BT II - Chapter 16 (Patreon)

Waves of energy undulated around Micah as he sat cross-legged in the center of a ritual circle.  To his left lay the river kraken, barely alive and only sustained by frequent applications of wood magic.  To his right was a tree so tall that he could not see its upper branches.  The plant radiated age and majesty.  Through his ritual connection with it, Micah could sense its roots running deep into the soil, drinking from the water table itself before anchoring themselves in the bedrock far below.

The tree was an absolute titan.  Created as a sapling when the gods themselves forged Karell from the mists of Elsewhere, and growing steadily ever since.  Civilizations had developed tools beneath its branches, using its leaves for shade on what had at the time been a floodplain when they made the first bows and spears that had slain the first dungeon monsters.  Its nuts had nourished entire armies as they waged war on their neighbors, and its roots had drunk their blood as the surrounding tribes invaded and slaughtered the burgeoning empire that had sprung up in its shadow.

It was a shame to use the  tree for something as mundane as a binding, but even the prodigious enchantments Micah had put on his spear earlier barely even dented the mammoth plant.  Maybe the bark was a little less blackened with age or the branches didn’t reach quite so high to drink in the sun’s light, but it was impossible to actually tell.

A twist of Micah’s wrist, and a handful of inhuman words cast temporal transfer, beginning the process of siphoning magical energy from the tree.  A motion from Micahs’ hand activated the ritual circle around him.  Two dozen glyphs, painstakingly etched into the surface of smooth river rocks and placed at precise intervals flared to life, glowing with arcane light as they interacted with the offerings around him.

Wooden carvings, crystals, and a variety of specially prepared powders burst into purple flames, consumed by the magic of the circle and the overwhelming power Micah was drawing from the tree.

He closed his eyes, reciting the ritual’s incantations as he shifted the Maarikava armor to his lap.  Strange words twisted in his throat like eels as they fought against Micah’s only human vocal cords.  Each stanza of the spell form took into account another variable as it guided and shaped the titanic power of the temporal energy that he was channeling.

“St’nnk Ah’neeia oose oose Kkrrnn.  Kkgrk Aooea blaaseik.”  His voice rangedfrom a gutteral echoing grunt to a whispering vibrato as Micah enshrined the phase of the moon, his location in the jungle, and the precise barometric pressure into the spell.

A golden needle appeared in the air before him, hovering in the damp jungle air.  Without looking, Micah reached out and grasped it with his right hand, gripping the Maarikava teeth lining the right shoulder of the armor with his left.

The glowing stylus flashed, thrumming with latent energy as he began the inscription, his mouth moving all the while.  Each motion of his hand planted another intricate line or swirl on the superheard ivory of the tooth, its depth and shape carefully calculated to capture the very being of the crippled river kraken.  It was almost a poem, an ode to the creature’s size, power and ferocity crafted in the alien tongue of ritual magic.

Sweat poured down Micah’s face as twenty or so minutes later he finished inscribing the runes on the first tooth.  The glyphs seemed to glow with their own golden light as they basked in the temporal energy from the tree.

With a deep breath, Micah made a chopping motion with this free hand, ending the regeneration spell that was keeping the river kraken alive.  The sounds up and down its flanks opened, letting blood dribble out onto the forest floor.

Micah moved on to the second of the four teeth on the armor’s right shoulder.  The ritual would have been shorter and simpler with a less powerful monster, or if he chose to bind the creature to a specific place and then link his armor to that location.  It is what he had done with the sturgeon, but at the same time Micah was still dealing with the fallout of that decision.

He could summon the fish easily in Pereston, but as he traveled further and further away, the spirit became both weaker and more mana intensive.  With a monster as powerful as the kraken, Micah didn’t want to waste its potential.  That meant inscribing the entirety of the spirit binding into his armor so that he could carry the creature with him wherever he went.  True, it also meant that an attack that damaged the enchanted fangs on his shoulder could theoretically destroy rituals binding the spirit, letting it escape and fade into Elsewhere, but that was a small price to pay for the efficiency and portability of binding the monster to the armor.

The river kraken shuddered, the last of its hit points draining into the soil.  A moment later, the misty form of its spirit began to leave its body only for a web of energy to crackle into being, twisted cords of magic springing up from the points around the edge of the ritual circle where the temporal energy had consumed his ritual offerings.

The spirit tried to flee, tentacles undulating as it pushed itself through the jungle air only to crash into the magical net.  The kraken’s gentle golden glow contrasted with the brilliant green of the cage, punctuated with sharp flashes of red as the ritual stung and burned the creature’s ghost every time it came into contact with the ropes of power that Micah was using to prevent its escape.

