“Well, that’s certainly something,” Mia muttered, not quite sure whether she should be horrified or awed by what she was seeing.
It was mid-afternoon after the day she and her party had gone down into the monster nest infested with goblinoids to clear it out. She’d slept like a log, passing out at dusk and waking the next morning well after dawn. The spiritual strain had passed, well, as much as general relaxation and meditation could soothe it anyway. Nothing helped a magic user recover from spiritual strain more than a full night of deep sleep. Not at Mia’s level of skill at least, there were probably meditation techniques masters of the mystical forces could use that trumped sleep, but Mia was far from that point. For now.
Not that she ever wanted to forego sleep altogether — they’d have to pry her away from her well-deserved cuddle and nap time with a crowbar, which she dared anyone to try — but she was digressing.
“What’s that thing supposed to look like?” Nikki asked with some bemusement, standing at Mia’s side and gazing at the distant colossal form. She had her arms crossed, her body language screaming ‘closed off’ and ‘wary’, but her ice blue eyes couldn’t fully hide a glimmer of curiosity that appeared deep inside them.
Mia rested her gaze upon the figure that held Nikki’s interest — or was it just confusion? — and couldn’t help the wry grin that tugged at the edges of her lips. The two of them, with the help of two more dedicated ritualists the Mayor had sent, had spent the morning and a good fraction of the afternoon working on a ritual that would bind the Earth Titan.
Well, Nikki was doing the lion’s share of the work, with Mia acting as her assistant on account of having helped the much more experienced Mage with a few rituals before. The other two ritualists were assigned the busywork. They were glorified magical interns, truth be told, trusted to handle only the least delicate tasks, but there were still a lot of those. One of them had an excellent grasp and skill for geometry, having been a high school math teacher for three decades, while the other was an architectural designer by profession.
Mia spent a quarter of her time fixing mistakes they made, and even she was surprised at the difference being Level 11 made when she had two people below Level 5 to compare herself to. Memory wasn’t one of her main stats, but she found herself able to recall the ritual’s design in exact detail while the two interns were left checking and re-checking the papers every few minutes. Her higher Body stat had also marginally enhanced her senses, pushing her already good eyesight into borderline-supernatural territory.
She could guess angles at a glance with an eerie accuracy, and the same went for distances down to the millimetre, and millimetre variances could be the difference between a ritual just barely working and it blowing up in your face. Or blowing up your face. And the rest of your body. And the house you were in. And the pigeon sitting on the power line running above the house.
But it was done. The ritual went off perfectly, and the Earth Titan just stood there, allowing itself to be bound for all intents and purposes. Sparkle said that while it was ‘dumb as a pebble’, it had a base intelligence. After all, Elementals could understand verbal orders and even knew how to accomplish them. They were magical creatures, even if they lacked sentience, and they couldn’t really be easily labelled. In some aspects, they were no smarter than an amoeba, in others they seemed to have an instinctive understanding of things that eclipsed that of humans.
So the thing probably understood that if it was bound, then it could stay up here in the material layer of existence. It also understood, instinctively, that being bound this way would make it more powerful even if it did nothing. That was enough, apparently.
Not that it explained why there was a five-metre-tall mecha, one that looked like it jumped right out of an 80s science fiction poster, running around and stomping through the forest outside Graz. No, but if one squinted hard enough, they would see the answer themselves in the form of a dwarf riding on top of the stone colossus’ head, laughing uproariously as it stomped a tree underfoot.
Mark, being the highest-levelled Earth Elementalist and also the one with the highest-grade Earth Manipulation Skill, became the optimal choice for being the ‘pilot’ of the freshly bound Earth Titan. It wasn’t a permanent arrangement, but anyone else who had tried so far barely got the Titan moving with any semblance of fluidity, much less running like it was doing under Mark’s control. For some, it didn’t even budge.
Getting it up to the surface had been … surprisingly simple. The Titan just walked behind them once it was bound under Mark’s control, and all the tunnels it stepped into just widened until they could accommodate it. The Elementals had a level of instinctive control over their associated elements that no Skill could ever replicate, so it wasn’t much of a surprise in retrospect. Even if seeing it firsthand had been enough to leave nearly all onlookers gawping.
“I think that’s supposed to be a ‘mecha’,” Mia said, cringing slightly as Nikki’s curious gaze flickered to her face. “There are … stories, for entertainment. Apparently a lot of guys really like the idea of riding around in a gigantic metal robot and piloting it to beat the heck out of other giant robots. Mark’s one of them, and he’s apparently taking this opportunity to live out his fantasies.”
