Unruly Summon Chapter 25: Fang (Patreon)

"Remember that dragon nightmare I had my first night?" I asked Christine once our full group was gathered back in the courtyard after lunch.

... Well, full except for Stephanie, who I hadn't seen since I'd stormed into the throne room. I had no way of confirming where she actually was—she could easily be hiding somewhere in the castle—but I had no intention of asking.

"I do. No-one else heard or saw anything, nor have there been any reports of similar dreams or signs of a dragon re-emergence. The most likely explanation is simply that you had a nightmare, presumably precipitated by your summoning. It wouldn't be surprising."

"And the blood?"

"Your foolish experimentation with body strengthening."

"I'm almost certain I was bleeding before I started! And in any case, it happened again."

"Again?" asked Christine, frowning.

"I had a similar nightmare. Apparently, Mary was trying for some time to wake me, with no effect."

"It's true!" agreed Mary. "I was shaking him, and his guard was shouting, and then I cast Parvus Sanatio, but nothing helped."

Christine's frown deepened. "That is... concerning."

"Too damn right," agreed Wendy. "Dammit, someone should have fetched me; I could have checked for any active magic. How long was he unresponsive?"

"Uh... About five minutes?" answered Mary.

"And what did you dream of?"

"Like before, I was standing in a flat field of ash, with a thick, dark fog blanketing the place. This time, I cast Maius Magus Visus, which showed me mana and dense miasma. The dragon said something I didn't understand, then roared, blasting the fog away. Then it hit me with fire breath, except it was black. I made about twenty casts of Maius Scutum, but it blasted straight through them all. Then, just when I thought I was dead, I woke up."

"Weird..." opined Wendy.

"You can't remember what it said?" asked Christine.

"No. The moment I woke up, the details started blurring, and all I could remember was that I couldn't understand it even in the dream. It was terrifying at the time, but within a minute of waking, it faded to the point it felt like a normal bad dream."

"If not for the inability to wake him, and the blood from the first time around, I'd say it was nothing more than a nightmare," said Christine.

"It's a bit of an odd thing to have a nightmare about, though," pointed out Wendy. "Yes, we mentioned dragons, but only as part of our history. It's not as if he needs to fight one. If he's having nightmares, they should be about demons. Or, dare I say, Mary getting murdered."

Christine clicked her tongue, either at the situation or Wendy's snide comment. "Let's consider this rationally, by asking the most important questions. Is Thomas in danger, and is there anything we can do?"

"I'm pretty sure I got flamed last night, and I woke up unharmed. Nor was my mana sight still active, despite me having cast it only minutes earlier. I have no reason to believe the dream was real."

"That doesn't mean much. The nightmare could have been much earlier in the night, and your death there is what made it difficult for you to wake. And... another disturbing thought. You used the words 'except it was black'. What colour would you expect dragon breath to be? We never mentioned that detail."

"Red? Like normal flames?"

"All dragon fire is black," sighed Christine. "So your dream contained details you can't have known. That is indeed disturbing. But what about the second question? What can we do?"

The group fell into silence.

"Then I don't see any option but to continue as planned. We'll be setting out for the nearest corrupted lands tomorrow morning. While we're out, I'll have some of our scholars look over the records and see if anything like this has happened before."

"Fair enough," I agreed. Until Wendy's point about me possibly getting flamed much earlier in the night and being left in a coma by it, I hadn't been too worried. Now I was very worried. If it happened again, perhaps I could slink away in the direction opposite the dragon...

"The group will consist of you, Wendy and me, along with a small group of court mages and a few squads of rank C slayers," continued Christine. "Sorry, but we'll not be bringing Mary with us."

"That's understandable; I can't defend myself," agreed Mary.

"What are slayers?" I asked, wondering about the unfamiliar name.

"Monster hunters," replied Christine. "The warriors who work to collect magical reagents from monsters, and to keep their population culled and prevent miasmic floods."

"Why slayers, though?" asked Wendy. "Why not knights or soldiers?"

"Several reasons. We don't want to take from the defences of the castle or the capital, for a start. We are also trying to keep Thomas's true identity a secret, and army forces moving around would be sure to attract attention."

