The Archmage: Chapter Forty-Three (Patreon)

I leapt out of my seat and floated down into the arena, landing next to Willow. One of the guards actually tried to release a force lance right at me, but I broke it apart before it could even finish forming. 

“Congratulations!” I beamed. 

I had wanted to congratulate her, but there was another reason I wanted to land here. As I stomped my foot into the ground, I spiraled a circle of faerie magic in the wood under our feet, and shaped it into a spell that would render blood inert. 

It wasn’t an especially powerful change magic spell, all it did was change the blood into its constituent parts, removing its sympathetic link to the original owner. But I’d had blood from the arena used against me, and I didn’t want Willow to suffer the same fate. 

“Thank you!” Willow said, beaming. 

“And congratulations to all of my students!” I said, turning my gaze over everyone. “All of you have done wonderfully, and exceeded my expectations! Now, as per usual, if you’d like to stay and chat with our lovely guests, you’re welcome to, but if you’d prefer some privacy, I’d be happy to guide you away.” 

This time, I led the tired students to the hospital branch. If Justin wasn’t going to get them the healing they needed, at least they could use Yesgol’s medical services. 

“I did want to congratulate all of you again,” I told the kids. “I only made it to the top ten in my year, so as far as I’m concerned, all of you have done fantastic.” 

That lightened the mood of a few of them – Jonah, in particular, looked brighter, and as they were slowly shuffled into the hospital one by one, I whispered to Willow. 

“Well done. You hid the blood trick well, I don’t think anyone else noticed, and I’m impressed you’ve already gotten such a start on artifacts.” 

She beamed at me, and I ushered her into the branch a moment later. 

“They’re good kids,” Osheen said, stepping next to me as we took positions on either side of the door that led into the hospital. We hadn’t discussed it, but given that it was the only way in or out of the branch other than the windows, it seemed logical for us to guard the doors.

“They are,” I agreed. “I’ve done my best to give them a good start.” 

“I think you’ve done well,” Osheen agreed. “I’ve done the same.” 

“Well, considering how close the fights were, I’d say you did excellent as well,” I said. 

We stayed outside the branch for a while, until Justin Hasting approached, flanked by two of his guards. He glared at us as he drew closer. 

“I realize you’re self important enough to think you’re both archmages, but you’re not. Step aside, I need to deliver the final tournament rewards to our first and second place winners.” 

I didn’t like the way he was acting , but I had the sense that if I started something here and now, it wouldn’t be me who paid the price, so I stepped aside to let them in. Osheen did the same, then once they’d entered, we both followed them in, loitering in the lobby as Justin went into Willow’s room, then into Olive’s. He spoke to both Faye and Donovan, presumably figuring out what each wanted, so he wouldn’t have to dirty himself by making a second visit after the loser’s bracket. 

After that, Justin left, but not before giving us both a glare. Once he was gone, I rolled my eyes, which at least got a pity chuckle out of Osheen. 

The loser’s bracket went smoothly enough, with Donnovan just barely managing to eke out a victory over Faye by getting his ward up faster than she could flood the arena with fire, then firing off his force knives at her each time she got too close. In the end, it was Faye’s own impatience that cost her – had she used the fire as a metaphorical and somewhat literal smokescreen, then outwaited the ward, she would have won, but she decided to spend too much power trying to punch through the ward, which let Donovan get off the winning attacks. 

As the second, third, and fourth year tournaments continued, we each made our public appearances from time to time, but we also skipped several days, in order to catch up on sleep. 

The fourth year tournament was kind of interesting. The same druid who’s swept my first year tournament won this one as well, the larger winged serpent able to take on most of the remaining members of the class, while Victoria was able to take a solid second place, and Sarai’s cousin took third. 

I’d not been aware that any of them were even still attending school, honestly. I’d assumed Victoria would be pulled into House Roark to try and help fill the power vacuum, but apparently, she wasn’t. I hoped that she was innocent in all of this, and that she’d taken the deal without understanding what all was going on under the surface.

Had she been avoiding me? 

Probably. 

I put it out of my mind, and as the summer started, Osheen and I began to seriously ramp up the number of clock towers that we enchanted each night. It got to the point where I actually had to go out and purchase several more aura crystals in order to keep up with the amount of aura I needed, and Osheen spent a bit of time each day simply standing in the hottest bath possible, in order to help charge the stones up. 

