BT - Book 1 - Chapter 30 (Patreon)

Micah wasn’t sure when turning sixteen and ‘revealing’ his supernatural powers to his family had lost its charm, but it no longer interested him.  He suspected that an entire timeline of enslavement and suffering due to the rarity of his ‘gifts’ had something to do with it.  Revealing some of his powers to his family was still necessary.  After all, what sixteen year old wouldn’t be excited about his new abilities, but Micah just couldn’t enjoy it anymore.

After some half-hearted bragging about his ‘Rare’ quality blessing, Esther ran off leaving him alone with his Mother for the remainder of breakfast.  He did his best to deflect her questions about his future, instead focusing on the need to ‘train his gift’ before he made any long-lasting decisions.

He wasn’t completely lying to her.  Deceiving his Mom via omission rather than an outright falsehood didn’t do much to ease his conscience, but after his run with the Golden Drakes, Micah wasn’t exactly enthused about the idea of trusting his fate to any outside organization.  Even with the Lancers, a fairly honorable organization, Micah suspected that they’d bury him in training and low risk combat for so long that he’d never get a chance to properly stop the Durgh threat.

As much as he might resist and look for another path, the Goddess provided him with a way forward.  Using temporal energy to reach into Elsewhere and summon an army of Daemons unseen outside of legends wouldn’t be an easy task, but with the help of the grove’s trees, it wasn’t an impossible one.

Despite everything, something inside Micah resisted his current course of action.  He’d spent the previous timeline, isolated and almost friendless, performing the same dark rituals over and over again at the demand of those who’d taken him hostage.  If he were to isolate himself in the grove for another two years to finish his task with no one but Telivern to keep him company, the solitude might literally drive him mad.

Of course, it didn’t help that his plans involved engaging in the darkest of magics.  As much as he might justify the rituals he planned to perform because they relied on temporal energy rather than literal blood sacrifices, he couldn’t help but think of Mursa’s preface.  Tapping into Elsewhere could grant him great power, but the chances of horrifying side effects or outright death were much higher than he’d like to contemplate.

On the other hand, after having breakfast with his Mother and Esther, what were Micah’s choices?  Neither of them would leave Basil’s Cove, and even if they did his entire family would be impoverished and at the mercy of the same callous and powerful individuals that cursed his past life.  Even if he had to risk death and sacrifice his sanity in order to enact the rituals needed to protect his home, it was a worthwhile risk.  He might not have had the resolve to make this stand in a past life, but after watching the world fall apart and losing all trust in the powers that be, he’d shed his former naivete like a snake sheds its skin.

From his room, Micah cut his palm, letting blood drip onto the teleportation rune.  It drank in the red liquid, glowing dimly as the blood’s essence seeped into it.  He shivered slightly as a chill passed through his body as the ritual stole energy from him.  Until he’d cast his first teleportation ritual, Micah had always wondered why they weren’t more common.  The ability to instantly translocate seemed incredibly useful.  

The world flashed into a kaleidoscope of colors as he staggered, shivering and weak as a kitten into the cave.  That was why.  Quickly he pulled together some tinder and lit it with shaking hands, starting a small fire.  No teleportation could take place without drawing energy from the object transporting itself through Elsewhere.  The amount of energy depended upon the distance and the quality of the beacon on the other end.  If you tried to go too far, well.  Not everyone exited a teleportation ritual safely.

Telivern walked into the cave, alerted by the noise of Micah starting the fire.  Snorting it walked up to him and laid down, curlin around Micah.  Its soft fur brushed up against his shaking body, warming him as the deer held itself close to him.

Bemusement.  Reassurance.

“I’m sure this is really funny for you buddy,” Micah’s teeth chattered as he rubbed his arms.  “Each and every time I hop out here it’s like running for an hour in a rainstorm after not sleeping the night before.  You should be glad I like seeing you this much or I wouldn’t put up with this crap each and every day.”

Laughing accusation.  Bemusement.

“Okay,” Micah rolled his eyes at the mocking deer.  “So I did this daily before I met you too.  That doesn’t mean it’s fun.  Teleporting is pretty miserable.”

Patronizing reassurance.

“Yeah, yeah,” Micah stood up, his hands tingling as the feeling slowly restored itself to them.  “Thank you for the incredibly sincere sympathy.  Look, Teli-”

The deer snorted at him, flicking its head.

“Telivern,” Micah raised his hands palm out in a placating gesture while rolling his eyes.  “I need to go back to the grove.  Your evolving is an important step, but we’re both going to need to be a lot more capable if we want to achieve our goals.  The grove has enough temporal energy for me to experiment.  I learned some things in that last dungeon that could really help us in the weeks to come.”

Telivern nuzzled him, burying its snout in his outstretched hand.  Micah ran his free hand through its offwhite fur, enjoying the thrills of energy that ran through him as small sparks fizzled off of the deer in the wake of his fingers.

Acceptance. Reproach.

“I told you that I was sorry for leaving you behind,” Micah smiled, flashes of electricity from Telivern’s fur lighting the dim cave.  “I didn’t know how long I was going to be stuck in there or how much danger I was going to face.  I would have brought you with, if I could.”

Acceptance.

“It’s been a couple of minutes since the ritual,” Micah reached past Telivern and picked up his spear.  “I’m ready to head out to the grove if you are.”

Rather than respond through the strange tactile empathy they shared, Telivern just snorted and began walking out of the cave.  Micah smiled as he followed it.  Telivern might not be able to speak to him, but since its evolution its communication had become noticeably clearer and more than a bit more sarcastic.