“A robot?”
“Errr, think a metal golem just instead of being powered by Elementals or magic, it's pure technology,” Mia tried to explain, but she only got a blank look for it. How was she supposed to explain technology to someone for whom magic and technology were practically interchangeable terms. Was enchanting not a form of technology? If a plumbing system under a city used magic, was it technology or magic?
In a Realm where magic and mana were ever present since its very inception, there was no reason to create technology that avoided using mana or magic in one form or another. After all, doing so would only make the final product less effective. Why waste time trying to come up with making a furnace without magic when a simple engraving could replace hundreds of hours of effort building a better furnace? It would be a waste, and humans — or mortals in general — were lazy. Why bother being a tech purist when magic makes life so much easier?
“Why would anyone d- Ah, right,” Nikki started, then cut herself off with an awkward grimace. For a girl who grew up knowing that magic and mana existed long before the Plane she was born on did, and would exist unchanged long after it fell into the Void, it was probably hard to come to terms with the fact that an entire Realm existed without either of those until not so long ago. “Well, he’s at least having fun, I suppose. People need their fun in times like these. He’s also pretty good at piloting that Titan; it’s a shame it will likely end up put to work in construction rather than in wiping out nearby monster nests.”
“I doubt we’ll need to try all that hard to convince him to stomp on any troublesome monster nests we find near the city,” Mia mused. Sure, Mark wanted to be a builder and an architect, but he had a battle-golem. Mia knew him well enough to tell he’d be bouncing off the walls to test the thing’s destructive capabilities against both ruined buildings and unfortunate monsters. “But that’s one issue handled I guess. Thanks for your help again.”
“I’m happy to help,” Nikki said with a small smile. “You always give me the most interesting problems. I’m glad I could get some use out of so many of those ritual circles I’d learned at the academy and thought I’d never use. I’ve never bound a Titan before, obviously, but it’s exciting!”
“Is it the novelty of it or the dubious legality of it?” Mia asked, arching an amused brow at the excitable woman. Not that she cared one whit about what this ‘Eternal Empire’ supposedly thought of the legality of their actions. Earth was never a part of their shitty empire, so their laws held no weight whatsoever. They were at best a guidebook for when their new would-be nation started working on a book of laws.
“Both, I suppose,” Nikki said, sounding distinctly cheerful despite the only expression showing on her face being a small smile. The girl had been giddy all day in her own subdued version of the emotion, and even now that the ritual was done, she remained airy, as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.
“Well, I’m glad.” Mia was happy for her. Nikki had been looking worn and stressed ever since Gabe showed up, and Mia had no idea how to help. Sending Gabe away was out of the question. She'd been considering splitting the party into two different apartments so Nikki wouldn't have to feel like she was walking on eggshells in the place where she was supposed to be able to relax and let her guard down. “Any plans for the future?”
“Some,” Nikki said haltingly, looking like she was barely suppressing the urge to fidget nervously. “Now that I have no worthless political and social duties taking up 95% of all my days, I can finally focus on furthering my magical research, training and skill. I was planning to do some experimenting and solo training while you are out training, and … join in whenever you find a Rift to delve into. If that’d be alright with you?”
Why join only Rifts-? Ah! Gabe couldn’t enter low-ranked Rifts with them, so they would only have him looming over their shoulders on the way there. Plus Rifts had awesome rewards, while also being something of an extreme high-end luxury in other Realms.
“Sure, we’d be happy to have you,” Mia said with an easygoing smile.
“I would … recommend you set aside time for some research of your own; Mage Classes adore it when you experiment and actually interact with the intellectual aspects of your Class,” Nikki said a bit hesitantly, looking around as if she was worried Gabe would pop out of thin air and chastise her for trying to poke her nose into the training schedule of his ‘student’.
“Okay,” Mia said easily. “I was planning to, but I’ll up it in priority. I haven’t done much of that since I made a halfway useful version of that Arcane Missile spellcircle.”
“That’s likely the reason why you levelled up before the others,” Nikki said. “Customising and creating new spellcircles of your own is the next best thing for experience gain as a Mage, right after killing monsters stronger than yourself.”
Mia nodded again, and they slipped into a companionable silence.
