Ends of Magic - Book 3 Chapter 30: Faces in the Dark

Nathan looked at the blackened and partially melted landscape around them. The ground protected by Stella’s shield had been only lightly roasted and the area within Khachi’s shield was pristine. It looked like a huge two-layer bullseye melted into the floor of the pass.

He pursed his lips. “Do we want to stay here? It seems a little obvious is there’s a follow-up group.”

Sarah pointed up the slope, at their campsite. “We’d watch from there. We can shape our eyes for any who come to gawk at this.” She swept her hand around them generally, indicating the devastation left behind by the fire elemental.

Nathan had to acknowledge her point. Their campsite had a good view of the site of the battle, but wasn’t obvious. Anybody coming by would have reason to be cautious, but the nature of the destruction would probably indicate that the threat was the dungeon that the pass was named for.

The team started back up the slope. After a dozen steps Brox yawned and stretched. He vanished with a gust of wind that stirred up the smoky dust floating in the air, reappearing on the ledge that held their campsite. He gave a jaunty wave before disappearing from sight over the crest of the slope.

Khachi didn’t let the moment go to waste, glancing over at Stella. “What occurs, Stella? What do you think of Brox and his plans?”

The mage returned his questioning look with a wry and tired smile. “He’s a bit of a muckgrabber’s asshole, isn’t he?”

Everybody gave her a surprised look, and she huffed out a tired sigh as she responded to the wolfman. “Hear me, but your blessing helped when Brox told me to drop my shield and contest the fire elemental with my own power.”

He did what?

She plodded slowly up the slope, not in any hurry to get anywhere. “I was so focused on the shield, using my [Concentration] skill. When he commanded me so directly, I just ignored him. The blessing made me certain it was right to keep the shield up, and I didn’t let him distract me.”

Stella stopped, looking back at the lighter patch on the stone where they’d made their stand against the elemental. “And then [High-Tier Concentration] Developed into [Unshakable Focus]. It says I won’t be distracted from my goals by mental skills or spells.” She shook her head tiredly. “It’s not a skill of adamant, but I’m free of regret to finally have some innate mental protection.”

“That’s a blasphemous Development!” Aarl said, punching Stella in the arm and smiling widely.

The mage smirked a little bit, rubbing her arm. “Yeah.” She leaned her head back, looking up at the glowing world above for a moment. “Yeah, protection from mental skills and spells. I’m… really glad.”

Her eyes closed, and Nathan was worried he’d have to move to catch her before she tumbled down the slope. But she wasn’t passing out.

Stella was crying softly, tears slowly leaking from her closed eyes as she stood there. The Heirs stopped, moving to stand protectively around her as she quietly sobbed with relief.

Sarah reached out and gently gripped Stella’s hand. “Hear me, I’m glad you’re protected now. We’re with you ‘til Endings.”

Khachi placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Your experience has made you stronger, forged you harder. We leave our challenges behind, improving in the passage. It is the blessing of Davrar.”

The words were imbued with a faint tinge of divine mana, and Stella’s stance firmed up. She didn’t stop crying, but her posture became firmer, more confident. She raised her hands to the sky above and balled them into fists.

“Never again.”

—

Nathan let the rest of the Heirs go to bed and took first watch. After all, he was still hopped up on Stamina. He’d gotten quite practiced at going way over his maximum cap for the resource, but it left him jittery and hyper until the excess Stamina went away.

Also, there was something bugging him. A faint thought twigged at the back of his mind, like something important he’d forgotten that just barely escaped his mental grip. He took a seat at the edge of the ledge that their camp sat on, watching over the valley even as most of his focus turned inwards.

Maybe I’ll figure out what’s bugging me too if I stop focusing on it for a bit. I can keep watch and use the extra Stamina to keep improving my body. Can’t do that if I go to sleep and let all this excess power bleed away.

He’d hit the point of diminishing returns on using [Perfected Body] for long-term gains. It had been easy at the start to align muscle fibers, streamline neural myelination and optimize bone honeycombing. But now he’d picked all the low-hanging fruit and further improvements were becoming more and more difficult to come by.