Following the deer out of the cave, Micah set out after it toward the grove.  By now, most of the monsters and animals native to the area around his basecamp avoided him.  In the past couple of months, he’d supplanted every predator in the area, slaying them for experience and the energy needed to power his rituals.  Between Telivern and him, they’d clearly cemented themselves as the region’s apex predators.

The grove itself hadn’t changed much from yesterday.  The bodies of the dryads and bat creatures remained where he’d stacked them at the foot of a nearby tree. The soil was still churned and scarred from the recent battle, most of the grass and bushes ripped up and destroyed from attacks that had missed the rapidly dodging dryads.

Sheepishly, Micah walked past the chaos and began assembling a ritual circle next to one of the six great trees, careful not to let himself sink into their temporal signature a second time.  At first Telivern watched on as Micah studiously carved the runes into the disheveled earth, but eventually the deer grew bored and wandered off into the nearby woods.

Micah didn’t let his focus slip as he continued his work.  Periodically he would pause from retrieving the rare and varied reagents he’d collected from his previous dungeon excursions to check his notes in the folio.

Any time he conducted a new ritual, there was a high chance of failure.  Given the complexity and power of this ritual, Micah wanted to make sure to double and triple check his calculations.  Of course, the problem with a new ritual was that he didn’t know yet what was truly important.  For example, in a teleportation ritual, the phase of the moon mattered, but if your calculations were off by a day or two it wouldn’t become a dramatic problem.  On the other hand, the number of days to the next solstice was a vital piece of information.  The circumference of the crystal dust circle changed with the passing of each day.

Micah thought he knew what he was doing, but anything from Intermediate Daemon Summoning was a risk.  One footstep in the wrong spot or a mispronounced syllable could drain him of his life force or unleash a horror on the world  

Finally the circle around the tree was complete.  Micah cocked his head to the side, as if trying to view it from another angle.  The reagents and runes all looked like they were in the right spot.  He’d accounted for the position of the sun, phase of the moon, barometric pressure, and the position of every major constellation.  All there was to do is hope that the position of a minor constellation, the temperature, or some other unknown variable didn’t throw the ritual into disarray.

The circle was as complete as he’d ever be able to make it.  At this point, any further embellishments were just Micah stalling for time and making excuses.

With a deep breath he cut into his hand, drawing blood once more.  Carefully, he stepped over the ritual circle and inscribed the final rune for a the temporal transfer portion of the ritual on the tree.  He shook his head to clear it of the tree's weight of purpose, the alien memories of leaves and roots, drinking water through the rich soil.

Slipping back over the circle, he squeezed his still bleeding fist and allowed a dribble of blood to fall on the inscriptions.  They began to glow dully, the unearthly glow rapidly spreading around the outside of the intricately carved runes.

Micah withdrew the Folio and began the ritual.  Reciting the words written in its yellowed pages, his cadence and hand motions changed in time to his precise notes.  Slowly, the spell built around him.  First, he connected with the tree.  His voice faltered as memories of growth and light filled him once again.  For a second, he thought that he’d doomed himself with the misstep, but the ritual continued unhindered.

Then he felt another link.  The ritual breached something invisible, ripping a hole into the very skein of reality.  Just out of reach, he felt unlimited potential.  A world of power and consequence without any definition or form beyond that created through a force of will.  The hole resonated with the tree, drinking in the aged giant’s history and temporal energy.  Somehow, Micah knew that this portal was different.  That all he needed to do was reach out his arm and he could have the power of Elsewhere dancing at his fingertips.

He restrained himself, barely.  The thirst for the power and the possibilities it represented burned at him, but common sense prevailed.  Nothing good came from changing a ritual midway through completion.

The portal stabilized, growing in size.  A skeletal claw the size of Micah’s torso reached through, grabbing onto the border of the rip in reality and pulling itself through.  Micah felt his Adam’s apple bob as he stared at the creature, sweat dripping down his back as he focused every fiber of his being on ensuring that the transfer of more temporal energy from the tree to the daemon continued unabated.

It stood almost twice his height, a great vulture covered in ragged black feathers everywhere but it’s scaled head.  It fixed its solitary red eye on Micah and squawked.  He wasn’t sure if it was a sonic attack, or just what passed for a greeting amongst daemons, but he stumbled, falling to his knees as the words to the ritual continued.

The monster spread its great skeletal arms and stared up at the night sky, breathing in Karell’s air as more temporal energy flowed into it.  Micah reached his limit, cutting the connection between the daemon and the tree.  The portal behind it fizzled, disappearing in a flash of mana and static.

For a second nothing happened as the monster turned its gaze on Micah.  He returned the favor, inspecting the creature as a smile grew on his face.  

Despite the odds, he’d succeeded.  A Brensen.  The second tier of daemons, roughly as powerful as a level forty adventurer.  Unseen on Karell in almost a century, and with enough temporal energy powering its summoning ritual to keep it on this plane for five years.  The weakness of summoning had always been the limited duration of the summons.  It took too much energy to keep a being of any power on Karell for more than one or two battles.

Temporal energy allowed him to sidestep that problem.  He might not be able to summon an entire army of daemons due to the cost in energy of each casting, but the grove would provide him with enough energy to make a very credible defense against the Durgh scourge.

Still, his mind flickered to the promise of power he’d felt when his mind reached through the portal to summon the Brensen.  The possibilities were endless.  He just needed to find the right ritual.