*****
Gabriel flew as fast as his wings could carry him. Speed wasn’t exactly his strong suit, but he’d figured out some tricks of his own to make do. His Body attribute was his lowest, but when he formed an aerodynamic barrier around himself that split the air, also all but nullified air resistance and friction. With it deployed, he could fly faster than if he had twice the Body stats to grant him strength. Faster and more powerful wingbeats could only make you go so fast before physics butted in on you and ruined your fun.
With that, he reached Vienna in roughly an hour. It was a pretty good time, he recalled the trip taking nearly three hours with a car travelling at top speed on a highway.
He could have gone faster if he was willing to spend mana, turning arcane energy into forward momentum with a kinetic energy transformation spell was both simple enough that he could freehand it even with his runic-matrix unable to assist in the casting and useful enough that he’d bothered to learn how to do so, despite kineticism not being his preferred school of arcanism. It had saved his life once or twice too, since he’d managed to incorporate the spell into some of his Wards and Barriers.
Using the kinetic energy transformation and having the full force of a blow against him be converted into backwards momentum was a superb way to get out of melee range without expending much energy. Having the ability to nullify the momentum of a blow, or a creature charging him, had also come in handy more than once, even if most higher-ranked monsters had ways to ignore or at least resist the attempt. He could still clearly remember the first time a Lesser Earth Dragon charged right through the Barrier that was supposed to stop its charge. That made sure he would always plan contingencies for when something could ignore his barriers, and that he would never challenge a draconic creature ten levels above him to a contest of strength. Draconic Magic Resistance was bullshit enough that he would always lose that contest.
Vienna was a sorry sight for someone like him. Gabe remembered the city as it was, perhaps even through rose-tinted glasses. He remembered the family trips they’d taken to the capital when he was young, and the memories of the visits to the yearly Christmas market sat especially close to his heart. He knew it was a lie in retrospect, but even still he remembered the event fondly. It was a time when his family was whole and unburdened by his father’s betrayal.
The massive sinkhole at the centre of the city had opened up beneath the old town and devoured both the parliament and most other important government buildings. His eyes twitched, watching how the Danube, the largest river of Europe, flowed into the depthless chasm, leaving the riverbed on the other side barren and dry.
Buildings all across the capital stood in various states of ruin, looking even worse than Graz. Gabe’s hometown was lucky. It was a bit further from the Dragon Vein that ran directly beneath the capital and its Rifts were less numerous than Vienna’s, but that wasn’t the main point. No, the capital had the misfortune to have two different Rifts spawn inside its boundary that spewed oversized monsters more suited for the destruction of buildings than direct combat. Because of them, large swathes of the capital were little more than collapsed rubble, even if the Rifts had been destroyed weeks ago and the monsters exterminated with utmost prejudice by the Marshal.
He touched down in Vienna a little over an hour after departing Graz, doing the courteous thing and making his approach easily noticeable. He could have used a Ward to go unnoticed, the only one in Vienna who could have maybe sensed him if he did that was that Reinhardt man, but he was a warrior type. There were no detection wards, sensory barriers, scrying anchors or anything of the sort around the city. Just men and women patrolling and keeping watch, assisted by some Rank 1 wards set up by local magic users.
But Gabe had the beginnings of an amicable relationship with Reinhardt. Since the city of Graz, his family lived in, and he would be guarding for the foreseeable future, was planning to join the Marshal’s Faction, it wouldn’t do to alienate him or sow the seeds of a grudge. Thus: basic courtesies.
It was an avian beastkin serving as a lookout, perched atop a still-standing skyscraper, that noticed him first. A subspecies likely blessed with superhuman eyesight, perhaps even a Trait, considering she’d noticed Gabe from kilometres away.
By the time he touched down before the nearest checkpoint — where the ‘hunters’ who went out to forage and hunt monsters beyond the safe zones could re-enter the city — he already had people waiting for him. Gabe suspected the Marshal had given the lookouts a basic description of his appearance so there wouldn’t be a panic every time he arrived.
“Gabriel Vexley?” A no-nonsense woman wearing well-used army fatigues asked once he came to a stop in front of her. There was recognition in her eyes and Gabe faintly recalled seeing her face before, likely during his short meeting with Reinhardt. Good.
“Yes,” he replied simply, his demeanour so easily slipping back into the one he’d used for the last five years. “I’ve come to fulfil a favour to a friend. My divination spell tells me her parents are still alive and in this city. I want to confirm it with my own eyes to lay her fears to rest, then I’ll be out of your hair. Twenty minutes max.”
The woman stared at him for a moment while the squad of soldiers behind her shared a wide-eyed glance, but were disciplined enough not to voice the obvious question that was on their collective minds.