Nathan had started to experiment with esoteric material to flat out improve the material properties of the various tissues of his body. The novelty made it a slow and Stamina-expensive process, but the only way to make improvements was to experiment. He’d recently succeeded in making his tendons dramatically stronger by weaving elastin and collagen polymers together with some layered beta-sheet proteins inspired by spider silk.

So far everything seemed to still be working, and Nathan had decided he wanted to apply the same improvement to his skin. His [Implacable Antimage] class made him extremely tough, especially when Raging. But he still tended to get cut open by magic weapons pretty frequently, and hoped that increasing the tear strength of his skin would make that happen a little less frequently.

Next is bone hardening. I’m willing to sacrifice bone marrow in my spine and wrists to avoid losing my head or hands.

It took time and a lot of Stamina to figure out how to make his skin harder to cut without giving it the same texture as rhinoceros hide. He focused on experimenting around the base of his neck, looking for something tough that wouldn’t inhibit flexing the skin. He’d chosen the neck because of a desire to keep his head where it was. It seemed like an important priority. But the process itched like hell, and there wasn’t much to occupy him aside from paying attention to make sure nobody snuck up on them. That seemed like a pretty important thing to be doing for some reason.

While his skin shifted on a molecular level, Nathan kept watch over the dark pass below and the sky above. The view was spectacular, with the baleful glow of the Fortress of the Face casting the landscape around it orange tones and long shadows. But the real glory was above. With only thin cloud cover, the continents and oceans spread out over Nathan’s head like a tapestry of Earths split open and sewn end to end. The blue-green majesty was only marred by occasional splotches of black or white blight. Nathan kept his eyes on the sky, idly estimating how many Earth-surface areas he could see from here.

I’m making some pretty big assumptions here with how big those continents are, but all I’m looking for is an order-of magnitude estimate. Maybe a hundred? Two hundred?

He ruminated on thoughts about Davrar for a little while, picking at a problem he hadn’t considered for a while.

The sun of Davrar is artificial, or at least magical. It’s also pretty close to the surface in terms of astronomical units. It seems to get recharged or something during the Solstice. So my intuitions about solar systems don’t necessarily apply. But Davrar isn’t the size of a solar system, not nearly as big. But bigger than a planet.

Nathan remembered his real task and dropped his eyes to the ground to keep his bases covered. The landscape was just as desolate as it had been a few minutes before, so he looked back up at the sky, and thought about what it meant.

I don’t have enough clues to figure out Davrar. The one person who could tell me more punched me in the face recently. I need to try and catch him in a good mood to ask him more questions.

The jittery feeling faded as Nathan’s excess Stamina drained into the skin of his neck. He sighed in relief as the itching faded. Nathan’s thoughts turned to Brox, and the way that the Questor had acted for the last few days.

He just doesn’t seem to fully consider the ramifications of his actions. Or maybe feels so insulated from any consequences that he doesn’t care. He certainly doesn’t take responsibility when he does something impulsive that endangers us. But if he doesn’t care, why is he here?

Nathan’s mouth twisted in a grimace. After talking to Kia, Nathan felt like he had a better grasp on his own moral compass. He had committed to always consider his actions, and to keep thinking about if the ends justified the means. He didn’t want to fall into the habit of killing as the easy answer to problems. Not if there was a better way.

His gaze panned over the blasted terrain where they’d fought the Giantsrest mages. The soft blue and green light from above mellowed the scene, made the scorched and melted landscape look calm and peaceful. It didn’t seem like what was important, so he looked back up again as he ruminated on the recent fight.

I don’t feel the least bit bad about that fight. Those mages were soldiers in the war. They signed up for this fight the moment they left their homes to attack Halsmet. Even that kid with the metal orbs. He was a prodigy with his magic, but he was here to enforce slavery on innocents, and so I killed him and I’d do it again.

Killing a mage on the battlefield, where their intent to harm was implicit, was fundamentally different than killing them in their bed. But Nathan was actively planning on going to Giantsrest with Faline to try and destroy Giantsrest from the inside. That would probably involve killing a lot more mages in their beds.

