Wizard Trials: Chapter 140 (Patreon)

Index | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter 

          The breath actually went out of Draevin as he realized what he was seeing. His world was changing to be more like Hell. Hell! That had to be what Tenna had warned him about. The “corruption” of Eldira had nothing to do with a bunch of demons so far as the Tuan’diath were concerned—this was what they were worried about. They didn’t want Eldira to become another Hell. No plants, oceans of lava, clouds of smoke, demons everywhere: in short, an inhospitable world. Compared to this, none of the other conflicts they’d dealt with seemed to matter. They’d been fighting to save their world, but if this… rot continued to spread there wouldn’t be anything left to fight for.

          Draevin lifted the rift-net off the ground with his ice. There was resistance. He pulled harder. Something finally gave way and the little round device popped up into the air. The place where it had been lying had two black spots in the red soil, almost like bite marks. Draevin craned his neck closer. The black spots were the broken ends of black roots. He looked at the rift-net now floating next to him. The piece of black root suspended in the center had sent out two shoots into the soil since he threw it away. He’d just broken them off, but they were still in the soil. “Shit!” Draevin cursed. Was it already too late to stop it? The roots were in the ground now, spreading like a cancer. He made a snap decision to try to pull them up. He didn’t exactly have the right magic for it—and he desperately wanted to avoid touching the stuff—but there was nobody else around.

          With a bit of cryomancy, Draevin wrapped the end of the roots he could see and pulled. The ground began to bulge, but that was it. There was too much resistance. It was the soil weighing the roots down. Draevin switched to steam to blast it away. A jet shot out of the end of his staff, billowing out red soil in a great plume. After a few seconds he paused and let the dust settle to check on his progress. Right around the two tap roots soil had been stripped away to reveal a tight network of black roots. They started from the source and branched, and branched, and branched again. It was like there was more root than soil! Draevin had cleared the soil away from a circle a few paces across but there were more roots snaking off under the section he hadn’t cleared yet. He looked around at the circle of red dirt. It looked like it was bigger than the arena grounds already. He wondered if the network of roots extended all the way to the edge of it. His best shot would be to get under the whole clump of roots with a sheet of ice, once he got it all out of the ground he could worry about what to do with it.

          Draevin ran back a few paces and blasted the ground again with a short burst of steam. Red soil blew away to reveal yet more black roots. That confirmed it. He jogged over to the very edge of the red circle and tried the same trick on the soil that hadn’t changed color yet. To his horror, Draevin found that there were already tendrils of root squirming around in the section that hadn’t changed color yet. It seemed the color change was lagging a bit behind the roots that were causing it. Draevin blasted away more soil until he found the edge of the root system. They wiggled and squirmed angrily when they were exposed to the open air, reaching for more soil to infect. It was spreading. It was spreading fast! “Shit, shit, shit!” Draevin cursed. This was beyond him. He needed someone else. Maybe everyone else! If they didn’t stop this today, they might not get another chance. How long before this stuff covered the whole planet? The bigger it got, the faster it would expand. Draevin jumped into the air and flew off, taking the frozen rift-net with him.

          Peter was easy to find. He hadn’t even made it to the front gates of Truntstown. Draevin skidded to a halt before him. “We need to go. Now!”

          “Oh, hey, you found it already,” Peter said, gesturing to the ball of ice with the rift-net suspended inside it.

          “Yeah. Found it,” Draevin said quickly. “Too late. We need to go.” He didn’t even wait for Peter to agree, just pointed his staff at him and wrapped ice around his waist, then took off again into the sky with the both of them.

          “What’s going on?” Peter asked as soon as they were in the air. “You seem a little stressed.”

          “Roots in the ground,” Draevin said. “They’re spreading. They’re taking over. Everything they touch turns to Hell.” He aimed them towards the main spire. It was still acting as the base of operations for the city. They landed before the front doors and Draevin immediately dismissed the ice around Peter’s waist. People were milling about, mostly cleaning up. Draevin looked around until he spotted someone he recognized. “Syl!” Draevin called out. “Where is Istven?”

          “Oh, hey Drae. You’re back. How was the—”

          “Where is Istven!” Draevin repeated more firmly. He didn’t have time for chit-chat. Every second they wasted those roots spread further.

          Sylnya arched an eyebrow. “Are you okay?”

          “He’s really not,” Peter volunteered from his back. “He was spouting off something about roots spreading Hell.”

          “I’m not spouting anything,” Draevin insisted. He squeezed the air bubbles out of the ice encasing the rift-net and waved it between them. “This thing sent roots into the ground. They’re spreading. Fast. Everything they touch turns to Hell.”

          “What does that mean?” Sylnya asked. “How do things ‘turn to Hell’?” She reached out and grabbed the rift-net device to study it closer. Draevin let her take it.

          “I mean exactly what it sounds like. Hell. Red rocks. No life. It’s—changing our world. Demons are one thing, but if our world literally turns into Hell there won’t be anything left to fight for!”

          “Terraforming,” Peter said. “You mean it’s terraforming our world.”

          “Sure, whatever you want to call it. I don’t care. If we don’t stop it right now we aren’t going to have a world!”

          “You know, this does sound kind of serious,” Peter said in entirely too casual a tone.

          “Yᴏᴜ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ?” Draevin screamed at him.

          “What is the meaning of this?” Istven’s voice called out. Draevin turned around. Istven was standing in the stairway.

          “Thank goodness,” Draevin said. “Istven. We need you. Our world is under attack.”

          “Where?” Istven said. “Is it Chaska’nal already?”

          Draevin shook his head. Peter stepped forward to explain for him. “Roots growing in the ground. They’re terraforming our world. Remaking it to be more like Hell.”