“That is possible?” The woman asked, giving him a searching look. “Just checking whether someone is alive and where they are with magic?”
“It is, and it’s pretty simple when you have a catalyst and the target has no resistance to divination,” Gabe said, and the mere fact that his answer wasn’t a single word or a deflection probably had to do with how much more relaxed he’d been feeling since he saw his family reunited. “Blood of a relative is a suitable catalyst. Now, may I enter?”
“Yes, the Marshal has ordered us to allow you to come and go as you please unless it’s to a restricted area,” the woman said, and bit down on a follow-up question she was aching to ask. She probably had relatives of her own she still hoped were alive somewhere out there. “You may go, but I’ve been ordered to assign a guide to accompany you while you are here. If you don’t mind it, that is.”
“I don’t.” It was a bit annoying, but if having a watcher attached to him at the hip made them more comfortable with his presence, then so be it. Everyone involved knew he would be able to lose the guide if he wanted to, but this wasn’t about what he was capable of doing. Going along with this charade showed that he was willing to play the game and had nothing to hide from his nominal allies.
Conjuring his small divination spell, Gabe used a lock of Lina’s hair the girl had given him as the catalyst. It locked onto two targets no more than a kilometre or two away from his current location at a guess, and he set off without wasting any more time. He had to be quick about this task of his, he still had to check whether he could find Mark’s parents and then return to Graz as soon as possible.
He hadn’t seen any new or especially fast-growing Rifts near the city that could cause problems, nor any wandering monsters the city’s defenders couldn’t deal with, but you never knew. He would much rather be back there, ready to assist at a moment’s notice, but he wasn’t enough of an asshole to refuse Mark’s request, or the one coming from one of Mia’s new friends.
He could count the number of friends his sister had made growing up on one hand, and unfortunately none of them lasted. It didn’t help that the family had moved out of the USA when she was young, then back to Austria once Mom and Father got divorced. Then Mia went away to college in Vienna, once more cutting off all her previous friendships. None of them survived the distance. Then it happened again when she practically fled the capital the moment she got her degree.
Gabe would never forgive himself if he turned out to be the reason one of Mia’s new friends got upset with her. Bonds forged through blood, sweat, killing monsters and surviving against all odds forged bonds stronger than almost anything a person living in modern human society could have formed, and Gabe hoped Mia’s bond with her new friends was like that, but he wasn’t going to test it.
This should be it. Gabe mused, coming to a stop before an old apartment block. He wasn’t sure what the architectural style was called, but it was old, probably old enough that nobody could demolish it without far too much paperwork to bother. The city grew protective of the architecture that gave it its antique charm and usually strangled any such building's destruction or renovation with so much red tape that no one really bothered. It was possible, but it was troublesome and rather costly from what he'd heard.
He walked inside, the ‘guide’ trailing after him at a respectable distance, and before long he stood in front of a door. His hand rose, and he rapped his knuckles on the wood, waiting patiently despite his concern for everyone back in Graz. He felt footsteps, then the turn of the doorknob before it opened just enough for a man wearing a deeply suspicious look on his face to peer through the gap.
“What do you want?” He asked, not even feigning politeness as he ran his gaze up and down Gabe’s form.
“Mr Maier, I presume?” Gabe asked. The man looked similar enough to Lina, with his sandy blonde hair and grey eyes, that he was willing to take a leap of faith on that guess.
His magical presence also shared the same characteristics that made Lina stand out from a crowd. An Aeromancer Bloodline was not something to scoff at, even if it paled in comparison to the ones Mia, Mom and Carmilla had.
“Who’s asking?” The man asked again, looking somewhere between nervous and even more suspicious. He was also preparing to launch Gabe through the nearest window with a burst of elemental air magic.
“I’m doing a favour for a friend, you wouldn’t have a daughter by the name ‘Lina’, would you?” Gabe asked, and the man went still, eyes shooting wide open. There were a lot of emotions there, but Gabe was no empath so he only caught the most obvious ones: overwhelming guilt and fragile hope.
As expected. Lina had noted that she wasn’t exactly on the best of terms with her parents, but family was still family. Gabe understood, even if he himself was of the opinion that there was a certain point beyond which someone didn’t belong to a family, blood be damned. His father had made sure of that.
“Is she … ?” He asked, the door opening fully as the air magic held at the ready dissipated.
“Alive and well.” Gabe nodded, then produced a letter from an inner pocket of his coat and handed it over. “I will stay here for half an hour if you want to write a reply. I’ll deliver it to Graz. I doubt you have the Tokens needed to transport yourselves over with the Obelisk.”
He would have asked about Lina’s mother, but the question would have been rather foolish when a woman who’d been hiding behind the door snatched the letter out of Gabe’s hand faster than her husband could. She held it to her chest like it was the most precious thing in the world and broke down crying once she saw the cursive script on the envelope.
“I will be out here,” Gabe said, stepping back. “Half an hour.”
The man nodded to him seriously as he hugged his wife, then kicked the door shut. Hard. Gabe didn’t blame him. Forty minutes later, he set off again, taking flight and leaving Vienna behind with a new envelope safely stored in an inner pocket. He wanted to hurry, but he wasn’t about to leave without that letter, or hurry the sobbing mother who struggled to write the last few lines of her letter to her estranged daughter, trying desperately to steady her shaking hands.
Nothing like the apocalypse itself could drive it home to even the most stubborn people what truly mattered. Gabriel couldn’t help but wonder whether his own father was out there, regretting leaving their family behind so long ago.
Gabe shook his head, a derisive scoff escaping him at the thought. He still didn’t know what the hell had been wrong with that accursed man, disappearing off the face of the Earth with nothing more than a goodbye letter left on the kitchen table.
A letter that blamed his children for him leaving. For not being what he wanted. For not being special enough.
Gabe would never forgive him for that. For what that letter did to his once-cheerful younger sister and the caring older sister he’d grown up with.
Flying faster than on the previous trip, mostly to focus on something other than bittersweet or outright bitter memories, Gabe arrived at his next destination in an hour despite the distance being double that of the one between Vienna and Graz. He floated high above the Alps near where the triple border between Austria, Germany and Switzerland used to be.
His divination spell tracking Mark’s nearest blood relatives led him here, and it was pointing straight down. Gabe hovered there for a moment, hundreds of meters above the snow-covered slopes and pine forests, his wings resting against his back as he stood atop a disc of solid arcane energy.
With a mental flick of a switch, his sight gained an added layer, perceiving that which was beyond the mortal senses. He was a half-elf, just like Sophie, and unlike Mia. That meant he didn’t have access to the Spirit Sense Trait that true-blooded Fae boasted of, but what he did have was the elven Mana Sight and Mana Sense Traits, which by themselves were already quite exceptional when backed up by his Rank 3 attributes.
His gaze roamed across the landscape of the snow-covered landscape, following magical presences, minor Leylines, monsters, monster nests and the occasional Rift. There had been a ski resort here, once upon a time, but nothing remained of it now, either devoured by a monster nest or its ruins covered by the thick white snow. There were no buildings anywhere within sight, nor any tents or other forms of magically-erected shelters where a pair of low-rank people could survive the freezing temperatures. Not that anything conjured by a low-rank person would survive, considering the land was teeming with monsters, some even approaching peak Rank 2 in strength.
Are they underground then? A cave system, perhaps? He mused, trying to see whether he could find any obvious ones, but he had no such luck. His Mana Sight wasn’t of much use for peering through the soil since the Dragon Vein ran right underneath this mountain range somewhere deep underground. The mana it radiated made peeping through the soil impossible even for someone at Gabe’s level. Maybe if he were a Rank higher … no. This was a Supreme Leyline, equivalent to the one found in the Eternal Empire’s home Plane. He’d need to be High Rank 5 to see through the dense mana it radiated.
Gabriel glanced at his divination spell again, trying to push it some more to give him an accurate distance between him and his target … and he went very still when his spell fizzled, then broke apart. He blinked slowly in surprise, even as five years of experience had him deploy his most powerful defensive and concealment Wards. He followed that up by deploying his best anti-divination Ward, then wrapped the matching perception-muddling Barrier around himself, which should throw off any non-targeted scrying attempts.
Because what he’d just experienced was eerily similar to what happened when a less powerful divination spell met a skilled magic user’s anti-divination Wards. If his targets were inside a Rift, the spell should have either failed to find them in the first place, or it should have given a nebulous return.
But no. The spell fizzled, then shattered. No. It was broken, so the Dragon Vein could also be discounted as the cause. Gabe knew what it felt like to have his spells dispersed by too dense ambient mana and this wasn’t that, it was too intentional. But if it was truly broken and not dispersed, then the obvious question was: ‘by what?’ … or rather, by whom?
What the hell had Mark’s parents gotten themselves into?