He reached out with his left hand, a lasso of green magic throwing itself from his extended arm and wrapping itself around the river kraken’s body, pinning its tentacles together.  Then Micah pulled, drawing the struggling spirit toward his armor even as his right hand continued the painstaking task of inscribing the intricate magical glyphs that would bind and enslave the creature.

It struggled, but just as in life, the kraken’s spirit was no match for Micah’s will.  Inevitably he pulled the being over, forcing it into the Maarikava fangs as they glowed with the combined power of the temporal energy and the spirit’s vital energy.  Even when the giant golden squid was no longer visible, Micah could feel it through his arcana skill, struggling against the ever tightening magical restrictions that he layered onto its very soul.

Finally the runes were finished, intricate and so heavily layered that the Maarikava fangs practically glowed with magical light.  Micah reached out with his right hand, releasing the golden needle to let it float weightlessly in the air before him.

Gritting his teeth, he pointed at the tree, pushing the temporal transfer spell that had been active during the entire ritual with his mind.  A torrent of energy flowed into Micah, memories of sunlight and growth, of superstitious tribespeople sacrificing animals to water his roots with their blood, all of it flooded into his mind, threatening to overwhelm him.

Micah slammed his eyes shut, guiding the tsunami of power into the Maarikava teeth.  They blazed with light as the carefully etched seals activated as one, latching onto the river kraken’s spirit and binding it once and for all inside the specially prepared lengths of ivory.

Satisfied, he let out a single shuddering breath before Micah spun the armor around, changing to the other shoulder.  He snatched the golden needle out of the air, beginning the intricate geometric lattice of runes that would form the basis for his next spell form.

He didn’t let the flow of temporal energy abate.  The enchantment he was working on wasn’t a simple spirit binding, rather a recreation of the Astria, the most powerful artifact that he’d managed to create in his previous timeline.

Micah wasn’t nearly at the level he he had been when he’d originally created the Astria, but the saturation of ambient magic from the spirit binding combined with the high quality of the Maarikava armor should be enough for him to complete the complicated ritual.

‘Should,’ Micah chuckled to himself, sweat pouring down his face.  That word was doing a lot of work.  He had the skills and power needed to finish the enchantment, Micah knew that.  It was more a question of focus and willpower.  The initial casting had taken him almost an entire day with him taking breaks for water and food in between each step, but doing so now would disrupt the carefully prepared conditions that were letting him attempt to create the item early.

He grimaced, needle flashing as the grid of hexagons began to take shape on sea serpent fangs.  Unless he wanted to wait a couple of years to have access to the Astria’s power, he would need to rebuild the entire thing in one sitting while he had a link to the almost limitless power of the ancient tree.

Four fangs.  The sun was hanging much lower in the sky by the time Micah finished preparing them.  His stomach clenched uncomfortably, demanding food, and his head ached from dehydration as the humid air wrung yet more sweat from him.

Micah closed his eyes, activating his arcana skill.  In his hands, the armor glowed with, radiating magic from the layers of enchantments he had laid on it, but Micah looked away, instead turning inward.

His mental gaze traveled through his own body, past his mana channels and through the solidified fire of his class until Micah was looking at his own blessing.  Runes, twisting and alien blended together into the shape of an hourglass, impossibly large but cracked at the and leaking small amounts of burning red energy that flowed into the rest of Micah’s body before it merged with his class.

It still took his breath away every time he saw it.  Over the years, he’d had a chance to look at dozens of blessings in an attempt to copy and recreate them, but there was no question that his was still the most artistic and majestic that he’d ever laid eyes on.  Of course, no one else with a Mythic blessing was willing to let him inspect their soul.  At most he’d been able to look at a pair of fairly weak Rare blessings, but somehow, Micah knew that it just wouldn’t compare.

Mursa’s work was gorgeous.  Solid clean strokes ending in runework so intricate that he’d never seen anything that could compare, let alone match it.  Then it shifted, a web of glyphs that changed, morphing seamlessly with each beat of Micah’s heart so as to not create a gap or flaw beyond the leaking crack that, as far as he could tell, was intentionally created as part of the original design.

Shaking his head slightly, Micah began transcribing the fraction of the blessing that he could comprehend to the first Maarikava tooth.  The moment the golden needle touched the armor, the webwork of initial runes on all four of the teeth on his armor’s shoulder flared to life, brighter than the failing sun.

Above Micah, the tree rustled.  The river of temporal energy being pulled from it by Micah’s spell turned into a raging ocean as the enchantment began to greedily suck every drop of magic from the titan.

His breath came in short gasps, arms heavy beneath the sudden weight of the mana clinging to the air.  To his arcana enhanced vision, the world was aflame, glowing in a brilliant array of colors as the temporal energy infused everything around him.