          “We have to stop it before it’s too late!” Draevin insisted. He thought of Tenna and the other Tuan’diath. Of the Rite of Severing she had mentioned. It didn’t seem so crazy to him all of a sudden. Stop the spread before it was too late. Protect other worlds from turning into literal hellscapes. He wanted to explain more about what he knew but wasn’t sure who might be listening.

          “Is that all?” Istven asked, sounding not the least bit concerned. “You need my help to pull up a weed?”

          “That’s selling it short, but sure, you could say it like that,” Draevin agreed reluctantly.

          “I will deal with this then,” Istven said. He turned to Sylnya. “I healed the last of those upstairs. I can attempt to restore your lost memories when I get back.”

          “Sure thing,” Sylnya said.

          “Memories?” Draevin asked.

          “Remember when I died and lost nearly two months of memories? I asked Istven to try to recover the memories out of my old body.”

          “Is that even possible?” Draevin asked. Fixing things was one thing, but Draevin couldn’t understand how Istven could restore knowledge he didn’t himself have. Surely he would have noticed if Istven had become omniscient. Peter couldn’t have gotten away with misleading him, for one thing.

          Sylnya shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”

          Istven was already walking off down the street. For once Draevin was glad of his no-nonsense demeanor. He hurried after him.

          “What do I need to know?” Istven asked.

          “Black roots,” Draevin said, being as brief as possible. “They’re spreading underground and changing everything they touch. I tried to pull them up but they’re everywhere. And they’re spreading fast. They’re just North of the city walls. I can show you. It’s hard to miss. There’s a large patch of Hell… dirt, I guess. The soil is turning red, just like Hell.”

          Istven nodded. Then he sank into the ground without a word. Draevin saw a black shadow zip across the ground like it’d been shot out of a cannon.

          “Wait! I—Dammit, he ran off,” Draevin complained.

          “You know where he’s going,” Peter said. “What are you waiting for? Fly after him!”

          “Right,” Draevin agreed. He lifted off.

          Peter stopped him, pulling at the sleeve of his robes. “Don’t leave without me,” he insisted. “I can help. And even if I can’t, I really want to see this thing for myself.”

          “Sure,” Draevin said. It wasn’t as though Peter’s presence was likely to do any harm. His oversized brain might come in handy anyway. Draevin lifted them both off the ground, then flew back towards where he’d found the red stain. As soon as they cleared the city walls Draevin spotted the circle of red soil. As he got closer he even noticed the smaller circles of exposed black root from where he’d used his steam. There was one in the center, one a few paces from the center, and the two right next to each other right on the border. Draevin pointed to the two by the border. “That hole there was just outside the border when I left,” he explained to Peter. It was now just inside the edge of the red ground. He’d only been gone a few minutes and it’d already spread that far.

          “That’s pretty fast,” Peter said. He furrowed his brow. “If the rate is exponential… hmmm.”

          “What?” Draevin demanded as he descended. “What do you mean, hmmm?”

          “Just that we might not have very much time. If it’s getting faster as it grows it could spread to the whole planet in a few days.”

          Draevin landed. Istven’s shadow flitted across the ground and emerged a few seconds later.

          “See?” Draevin asked. “Just like Hell. And it’s spreading fast.”

          Peter squatted down to examine the dirt more closely. He even sniffed it. Istven merely frowned.

          “No plant life either,” Draevin added.

          “Well, to be fair, there wasn’t any to begin with. This whole area was already scorched by the Truntstown laser,” Peter pointed out. “I would be curious to see what it does to a plant though.”

          “Let’s worry about experimenting after we fix this,” Draevin said. “We still have at least two more pieces of the stuff in the rift-nets we recovered from Dwyra’s soldiers.” Draevin gestured to the nearby hole he’d blasted in the soil. The network of black roots could be seen wriggling under the surface. “See the roots? They go everywhere. I checked further out and all the ground that’s turned red has them. They’re all connected too. It started when the tiny chunk of root in the rift-net device came in contact with the soil. It was attached by two taproots when I tried to pick it up.”

          “It makes for an interesting problem,” Peter said. “If we don’t get every scrap of root, it sounds like it could just spread to this size again in a few hours. We have to be thorough.”

          “Agreed,” Istven said. He studied the ground for a bit. “I will have to dig out the entire area. Draevin, create a sheet of ice for me to set it on while we figure out how to destroy it.” He turned a side eye at Draevin. “Is it difficult to destroy?” he asked.

          “I have no idea,” Draevin said. “But I did manage to destroy one of the rift-nets with a technique involving super-heated steam during the attack. The way Dwyra’s soldiers were talking just after, they didn’t seem to think destroying it was even possible. I might be able to—”

          “That will not be necessary,” Istven said. “So long as it is possible, I will take care of it.” He took a knee on the ground and reached down with his bare hand.

          “I wouldn’t touch it!” Peter warned.

          “Don’t worry so much,” Draevin told Peter. “He’s a god now, remember? It’s not like a little scrap of root is going to pose any sort of—”

          Draevin’s words were cut off at the sound of an ear shattering shockwave of noise. It hit Draevin in the chest, causing him to stumble back, gripping uselessly at his ears. It took him a moment to realize what the noise was. He’d never heard it before.

          Istven was knelt before Draevin with one hand reaching into the red soil. He had his hand around a tendril of black root and the root had in turn wrapped around his hand. Black-on-black it was hard for Draevin to make the details out, but one he certainly didn’t miss was the glowing white blood dripping from Istven’s wrist. None of that would have concerned Draevin if not for the sound he was hearing. A sound that vibrated his ribcage like a leaden weight dropped into the pit of his stomach.

          It was Istven. He was screaming. He was screaming for everything he was worth, like he was in the most unimaginable pain. The roots were crawling up his arm, burrowing under his skin, spreading through his body.

Index | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter