Zijeregh climbed out of the crack in front of her, emerging out into the light of day for the first time in days under the boughs of an ever-burning tree. She inhaled the hot air, letting it burn her nostrils. Her vessel’s skin burned slightly at the touch of direct sunlight and she had to squint to be able to see. The heat was the biggest problem, though. She would have to take her vessel out of this copse of trees quickly, or it would die.
Still, she preferred this to the Depths. The first hell, where she came from, was always bright. Besides, it was funny to feel her vessel’s mind squirm uncomfortably, trying to cringe back with reflexes that were no longer tied to his body. He had a strong will – one that she would take with her as payment when this body died. Having to walk around inside a dwarf was an indignity.
Looking back down, she hissed a few words, calling up her demons. It wasn’t much – just her shade servant, Aelos, a hellhound and an imp. The latter two shot forth immediately, heading up into the foothills to the north to hunt for the scent of human. The shade slithered into the flickering shadows of the trees, slowly working its way out. He wouldn’t be able to start hunting in earnest until night fell.
There were mortal thralls, too – cultists of Varamemnon. A few humans, dwarves and a lizardman. She would have to go back down in a moment and find another exit for them. They were even more vulnerable to heat than this Duergar vessel, and wouldn’t make it out of the forest. She had wanted them for an ambush against the rest of the mortals further up along the road on the other side of the mountains, but she’d taken them herself when Uvnik, her summoner, had proven to be uncooperative.
She wished she had ten more demons and a complement of Duergar soldiers, but she had to abide by her “master’s” wishes. The Duergar thought that destroying the main body of the expedition should take priority – they didn’t really care about a single escapee.
But they didn’t control the cultists, and they didn’t know she could lie.
As a result, they’d believed her when she’d told them that the escaped mortal was a dangerous warlock – one who sought to turn their own methods against them. After all, she had eyes and ears everywhere, and she was “bound” to serve them. They couldn’t ignore a threat like that.
Despite that, though, Uvnik had tried to send her after the mortal alone, reasoning that as a powerful demon in her own right, she could handle a single spellcaster. That was true, of course, but also stupid. She’d had to point out that they needed a way to find the mortal before the fool had even let her bring the few demons that she had. She’d been forced to look for additional bodies elsewhere and the cultists had been her only accessible option.
This irritating hunt was going to take longer than it should have, but it would be enough. Soon, she would bring that insolent warlock’s head to Nuros.
***
Bernt checked his map, trying to make sense of the terrain in front of him. He’d started heading west, originally, but the increasingly mountainous landscape had forced him to turn further and further south after just an hour. It didn’t make sense – this part of the mountains ran east to west all the way to the western edge of the Phoenix Reaches, where they turned south.
Unless…
He examined the map again, looking a little further east. The mountain range did widen quite a bit at one point, extending southward before narrowing again slightly. But that would mean he’d crossed the mountains at least four leagues east of where he’d originally thought.
Shit.
It wouldn’t make a huge difference in the total amount of time he spent here, not in the grand scheme of things, but it meant he would have to go a lot deeper into the Reaches than he’d planned to get around this more mountainous area. Who knew what he was going to run into that far in? He’d read about the kinds of elementals and monsters that made their home here.
What was he – a pyromancer – going to do against something equipped to survive in a place like this? The best policy was not to get into a fight in the first place.
Of course, not everything that lived here was a monster or an elemental – most of the creatures he’d seen so far were animals. In the early morning, he’d seen some of the birds trailing multicolored flames as they flew through the air in patterns – not as a defensive measure as far as he could tell, but rather as some kind of mating display by the looks of it. They’d stopped after the sun came up.
Later, there had been a herd of deer who looked almost normal, except for the fact that they all seemed to have antlers, even the little ones. The real surprise, though, came when Bernt saw them nibble on the flaming leaves of the perpetually burning trees. They treated the fire as normal and didn’t shy away from it. As they masticated, fire flickered around the points of the antlers, dissipating in the air after a few seconds before they took another bite and repeated the process.
Bernt had stopped and recorded the entire experience in his notes. It was obviously some kind of sorcerous adaptation. How did an animal develop a spirit with such a specific sorcerous function?
He wished he had his friends with him to watch his back – he wanted to study all of this, to try to record the shape of their sorcerous mana networks and bring it all back to Halfbridge for Pollock to look over. But that would have to wait.
He packed the map away, and was about to start moving again when he smelled burning leather. He sniffed at the air. What the hells? He checked his bag – had something set fire to it?
It looked fine, but as he picked up the bag to sling it back over his shoulder, the tiny trail of smoke rising from his boot caught his eye. A huge ant, nearly half as long as a finger, had sunk its mandibles into the now blackening sole. He yelped and tried to shake it off, but it just flopped around, hanging on doggedly. Still vainly trying to dislodge the thing, Bernt kicked at the rock where he’d been sitting, crushing the insect against it.
