Spellscribed: Ascension (35 page)

He struggled, on top of the confusion his senses, to filter through the memories of three simultaneous absorptions, but it was far beyond his abilities. He couldn’t have handled two at once when he was in his prime, much less suffering what he concluded was the worst spell sickness in the history of all mages.

Something changed as the memories started to overwhelm him. The thought in the back of his mind, the spell-form that hovered in the library of his mind, surged forward. It effortlessly took control of the process and began simultaneously filing away every memory, every bit of knowledge the old mages had left in their desiccated bodies into their proper place.

Suddenly, the information was no longer an added burden; it was more like when one played music in one’s head from memory while performing other tasks. It was present and he was thinking it through, but the process had become so familiar seeming that it took virtually no attention at all to do it. At the end of the process, the spell-form put the ego impressions into their own spaces in his library and went back to a passive state.

Endrance slowly recovered from his overload, returning to being simply extraordinarily discombobulated. Pulling himself back up to his knees, he was able to see that Gnaeus stood over him. Endrance looked up, still pale from the experience. The wolfman reached down and pulled the wizard to his feet.

“You did well exposing them.” Gnaeus said. “We were able to slay them and take only a little damage. If you had told us you were sacrificing your own ability to do so, we would have been in a position to take advantage of it.”

“I…I didn’t know it was going to hurt at all, much less that badly.” Endrance replied weakly. “I feel like a bug thrown through a whirlwind.”

“I think I understand.” Gnaeus said. “It was very effective, though.”

Endrance nodded, and immediately regretted it. Once he was done dry heaving, he looked back at Gnaeus. “We need to move. The other Atastos will have noticed the fight and will be coming for us.”

“They are.” Wrach reported, coming into view. “What should we do with that?” he asked, pointing to the gold device.

Endrance furrowed his brow, trying to concentrate. “Take it with us, if we can.” He said. “I can’t examine it now.”

“We can carry it faster than the dead could.” Wrach confirmed. He growled something out to the wolves and six of them picked up the palanquin and took off at a trot. They followed it, moving farther away from the city. Endrance tried to run, but the dizzy spells were actually getting worse and he kept falling down. Gnaeus eventually plucked him up and carried him over his shoulder.

Endrance struggled to keep alert and attentive, but the damage he had done to himself had been worse than expected. Woozy, he wondered what was up with him being the source of most of the damage he took. Wasn’t it enough that he had countless enemies? No, he seemed to do more harm than good to himself most of the time. Endrance slipped into unconsciousness as his thoughts scattered into even more inane nonsense.

Endrance wasn’t aware of dreaming. But he woke up with a scream caught in his throat. Despite the cold, he was sweating. Endrance struggled to move and panic shot through him, as he seemed incapable of doing more than lift his head. And even then, he didn’t see anything but darkness. A strange pressure covered his body, holding him down. The smell of wolf filled the air, tickling his nose.

Endrance sneezed. It wasn’t the smell of wolf fur tickling his nose; he had actual wolf fur over his face. The mage focused, enabling his ability to see in the dark. His eyes limned in green light as his gaze pierced through the darkness.

Above him was dirt, loosely packed. From what he could tell, roots of many kinds crisscrossed the surface. So he was underground. As he glanced around, he could see several of the wolfmen packed in around him, sleeping in tight quarters. He realized he could hear the shallow breathing of numerous bodies around him. He also could see why he couldn’t move. In such tight quarters, Endrance had been pinned by two others who had apparently thought his unconscious body was comfortable to lie across.

“Oh good.” Endrance muttered. “Maybe my nightmare was of being smothered by wolves.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t think so.” A rough voice replied. Endrance looked above his head. Wrach crouched near a small hole in the ceiling from which the air drifted in. “You were saying strange things in your sleep. Why do your eyes glow?”

Endrance blinked a few times. “So that I can see in the dark.” He replied. “It’s about as clear as day, but colors are kind of dulled this way.”

“A useful power.”
Wrach replied, turning outside. “It’s too dark to see outside, so I have to keep watch using scent.”

“At least you can do that.” Endrance replied. “Humans have a horrible sense of smell.”

“Yes you do.” Wrach replied amusedly. “Or you’d find your odor overwhelming.”

“Are you saying we stink?” Endrance asked, a twinge of a smile coming on.

Wrach shrugged in the dark. “Yes.” He said. “Though I can now smell what Gnaeus was describing to me. You don’t smell right for a human.”

“Uh-huh. What do I smell like then?”

Wrach looked uncomfortable. “You still smell mostly human, but it is more the way that something that has been around humans for a long time smells. It’s rubbed into you, but it’s not you. There is an underlying smell that we’ve never encountered before.”

“Couldn’t it be that I’m a mage?” Endrance asked.