It took us the better part of a month and a half, even focusing everything that we could on the clock towers. When Osheen and I weren’t working on clock towers, we flew north, to a cave that was a full hour and a half flight away from Hallowbrooke, and we began to prepare it for the worst case scenario, and I threw together a quick stone carving wand to assist in its creation. 

But eventually, we reached a point that Tara and I were both confident would cover as much of the population of Paerús as was reasonably possible

While getting packets into the minds of people who lived far away from anyone else, like farmers who sustained themselves off of their land, would be incredibly hard, we didn’t actually need every single person in the entire country to receive the message. 

Arguably, we didn’t even need to do as many of the towers as we did – if we had stuck to only the capital, for example, that still would have been far too large an amount of people for the archmages and government to be able to quash. 

But we agreed that it was worth it to hit every major population center. It was better to spread the information wider than was strictly needed than it was to risk it being too low. 

With the fact that the general populace of Paerús struggled with accepting magic at the best of times, I focused the memories that I was going to be displaying on the corrupt political structure, and the methods the nobility used to gain their human sacrifice. 

We also came to the conclusion that I was going to have to reveal myself as an archmage during the spell. While it was technically possible for a non-archmage to have cast the spell, the information I’d be putting out there would be too specific, and have too many details that few other people would even have a way of knowing. Regardless of if it took the nobility a day, a week, or a month, they would put together that I was the one behind it, and that would make me a target. 

If I declared myself an archmage during the event, it would catapult me into the public consciousness, which would at least make it harder to assassinate me without it seeming like it was retaliatory action… 

We hoped. 

It was hard to tell. None of us had ever done a spell on this scale before, none of us had ever even come close, and truthfully it was near impossible to predict how the public would react. There might be rioting in the streets, or there might be nothing at all. 

Even the Ligature wasn’t sure. While this was a goal that they’d been building toward for a long time, there wasn’t much of a historical precedent. While the oath-break king had experienced a violent revolution, that had been incited by his own supporters, not a relatively external force. 

But, since I was revealing myself, Osheen decided to reveal himself as well. Tara was still going to cling to her anonymity, which was fine, but Osheen made it clear in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t going to sit idly by while I drew all of the heat.

With that decision made, I met briefly with Liam again in secret to give over the keys, and we had a few days of relative nothingness, while we waited for all of the relays to charge up. 

During this period, the preparations that we’d made for the cave redoubled. 

The fact that Osheen and I lived in Yesgol wasn’t exactly a secret, so we needed a place to run and hide, in case everything went poorly and we had nowhere to dodge the assassins. I build abjurative arrays around the entire cave, stuffing them with every bit of counter-divination spellwork that I could manage, and even laid down a few wards. The ambient aura was thin here, so they weren’t strong, but they’d at least give us an alert if someone broke through the abjuration spells… 

Probably, at least. There was always a chance that someone would be skilled enough to slip around all of the defenses, rather than break through them, and if that were the case then we’d simply be out of luck. But even the best defenses couldn’t defend from everything. 

I also created a few single-use artifact stones around the perimeter of the cave, which would explode violently if a person other than us approached. Again, it wasn’t perfect, since familiars could slip by, but it was something. 

After the enchanting was done, we started stocking the cave with food and water. 

To my surprise, water was actually the hardest part. Even with me throwing together a couple of spells that would allow water to condense from the air, I had never really gained an appreciation of just how much water a person really drank. 

Food was also an annoyance. While it was all basic fare that could be stored, it attracted animals, and we returned more than once to find a bear nosing through the stored away salted fish and jerky. 

In the end, I wound up finding a basic animal repelling ritual, and set it up around the camp. It required a lot of inductors and capacitors fed with my recharge to keep active all day, but it was able to keep away almost all wildlife. 

Heat, thankfully, was much simpler. A bedroll and lots of blankets served well for the nights, and I was able to throw together an enchantment that produced a flame that shed almost no light, but lots of heat, more than enough to warm the cave. 

I’d spent so much time carving into stone at that point, though, that I broke down and just used some of the aura crystals I’d bought in order to speed along the process of creating the heating artifact. 

With only three weeks left until the new semester of school began, Osheen, Tara, and I gathered one last time in my deep root lab, ready to actually begin the casting of the spell.