"A group of court mages will attract attention, too, but I can see the logic," conceded Wendy. "We aren't going deep into the corrupted lands. It's only a few days' round trip, and we shouldn't encounter anything dangerous."

"Exactly. With Thomas's growth, the three of us should be able to handle any danger we're likely to run into on our own. Bringing an escort of slayers is purely out of an abundance of caution, and to aid with logistics."

"Yeah, a watch rotation with only three people wouldn't be fun," agreed Wendy.

"I would have liked to have Thomas fight captive monsters in preparation, but arranging that secretly and at short notice hasn't proven possible. You'll be training against me again instead. First, I want you to get used to using battle aura in your mage robes. If you master that quickly enough, I'll teach you crescent fang."

"You'll teach me what?" I asked, ears perking at the unfamiliar name.

"No, I'm not falling for that one. If I show you, you'll try to copy it unsupervised."

"I can't help but feel that I've gained several unearned reputations in the few days I've been here."

"Uh... You kinda... did earn them..." begrudgingly admitted Mary, who I hadn't even been sick on once while getting the hang of Omnia Visus.

It was a shame Wendy had then spoilt things completely by suggesting I give Maius Omnia Visus a go.

"Wow. Et tu, Mary?" I asked, doing my best attempt at a pout. It wasn't as if she didn't have spare uniforms.

"... I'm not sure what your face is doing, but please make it stop," begged Wendy.

"Sorry," I said, suspecting my best wasn't up to much and that an apology was probably warranted. "But I suppose we should get started. If I'm expected to wear this dress..."

"Robe!" corrected Mary.

"... on our little expedition, practising fighting in it seems sensible."

"Then take your weapon. We'll be using the blunted metal swords from the beginning today," said Christine.

"Do mages ever use staves or wands or other such things?" I asked as I drew my metal training sword, still unable to shake the feeling I was some sort of half-baked cosplayer. I had to try quite hard to resist the urge to flip up my hood. There was a fragment of geek buried deep inside me that really wanted to, but the part of me that respected common sense pointed out that restricting my range of vision in battle would be a bloody stupid thing to do. "The sword and robe combo seems fundamentally wrong, somehow."

"Yes?" suggested Wendy, giving the impression she didn't quite understand the question. "Slayer mages often use staves, mainly so they can bash weaker monsters with them and save on mana, but if you're asking about foci, a staff or a wand isn't really any better than a simple ring. Certainly not worth giving up a hand to carry. It is possible to create staves and wands with embedded spells, but for you, there's no point; they're less efficient and harder to control than casting the spell yourself, so they're only useful for casting spells of an affinity you completely lack."

"And I have every affinity," I finished. "What's a foci?"

"A focus. Foci is the plural. They're items attuned to a specific affinity, that aid you with spells of that colour, but make spells of other colours less efficient. So, again, not much point for you. If one would have been useful, I'd have given you one to start with."

"Fair enough," I admitted, wondering if I could still get a staff just for the look of thing. Maybe a staff-shaped sheath for my sword? Or a detachable knob at the end that could be removed to reveal a spearhead?

"If you're done asking magic questions in your martial arts class, shall we begin?" asked Christine, not waiting for my response before beginning.

"I think I'm going to need a new robe," I admitted an hour later. Wendy hadn't been kidding about how battle aura scaled with distance, which made protecting the loose uniform tough, particularly the baggy sleeves and hem. Still, I'd got the hang of protecting the important bits before the last threads gave up and left me in my underwear.

"Those robes are expensive," complained Wendy. "Not that I'm paying for them, or that I care. I just feel obliged to point the fact out."

"Better he learn here than in the middle of a monster attack," said Christine.

"Yeah. Ending up naked in the middle of a large group of slayers and mages doesn't sound fun," I agreed.

"Yes it does," disagreed Wendy. "Just not necessarily for you."

"Please rein it in, Wendy," sighed Christine. "You were doing a reasonable job of acting professional the first couple of days."

"Oh, come on. You don't think it would be funny? You agree with me, right, Mary?"

"Uh..." demurred Mary, who obviously agreed but didn't want to admit it.

"If you have slimes here, I'm totally going to sneak some into Wendy's bed," I sighed. "Now, more importantly, have I qualified to learn crescent fang yet?"