The wolfman shook his head. “No. We’ve had that smell before. It’s more like you are something unique.”

Endrance sighed. “All right, enough of that. Why am I covered in wolfmen?”

“We just call each other wolves.” Wrach said, looking outside again. “Humans added the ‘men’ part.”

“So why am I covered in wolves?”

“It was time for us to rest, and hide.” The watch-wolf explained. “The common wolf only uses dens for birthing pups, to keep them safe. We’ve learned to use them when we wish to be safe. Resting in small spaces like this keeps us warm with collected body heat. It’s also faster than digging out a den for each wolf.”

Endrance blinked a few times. “I see.”

Wrach glanced at Endrance in the dark. “You’d be the only one.”

“I meant that I understand it now.” Endrance protested.

The wolfman was grinning. “I’m well aware.”

Endrance lay in silence for a moment, collecting his thoughts. “So where’s the artifact.”

“Artifact?”

“The gold thing I asked to take with us.”

“We’ve hidden it. Somewhere nearby. Alpha didn’t want us sleeping next to the thing.”

Endrance couldn’t blame them. “Ah.” He said. “So what was I talking about?”

Wrach shrugged, whether because he knew Endrance could see or out of social habit he couldn’t tell. “Don’t know, you were speaking in a language we didn’t know. It wasn’t the common tongue you humans use everywhere.”

“And by elimination I can guess it wasn’t in your language… whatever it’s called.”

“Call it whatever you want; there is no name for it in your language.”

“Wolfish?
Wolfen?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Growlish?”

“Are you even being serious?”

Endrance felt a funny sensation go through him. He wasn’t entirely sure why, but he had another name spring to mind. “Ulfraeou. It’s called Ulfraeou.”

Wrach nearly slid from his perch. “Where did you hear that?” the wolf asked inquisitively. “That sounds… strange.”

Endrance stared into the ceiling, his voice coming from deep within his memories. “I’m not entirely sure… but when I absorbed the Atastos mage imprints, I got some thing, from them. They were undead, and had been gone a long time, but there were tattered scraps of memory left in their imprints when I absorbed their power.”

“You… drank their power?” Wrach asked.

“Yes. The bracers I wear let me do that when a mage nearby dies. It didn’t work on most of the Atastos, and I believe that’s because they had no aura to begin with. But the mages did.” Endrance was puzzled and kept talking. “But the dead cannot keep an aura. They don’t have the spark of life which an aura radiates from. Unless it was magic keeping the aura attached to their bodies. But then they wouldn’t be able to recover any power spent.”

“What does that mean?” Wrach asked.

“Any mages of the undead variety have greatly limited power.” Endrance concluded. “They would have to be very intelligent and very careful with the little energy they had left or else they’d be as useful as the regular, non-magical undead.”

“So they weren’t as big of a threat as you thought?”

“No, they were still extremely dangerous.” Endrance said. “But more like a bow with a few arrows left in the quiver. Once they’re out, they’re out forever.”

“This is good.” Wrach replied. “If we encounter more, we use tactics to force them to use their powers until they are exhausted. Then we move in for the kill.” He stretched. “Not too much different than hunting hydras, I guess.”

Endrance had been trying to wriggle free from the two wolves pinning him when he heard that. He grunted with effort as he pulled an arm free. “You guys hunt hydras?”

“The snow hydras, at least.”
Wrach confirmed. “Sand ones don’t grow around here, and from what I’ve heard, they are a great deal bigger.”

“Great. How much longer till we can move?” Endrance asked, freeing his other arm.

“About two hours. You should get back to sleep.” Wrach said, glancing outside.

“Can’t.” the mage replied. “I have to… well, you know. Do my business.”

The sentry leaned towards him and held out a furry arm. “Take my hand.” Wrach instructed. Endrance grabbed it and the wolfman pulled him free with a single smooth tug. Endrance half stood, stooping against the dirt packed ceiling.

“Stay downwind.” Wrach suggested. “I don’t want to have to smell that much of you for the next two hours.”

The mage nodded and clambered out of the hole. “I’ll try to figure that out.” He muttered.

He found himself in the pines on the far side of the flatland in front of mount Balator. Most of the time, the pines were a dark smudge along the edge of a light smudge in the backdrop whenever he was out and about on the mountain. Now he knew what they looked like up close. He briefly wondered who would be able to see him if he used a light spell. Would it look like a spark in the darkness at that distance?

He refrained. The Atastos would be closer and they had something akin to a fatal addiction to him; they were out for his blood and Endrance wasn’t likely to survive it if they all came at once.

He held up a hand, felt the breeze and found a suitable tree over a dozen yards away to do his business. He had been thinking about his nightmare and what he had talked about with Wrach. He had obviously picked up something from the three Atastos that was bothering him, but it was fragmented, broken up by the necrosis of having been centuries dead.

