cloak around me, trying to keep myself safe from whatever was in the room with me. 

I started creeping towards the entrance, Oracle’s third eye straining and looking through layers of reality I hadn’t truly begun to understand yet…

Which meant that I was able to get a perfect view as the enchantments went absolutely wild, writhing as the tree’s aura bucked and changed. The roots began to shift and shake, trembling like I was caught in the middle of an earthquake.

“Tomorrow…” the voice said. “Return!”

I shakily nodded and left, working on expanding Oracle’s bracelet. Once I’d finally calmed down, I returned to Osheen and explained what happened. 

“Do you think it was the tree?” he asked. 

“What?” I asked. “It’s a tree.” 

“It’s also got an aura,” he said. “If our escapades have taught me anything, it’s that the aura seems to be connected to the soul in a deep way.” 

I paused, nodding. It was true, but thinking about it as a tree was… strange. A tree with a soul? How did that even work? 

But I thought that Osheen’s suggestion was the most likely to be correct, especially since I couldn’t think of what else could be going on.

The following morning, I returned to the hidden space under the tree before classes even began. 

Within the same space where there had once been all of the enchantments, there was only one thing that had changed. 

Three acorns, each the size of a full melon, sat on one of the desks. 

“Take,” the strange voice on the wind said, and I twitched. The voice was different. It had been faint and brief even before, but now… 

“You’re dying,” I said to the tree. I still felt very strange talking to a tree, but if it had the capacity for sapience, then who was I to judge it.” 

“Put self in seeds. Not dead yet, ears good one. Kill one, three bathed in the ashes, three rise. Grow better.” 

I frowned as I tried to parse the strange language. The self in seeds – the tree presumably had stored part of itself inside of the acorns. 

The second line was probably the most confusing – the tree wasn’t dead yet. Could I only hear it do to my strange nature? That didn’t make sense. Why were my ears good? My faerie connections were all I could think of, but that didn’t make any sense. 

At least the last two lines made sense. Kill the tree and bathe the acorns in the tree’s ashes to allow them to grow better.

“How?” I asked. 

“Not dead… But tired. Power have. Power give. Use. Die. Reborn as three. Language bad. Hard think. Long time.” 

That was even more obscure and arcane, but I thought I took the meaning of the first part of the sentence. 

“You want me to –” 

Before I could finish asking the question, the room shifted again, another small door appearing. 

“Here is.” the faint voice said. 

I froze, and Oracle offered to go ahead. After all, if he died, it would only discorporate his vessel, not truly kill him. 

With some grumbling, I agreed, and he winged over to the door, planting himself on a table, and after a bit of struggling, the door opened. 

Within, I could see a single spell. A new spell, one that I could tamper with to my heart's content. The original plant spell that had begun the growth of Yesgol after Paerús conquered the land. 

It was dead, long dead. The magic had burnt it out, channeling more power through it than it could handle. 

But as far as a symbolic component worked, it was about the most perfect thing I could hope for. 

“Long held. Now rest. Kill.” 

I froze at the last word, but when there was no attack, I figured the tree had meant it as a reminder for me to kill it.

I was too creeped out to do much that day, so I just added some basic abjuration runes that would allow me to shut off the power modulation and direct it however I wished. Not technically a violation of my oath – after all, it was a massive improvement, since the tree had invested in making three successors, rather than living itself. The three new trees would be better. 

I did feel bad about killing the tree, but as I took one last look at the enchantments that kept it alive, fed on blood and death, I changed that thought. It was sad, but I thought it was mercy. 

I wasn’t sure how I’d get better solutions yet. But I would.