"At least someone is capable of focus," said Christine, taking an odd stance with her sword raised and the palm of her off-hand pressed against the blade. I prepared to defend, watching her feet to spot the moment of her advance, but they remained firmly planted in place.

She swung the blade and, despite being yards away from me, my sword-arm went flying off behind me.

"What?" I asked stupidly, my nervous system not quite having caught up with the fact that my arm was no longer attached.

"And that was crescent fang," said Christine. "I have to say, I was expecting you to dodge or block it, rather than just stand there and take it."

"I didn't even see it!" I complained. There was a rut cut into the earth, starting a couple of yards in front of Christine and extending a few more yards behind me. It was as if her sword had momentarily extended itself during her swing. "Also, ouch," I added, as my brain finally got the message that I was supposed to be in pain.

A thought I'd had yesterday, and was having again now, was that a severed limb should probably result in more than an 'ouch'. It wasn't as if I'd made a habit of having limbs chopped off back on Earth, so I couldn't say for sure, but common sense insisted it should be painful. Either my common sense was wrong, or perhaps my divine blessing interfered with pain, too?

"Here you go, Master," said Mary, who'd run out to collect and return my arm like some sort of ballgirl. Or possibly a puppy playing fetch...

"Thanks. Maius Sanatio," I said, reattaching it and replenishing all the blood that was now fertilising the courtyard instead of keeping my tissues oxygenated.

Another random thought that I kinda wished I hadn't had: what if dust got in the joint? Did I now have soil stuck in the middle of my bones? Should I have washed the cut before reattaching? Mary didn't say anything, and she was the one with training in healing, so hopefully it was fine. Just like the way I hoped it didn't matter if my positioning was a few millimetres out. I could still move it, so the nerves at least must have all been linked back together correctly.

"Let's try that again. This time, I'll aim at a target. Please use your mana sight to observe."

"Why didn't you use a target the first time?" I complained, before remembering her behaviour yesterday. "Wait... Bah, and there I was thinking that you were more professional than Wendy."

"You can hardly blame her. It's not often a hero shows up. We all want to see how far you can go, so you can't blame her for getting a bit excited," smirked Wendy.

"Please don't lump me together with her," sighed Christine. "And please cast your mana vision."

"I already have," I answered, smirking in turn. Rather, I'd used Maius Omnia Visus, but cast it subvocally. Given how loud the standard version of the powerful sight spell had been, I figured the enhanced version would be worse, and thus casting it out loud would run counter to the goal of keeping a low profile. We didn't want another Miraculum vibrating the castle.

It was an impressive spell. Even putting aside the various other overlays it offered, the mana sight alone exceeded Maius Magus Visus in both range and detail. The range still wasn't huge, but I was at least able to see from one side of the courtyard to the other, meaning both Christine and the targets were in range.

She took the same stance again, and I could see her coating the blade with mana. She swung, launching the mana into a crescent-shaped wave that tore through the air at bullet-like speed. It expanded as it travelled, the base gouging into the ground. The portion that hit the black pillar did nothing, harmlessly dissipated by whatever the target was made of. The top part continued on, expanding further and striking the far wall, but not causing any noticeable damage.

Perhaps 'diffused' would be a better description than 'expanded'. It was a mana-based ranged attack usable by those with only melee weapons, but the range wasn't unlimited. Too far, and the fang spread out too much to pierce anything.

"Did you get it?" asked Christine.

"I think so," I answered, taking the same stance and coating my training weapon with mana in the same way. "Crescent fang!" shouted my overly excited inner geek as I swung my sword downwards, launching the fang of mana through the air.

"Uh..." the more logical part of me added as I realised I'd used a lot more mana than Christine. The noise as it tore into the ground was substantial. Thankfully, it still didn't do anything to the black pillar.

Of course, like Christine's, the upper part of my attack kept going.

"I can think of another reputation you're well on the way to earning," laughed Wendy as the four of us stared at the large gouge I'd torn in the castle's outer wall.

"At least it didn't go all the way through?" I tried, but without much hope. This time, it was my logical side that flipped up my hood, trying to hide my embarrassment as a crowd of guards rushed into the courtyard. "Why don't they make the walls out of whatever those targets are made from?"