Do I have a choice? If I had to kill every mage in Giantsrest to break their culture of slavery, would I do it? I’d definitely prefer another way. The archmages have to go. But the enchanters? The students? That’s a lot of unnecessary death.

It was a problem he would have to keep wrestling with. The real issue was that he didn’t know enough. What would it take to topple Giantsrest? Would he have to start at the top and kill his way down until they agreed to stop being slaving assholes?

If I kill all of the mages then a lot of the freed slaves will die to the dangers of Davrar. I’d love to wave a magic wand and make everybody in Giantsrest have basic empathy for their slaves and work to fix their shit. But that’s not about to happen, even if I hadn’t given up magic. The best I can do is ensure that the people I kill deserve it, or at least murder the fewest number of relatively-innocent people in their beds on my way to my greater good.

With a sigh, Nathan remembered the artisan mage he’d killed in Halsmet – the one who’d had a lovingly-made quilt on her bed. He’d have preferred she survived to flee Halsmet, and then survived the fall of Giantsrest to contribute to whatever came after.

Brox just doesn’t take the energy to think like that. He just does what he wants. If there was an enemy in front of him, he’d kill them. Granted, that’s what I’ve done so far, so I can’t truly claim the moral high ground. But I’d like to try and do better.

That thought made Nathan even more frustrated with the Questor, and his avowed desire to delve the Dungeon tomorrow. It was a stupid and unnecessary risk, and put Nathan squarely in the crosshairs of a magical being that was best measured in terajoules.

Hard problems don’t have simple solutions, and that means you need to get involved and work instead of taking the easy solution, which is usually no solution at all.

Nathan’s eyes traced the coastline of one of the continents above before his eyes seemed to jump towards a faint shimmer in the air. Nathan dismissed it as a cloud in the sky, and looked down for another quick glance around to be sure nobody was sneaking up on them. He frowned as something weird pinged his [Magical Perception], feeling a bit like some approaching spells and a fairly sizeable mana pool.

Just gotta be some weird mana floating around after the fire elemental.

Nathan shook his head to try and clear it, the thought that had been bothering him surging him with worry. He was nervous as hell, and started breathing hard.

What’s going on, why am I suddenly hyperventilating? Everything’s peaceful and calm. Nothing’s happening, there’s nothing to be worried about.

Regardless of whatever wasn’t happening at the moment, Nathan didn’t want to lose his train of thought. He managed to refocus on his musings.

I don’t want to get drawn into Faline’s narrative again. In Halsmet she pretty much pointed me at people and I killed them. I need to double-check who she points me at, and not blindly trust her. Hopefully [Mental Fortress] will help me with that, if she is using a skill on me.

Nathan got up and started pacing, unable to keep still as a sick anxiety built inside of him. He had a sudden urge to duck and surrendered to it, dropping into a crouch in an instant as something wooshed overhead.

Wind is pretty loud tonight.

That thought felt wrong, and the thought in the back of his head crystallized. [Mental Fortress] pulled up definitive memories for Nathan’s attention. The shimmer he’d seen now and earlier – matched how he saw invisibility spells. The magical signature indicated a flying mage. The woosh had been an invisible attack aimed at his head.

Naww, that’s can’t be it. No reason for a mage to be here.

Nathan fought through the mental influence and started spending Focus to reassure himself that there was an enemy mage around. He looked up and saw the shimmer coming back around for another pass. His magical senses let him find the mana pool and associated spells. But he couldn’t localize the target, his mind seeming to slip away from being able to pin them down. His eyes kept sliding away from the haze in the air.

That’s a goddamn strong stealth skill, combined with damned powerful magic. They’re being edited out of my conscious mind in some strange way, but my subconscious knows. Trust it.

Nathan leapt upwards from his crouch, his right fist leading the way. He wasn’t aiming so much as letting his body’s natural inclination do the aiming for him.

His aura sliced through a series of spells before his fist rammed into flesh. Somebody gave a pained gasp.

Congratulations, you have developed the [High-tier Notice] utility skill into [Alertness]. Beware, it is harder to rank and develop non-tiered utility skills.

[Alertness]:

This skill will help you consciously and unconsciously notice important details, and you will be very difficult to deceive with stealth skills or magic. Especially useful for rapidly detecting concealed enemies, magical effects and triggers.

Nathan didn’t put his full body weight behind the blow, instead grabbing hold of the barely-tangible object and swinging it underneath him. He used [Slow Fall] to accelerate downwards, crashing into the hard ground knees first. His impact was cushioned by something, though it gave with a crunch that made him wince.

Nathan stared down in confusion for a moment as something clattered to the ground nearby. A complex piece of spellwork bloomed underneath him – it felt like a healing spell cast from a contingency item. But Nathan was so close that his aura immediately canceled the effect before it could heal whoever the target was.

He blinked around for a moment, confused as to why he was resting on empty air. Then his eyes seemed to clear, like he was recovering from being flash-blinded. Nathan was kneeling atop a spindly old figure in plain black robes.

Is that… Badud?

Implacable Antimage has leveled to237! You have killed the Archmage of the Nails!

Assassin of Gemore has leveled to 81! You slain the master assassin Cala dha Drex as she ambushed you from hiding! Please choose a developed class from the following list to continue leveling, as you have unlocked a higher level than 81!

I guess not. I’ll take the Archmage of the Nails.

Potential classes: Magekiller: You have slain dozens of mages in the face of their most powerful magics. This class will enhance your antimagic to subvert enemy spells and help you remain hidden from mages, while also ensuring you finish off difficult-to-kill enemies. This class may further develop into classes focused on stealing enemy magic or engaging successfully in direct combat against mages. With this class, you will be able to combat the most powerful magic-wielders. Master Assassin of Gemore: You have been personally trained by the leader of the Assassins of Gemore. This class will allow you to blend into nearly any situation and make you more persuasive. Additional skills will enhance your self-modification abilities, allowing you to quickly and reliably change your face. This class may further develop into classes focused on changing shape, gaining your enemies’ trust or killing completely unseen. With this class, you will be the perfect unseen killer.

Nathan stood, wiping the splash of gore off his legs and frowning at his class options.

Only two options? Boo. I suppose it really hasn’t been a long time since I hit 27. I wasn’t able to pick up a lot of Insights or do deeds that might give me additional classes. Maybe if I’d actually figured out a good time to Develop [Airwalk] and used it I would have gotten a class that could synergize with that. My first thought is that [Master Assassin of Gemore] is a nice class for sneaking into Giantsrest after the battle. But that Magekilled might be better for winning that battle.

There was a flurry of motion from behind Nathan, and he looked backwards to see Sarah, Aarl and Khachi quickly readying themselves to fight. Nathan took a second to look around the campsite, to ensure there weren’t any other infiltrators around.

I caught the literal boss of the enemy spy organization and Developed my perception skill. I’m pretty sure nobody else from Giantsrest is capable of sneaking up on me anymore.

“What was that?” Aarl said from his bedroll, where he’d rolled to his feet and was scanning around with his shotgun ready.

“Nathan, are you standing on somebody?” Sarah said from the perch she’d leapt to, higher up the slope. She was staring at the black-robed figure on the ground. Khachi and Aarl hadn’t noticed yet.

He looked back at his teammates, then down at the corpse. Nathan smirked and stepped off the bundle of cloth and flesh. “Yeah. This was an archmage of Giantsrest. Cala dha Drex. the leader of the Nails. I don’t think there are any more nearby.”

A moment of silence greeted his words. The wind howled in counterpoint before anybody spoke.

“That’s a blasphemous kill.” Khachi said, striding forward without his armor. The big wolfman carried his shield and hammer, blinking sleep out of his eyes as he approached Nathan and the corpse.

“Stop!” Nathan said, holding out his hand towards his friend. He pointed at the ground just in front of Khachi’s foot. “There’s an invisible weapon right there. She dropped it when I grabbed her.”