Distantly, Micah noticed his hit points beginning to drop as the uncontrollable sea of energy began to erode both his body, and the fabric of reality around him.  It wasn’t much, his high level and body attribute would be more than enough to carry him through, but the nearby plantlife wasn’t so lucky.

Ferns, bushes, mushrooms- everything within twenty or so paces of Micah suffocated under the force of his enchantment.  One by one, the vegetation reached its limit, flashing with light before it disintegrated into ash from mana saturation.  Then the process repeated itself with his personal effects.  Clothes, spare food, and shoes, anything that wasn’t previously enchanted simply could not withstand the maelstrom of energy that followed in the wake of Micah’s flashing inscription needle, leaving him as naked as a newborn in the forest clearing.

Then, a burning, tingling sensation washed over his body.  Hair and dead skin, no longer protected by Micah’s soul melted, turning into dust with a flash of golden light.

Still he ignored it, carving the runes and mana channels of his blessing as best he could into tooth after tooth.  Time, pain, hunger, and thirst, every sensation Micah associated with his body lost all meaning.  Every grain of his focus was spent trying to transcribe Mursa’s masterpiece onto the crude forgery of his armor.

Micah opened his eyes, gasping for breath.  The sun was long gone, replaced by the moon which was already beginning its own descent.  The outlines of his ritual circle were clearly visible due to the lack of life.

He sat alone in a clearing, the titanic tree that had brushed the sky itself little more than a yearling, barely taller than Micah if he were to stand.  It glowed in the darkness, its bark a shimmering mosaic of silver and gold as the mana from Micah’s casting infused its very being.  Everything else was gone, disintegrated into a fine dust that had long since mixed with the moist jungle soil.

With a groan, Micah stood up.  Sometime during the enchantment process, his hit points had dipped under half of their total.  Everything about his overly pink and totally naked body hurt, from the tips of his ears to the overly tender soles of his feet.

Reaching down, he picked up the armor, inspecting both of his enchantments before Micah’s face broke into a broad smile.  There was only enough room to bind one more monster, but his work on both the Astria and the river kraken were a success.

The Astria was a crude facsimile of blessed return.  Despite the expenditure of resources and magic that Micah had needed to make it, the enchanted fangs could only send him forty eight hours into the past, and it took them a full week to recharge.  It couldn’t create a full time-loop the way blessed return could, but in its own way, a two day jump was almost more useful.

He’d have to be careful using it against the third prince, after all the daemon would travel back in time with him, but against more mundane foes it was the perfect tool to extricate himself from a snare or trap.

An appreciative whistle snapped Micah’s attention away from the armor.  Leeka strode into the clearing, nodding at him with a broad grin on her face.  Somewhere in a nearby tree Jakaw chattered excitedly.

“I was wrong Micah!” She exclaimed cheerfully.  “You ARE a male.  Also, it’s good to see that your extra height and strength has been beneficial in other areas as well.”

“See?” Micah asked in confusion before realization dawned on him.  Frantically, his pink and newborn smooth skin blushing a deep red, he positioned the Maarikava armor in front of his waist, cutting off Leeka’s view.

“No need to end the show early,” Leeka replied with a chuckle and a wink.  “Anyway, I’ll wander off into the forest for a minute or two to let you get dressed.  After that, we should probably head out to Jakint.  We’ve already wasted a lot of time.  I didn’t expect you to spend a whole day on that spell of yours.”

“We?”  Micah asked, jogging over to his pile of spare clothing the second Leeka turned her back on him.  “What do you mean, ‘we.’  The Pashta only committed to providing me with a map to Jakint if I helped out.”

“Just think of me as ‘the map,” she called back, carefully keeping her gaze away from Micah as he dressed.  “There’s no way you’d be able to pick out the necessary landmarks, and in all likelihood you’d just end up getting turned around and wandering the jungle for a couple of weeks before you ended up back at the Amghul River.”

“The council knew that I was a bit bored with being forced to hunt the same game trails day after day,” Leeka continued.  “The only reason they didn’t let me leave earlier is that the tribe needed every woman that could fight on hand for the war with the Roktoll.  Now that you’ve put that conflict to rest, there’s no reason not to send Jakaw and I to guide you out of the jungle.”

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”  Micah questioned, shrugging on a crude tunic.  “Jakint isn’t the end of the road for me.  I’m not sure I’ll ever be back in your tribe’s jungle, and if I do visit, it likely won’t be anytime soon.  If you come with me, you’ll either have to find your own way back or be stuck with me for a very long time.”

“Oh don’t worry about me,” Leeka chirped happily.  “All of this exploration and adventure sounds like fun to me.”