Centuries? Endrance wondered if his recollection was accurate as he cleaned up and walked back to the hole in the ground. The mages had died with an oath on their lips, but he couldn’t remember what it had been, or why. He knew that the risen dead they had been fighting were the product of hundreds of generations of wolfmen living and dying and being buried in the cold earth. Endrance was surprised that the bodies had been so well preserved. Perhaps-

Endrance looked around. He had missed the den somehow. He turned in a circle, unable to see the hole. “Damn.” He muttered.
“Wrach? Where’s the entrance?”

The sentry didn’t answer. Endrance groaned. He had forgotten how incredibly bad he was at navigation. Without a map and compass and a guide, Endrance could get hopelessly lost, like he had done several times during his training years ago. Without Joven at his side, he would never have found Balator on his own, and it was the biggest mountain on that side of the world.

Endrance knelt down and concentrated. Rubbing his hands to warm them up, he quickly and quietly cast the awareness spell he had used so long ago. He touched his hand to the earth as he completed casting, speaking the final word of power. A pulse rippled across the ground, practically invisible and silent.

He became aware of everything that lived in the area, knowing them as if he had personally found each and every one of them, noting and cataloging their presence. Dimly he was aware this time that the information was also being sorted and filed away by the same spell form that had helped him hours before. It was being far more helpful than he had thought it was going to be.

              The spell reached out in the direction he was facing in a cone reaching fifty or so yards, and though he was acutely aware of the surprising number of animals and insects hiding out of sight, he did not detect the wolfmen. He sighed, turned, and cast the spell again so that the layers slightly overlapped on one side. Like a fleeting glimpse, he didn’t sense them in that section, but he did notice a strange section where there were no creatures or insects of any kind for several yards.

It was worth investigating. Endrance picked himself up and walked in that direction. It didn’t take him very long to find the location. A pile of recently disturbed dirt nearly five feet across spanned between two trees. As Endrance approached, he was able to see the trees were being adversely affected by whatever was underground. The roots had pulled up from the dirt around it, and black corruption had spread up the sides of the trunks nearest to the mound.

He felt the aura he had felt before; it was the artifact that the Atastos had been hauling to the kingdom. Endrance thought back, and the spellform immediately found the relevant memories he had captured and brought them to mind for him. No hints of personality or ego remained in the memory; they had been cleanly divorced from their imprints.

It was an artifact and the wolfmen had known there was more behind the mountain than just a kingdom of barbarians. They had been taking the ewer there for a reason.
The ewer. That sounded right to Endrance. It was meant to carry something, but it wasn’t water.

Endrance felt, rather than heard, something approaching. He whirled, drawing one of his knives.

He saw two figures barely ten yards away, one Atastos of impressive size, and one hooded figure that looked human, his face covered in a blank white mask with only eye holes. Viewing through the dark, Endrance couldn’t make out the color of the person’s eyes, but the black robes and hood gave him the impression he preferred to remain unidentified.

The masked man stared Endrance in the eyes. “Kill him,” He said; his voice neutral and quiet, barely heard even in the silence of the night. “And recover the Ewer.”

The hulking Atastos lunged forward. Endrance felt adrenaline spike in his system as the thing easily matched Joven for size and apparent power. He yelped and dove under the thing as it swiped at him, rolling between its legs and slashing at one knee as he passed.

The thing didn’t seem to notice, the blade slicing dead fur and flesh but not deeply. The mage thrust his other hand out at the hooded figure and fired a blast of lightning at him before he could react. The hooded one slipped behind a tree as the lightning shot past, blasting a small burning crater into the side of a pine.

The Atastos whirled impossibly quickly, swinging an outstretched backhand. Endrance was caught in the side before he could react, tossing him through the air and rebounding off a tree trunk. He cried out in pain, the impact jarring him and knocking the breath out of him. He scrambled back to his feet, his vision swimming.

He turned to the Atastos and immediately ducked, as the thing had already caught up to him and was in mid swing. Its claws shredded bark and tree several inches deep, spraying splinters like shrapnel. Endrance slapped the palm of his right hand against the thing’s hip. He had a split second to recognize that the body was incredibly hot to touch before he pumped a fair bit of power into the repulsion spell tattooed on his hand.

The blast of kinetic force must have shattered the brute’s hip, but it had the added benefit of rocketing the thing over a dozen yards away from him. Endrance turned to the hooded figure just as it slipped out from behind a tree a few yards away; the energy of a spell it was preparing causing Endrance’s skin to tingle. The enemy, a mage, opened with a blast of fire similar to the one that Kaelob had used often, and Endrance had learned by watching him.