Aarl stepped forward like a dog expecting a treat. “Oh, I’d love an invisible weapon!” He looked around, a wide grin on his face. “Where is it?”

Nathan just rolled his eyes, keeping his hand pointed at the weapon and waving Aarl to wait for a second as he looked for the other two members of their group.

Stella was still fast asleep, and Nathan stepped over to make sure she hadn’t gotten her throat cut while he wasn’t watching. Brox’s magical tent was sealed, and he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to emerge. Nathan shrugged and walked back to the corpse of the archmage, gesturing Sarah and Khachi towards it in an invitation.

Then he swept the body with his senses, finding a half-dozen bombs and a few dimensional bags that definitely felt like they’d eat anybody who opened them without the right magical signature. He reversed the gesture, halting his friends. “I think the Nails are almost as paranoid as Old Gemore. There are a lot of traps on her.”

“The sword first!” Aarl demanded, dancing around the spot where the weapon lay.

“It’s not a sword. An ax, I think.” Nathan stepped over to the place he could feel the object, lowering his hand to hover over the perfectly translucent weapon.

This isn’t Giantsrest work, though the couple traps in it are. They’re magically bolted atop this masterpiece of a weapon. It’s like welding a bayonet onto a plasma rifle.

He looked up at Aarl. “Want to keep the invisibility?”

The [Master of Many Weapons] nodded vigorously.

With a judicious application of antimagic Nathan carefully burned away the Giantsrest traps, restoring the clean and lethal feeling of the metal and wood beneath. He got up. “I’m pretty sure it’s Quazian work. Beyond being invisible and having excellent strengthening and sharpness enchantments, there’s also some kind of death enchantment going on. It feels like it will cast a powerful necromancy spell on anybody it cuts. There’s a mental component too, but it doesn’t seem invasive. I think it’s like the armor, so that the wielder always knows where the weapon is. It might also control the death magic.” Nathan picked up a pinch of dirt and sprinkled it on the handle. “The handle is here.”

Aarl reached over and punched Nathan in the shoulder. “You might not give me Grand Insights, but these weapons are worth a dragon’s hoard.” He reached down and grabbed the haft of the ax, lifting the arm-length weapon up in one hand.

The wiry man grunted slightly, eyebrows drawing down as he concentrated. “Yeah. I know exactly where the blade is.” Then his eyes widened. “And I can control the necromancy spell. This ax can kill anything living two different ways, then raise them as undead under my command.”

He gave it an experimental swing or two. “Self-charging too. A weapon fit for a Questor.”

Nathan stepped over to the archmage’s corpse to start disabling all of the dangerous traps she’d been carrying on her person. “Why was the archmage of the Nails out here, anyway?”

Skill comparisons:

[High-Tier Notice]:

This skill will help you notice details. Especially useful for rapidly detecting concealed enemies, magical effects and triggers.

[Alertness]:

This skill will help you consciously and unconsciously notice important details, and you will be very difficult to deceive with stealth skills or magic. Especially useful for rapidly detecting concealed enemies, magical effects and triggers.

Status of Nathan Lark:

Permanent Talent 1: Aura of Antimagic 7

Permanent Talent 2: Perfected Body 8

Talent 3: High-tier Slow Fall 10

Class: Implacable Antimage level 237

Deepened Stamina: 7382/7410

Antimage’s Impassivity

Antimagic Momentum

Raging Thrill

Implacable Inertia

Unarmored Resilience

Improved Antimagic

Strenuous Agility

Hand-to-hand Expertise

Class: Assassin of Gemore level81+

Regenerative Focus: 811/910

Catastrophic Blows

Stealthy Movement

Infiltration

Forgettable

Unsuspecting Strike

Utility skills:

Battle Meditation 9

Leadership 6

High-tier Sprinting 8

Magical Perception 8

Alertness 1

Magical Intuition 7

High-tier Dodging Footwork 10

Mental Fortress 4

High-tier Lecturing 5

High-tier Tumbling 8

Mid-tier Noticeability 8

Low-tier Quiet Movement 4

Low-tier Disguise 4

Mid-tier Battle Cry 3