It made an uncomfortable crunching sound as it died.
Where had it come from? Bernt looked around. There was coal grass here, and some unfamiliar bushes, but no obvious giant ant mounds. Either way, he didn’t want to be here when more of them showed up.
Or… did he? Bernt looked down at the crushed corpse. The thing had been doing sorcery, of a sort. Casting fire magic through its mouth parts. That was something worth examining, right? He hadn’t had a chance to directly examine any of the sorcerous creatures here, and he probably wasn’t going to be able to force a deer to cooperate.
This dead ant wouldn’t work either, of course. You couldn’t conduct research on dead subjects since their spirits – and therefore their mana networks – would be gone. But where there was one, there would be more.
Carefully, Bernt backed away a few steps, watching his step to make sure he didn’t accidentally walk into a whole army the little things. Ants followed each other around, right? He just needed to wait, and come up with a way to trap one without killing it. He considered the problem for a moment, then went back, raising his left hand and running mana through his focus as he began tracing a quick rune in the air.
One earth shaping cantrip later, the dead ant was sitting in a small, square hole in the ground. To complete the trap, Bernt pulled a bit of dried apple from his pocket and put it down next to the dead one.
Bernt sat on a large stone a few steps away to watch. He wanted to take the opportunity to relax, but it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. The burning ant had put him on edge, and he checked his surroundings every few seconds to make sure no more of the fire-mouthed insects were sneaking up on him. Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long. Barely five minutes later, he caught sight of one of the things as it came questing out from under a rock, its antennae waving back and forth.
Irritatingly, it didn’t just go for its dead comrade. Instead it first wandered over to a large pebble, which it examined for a few seconds before going off to scout a small patch of coal grass. Bernt couldn’t guess what it was thinking – he supposed ants weren’t especially smart. Finally, though, the thing seemed to notice something and approached the trap. Without hesitating for so much as a second, it disappeared into the hole.
Huh. That hadn’t been so hard.
Scrambling to catch up even though he’d been waiting for this exact moment for minutes, Bernt cast another earth shaping cantrip. Dirt flowed out from around the outside and underneath the trap over its open top and sealed it tight. Smiling to himself with relief, Bernt stepped up and picked up the somewhat lumpy stone-like box. Perfect.
He’d need to do the experiment soon since the ant wouldn’t live very long inside a sealed container, but he wanted to get a little further away from wherever the rest of that colony was first.
Bernt headed south for a few minutes until he found a reasonably sheltered spot behind some boulders at the foot of a steep hill where he could stop for a while. There, he got out his notebook, something to write with and a snack – he hated working on an empty stomach.
Carefully, Bernt flattened and smoothed the surface of a large rock with a stone shaping cantrip and put the box down on it. Then, he pulled a bit of chalk out of his bag and carefully drew out a diagnostic circle.
It wasn’t the one he normally used to examine spells and magical materials or to perform investment procedures. This one was simpler – he’d learned it from Magister Pollock when the old wizard had examined his crippled right arm. Rather than unraveling a spell or a magical material into the spellform that defined its metaphysical essence, this one just projected a visual representation of whatever mana flows were present inside.
As soon as he finished, a ridiculously tiny web of glowing light materialized over the box. Oh no. Bernt grabbed his notebook and pencil and leaned in, quietly cursing to himself. Sure enough, it was a tiny mana network – and it was moving around. At least it didn’t look too complicated, but it was nearly impossible to make out any specifics.
Still, there was nothing for it but to try. There was probably a way to change the scale of the projection, but he didn’t know how. Rune circles were a warding discipline – a field of study that he’d already promised himself to study in greater depth, but he had no idea when he’d find the time. This was going to take a while.
Bernt drew, squinting down at the tiny mana network, trying to decipher how it worked and marking down his best guesses, then correcting them occasionally when he worked something out. He wasn’t sure exactly how long he spent at it, but eventually the tiny projection winked out as the ant died inside the sealed space and its spirit departed. He sat up and rubbed at his aching back and neck. That was fine. He wasn’t going to get much more out of it than he already had, anyway.
Checking the sun, Bernt realized that he’d spent the better part of the afternoon here. He should try to cover a bit more distance before he called it a day.
As he walked, he looked over his notes. It was… just a mana network. It was much simpler than his sorcerous investiture, which created a perpetual flame. As far as he could tell, this one just burned mana for heat, like a basic fire cantrip. Of course, the way that it worked was entirely different than the spell he was familiar with. But there was more than one way to produce any given effect. The ants couldn’t actively design a logical spellform – its spirit had been shaped organically.
Bernt couldn’t guess what he could learn from that. In the end, it was just a copy of a mana network. But insights were born from data. The more he could gather, the more likely it was that he might learn something new.