Caladin’s Climb—Part 15 (Patreon)

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          So if I’m understandin’ this right, Lenny sent to Caladin through their mental link. That magic trail of smoke leads to Jaeryl, but you want me to let him get away?

          Not exactly, Caladin projected. You still need to catch up to him, I just want you to make sure he doesn’t spot you once you do so we find out where he’s going. I’m going to try to whip up some spells to help from here.

          Whip up some spells, huh? Lenny commented. You make it sound so easy. Why doesn’t everyone cast spells like that?

          They just lack imagination, Caladin replied. Lenny was right, though. Most wizards couldn’t create new spells whenever they wanted. Masters could improvise spells within their harmonic a bit, but what Caladin did wasn’t really the same. He didn’t have to learn all the intricacies of each harmonic. He just had to write out a grammatically correct sentence in runes describing what he wanted to do. He wasn’t entirely sure why, but ever since he was a child, he’d been able to understand how to read and write runes. There were a lot of contradictory rules and exceptions, but he just understood all of them intuitively, like it was a language he’d been born speaking. Being a human, Caladin also didn’t have to concern himself with the risks of Corpus Mana-Siphoning Syndrome in the event one of the spells he improvised backfired. It was almost like he was cheating.

          The first thing Caladin did to try to support Lenny was to combine the two spells he was currently maintaining into one. He didn’t want to leave a visible trail of glowing humors that would alert Jaeryl to the fact he was being followed, but he also needed Lenny to still be able to see it. A mentaltrail superimposing an image in the mind of the person following it seemed like the perfect solution. The disparate harmonics tried to interfere with each other, but with a bit of tweaking, he was able to get them to behave with minimal losses to effects. It was some of the most complex spell-work Caladin had ever attempted. And he learned a lot from the way the spell kept collapsing each time he tried to combine the harmonics. He learned that there was a sort of ebb and flow to the spells. A rhythm. As long as he matched that rhythm, the spell wouldn’t collapse. The result was a wholly unique spell that maintained a mental connection over a long range while also projecting a mental image from a trail of bad humors into both targets’ minds. Once he was sure the new spell was working as intended, Caladin ended the other two.

          What happened? Lenny asked. The smoke trail just changed colors. It’s not green anymore. There’s a bit of blue now! I haven’t seen the color blue since I died! Caladin could feel Lenny’s excitement filter back through their mental connection.

          That was me, Caladin told him. The smoke trail is only in your mind now. I didn’t want Jaeryl to notice the trail forming behind him and figure out he was being tracked. I didn’t realize you’d be able to see colors if they were projected into your mind.

          You don’t think Jaeryl already noticed the trail, do you?

          Hopefully not, Caladin thought, but if he did, there’s not much we can do about it. With any luck, he’ll just think the spell wore off and is no longer tracking him.

          How long is this spell going to last? Lenny asked. It might take days for him to get where he’s going. Can you maintain it that long?

          I doubt it, Caladin replied. But you have to remember that you’re both undead. You can run much faster than your mortal bodies allowed and you don’t get tired. It’s unlikely this will take days. If it does take too long I can just head back to Brorn’s to recharge my mana. I got the circle working. Usually for this kind of spell work the bigger concern would be the source of the smell we’re tracking fading over time, but I don’t expect that to happen because in this case Jaeryl is a rotting corpse. If anything he’s going to smell worse as time passes.

          Thanks, Lenny thought with a note of sarcasm. Caladin could feel through their connection how self-conscious Lenny was about his own corpse-stench.

          Don’t worry, Caladin assured him. I can Repair you again as soon as you get back. You’ll smell as fresh as a… fresh corpse. I was also thinking of adding a low-grade cryomancy enchantment to keep you fresh for longer. Brorn said enchantments like that would interfere with the necromancy work, but I think I’ve figured out a method of forcing two non-adjacent harmonics to work together.

          I don’t know what all that magic talk means, Lenny replied. But anything you can do to help with the smell would be appreciated. I didn’t choose to be magically animated rotting corpse.

          You didn’t choose to die either,Caladin reminded him. That put an end to Lenny’s complaining.

          Despite Lenny’s concern, it didn’t end up taking him very long to catch up to Jaeryl after that. The former soldier was still trying to do fancy switch-backs to shed his tail, but now they were only slowing him down. Lenny came to a fork in the trail where it looked like Jaeryl had doubled back; climbed a tree; jumped across three more trees; landed in a small creek; then followed it for a while before exiting. Caladin’s spell left a clear trail to mark his every move.

          Dang, Lenny thought when he saw it, he probably would have lost me here.

          But he didn’t, Caladin pointed out. And better yet, it looks like that move must have cost him a lot of time. Less than a minute after crossing the stream, Lenny caught sight of a dark shape slipping through the forest.

          Caught up to him! Lenny reported with a burst of excitement coming through their mental link. Now what?

          Just keep your distance and follow, Caladin told him. I can’t stress enough how important it is that he not see you. This whole plan collapses the moment he knows we’re following him.

          Lenny went mentally silent as he slinked after his mark. That didn’t seem strictly necessary to Caladin but he wasn’t about to correct him.

          He just inspected a tree trunk, Lenny projected in a mental whisper a short while later. Caladin didn’t even know how he’d managed to think in a whisper. I think his people left signals for him. I’m going to get a closer look when he moves on. Then a few moments later. Okay, yeah. I found some kind of symbol carved into the trunk. It’s complicated and has an arrow on it. I think this is directions! He’s known about this from the beginning!

          I’m not surprised, Caladin replied. There’s leagues of forest. It would be way too easy to get lost if their people didn’t have some way to navigate. Magic can be tracked. Marks on trees are much harder to detect. Any chance you can tell what the marks mean?

          Not a chance, Lenny thought. I’ve never seen any of these symbols.

          Are they words? Caladin asked. He didn’t want to come out and say it, but Lenny was illiterate.

          No. Just a few crosses and an arrow.

          Don’t worry about it, Caladin thought. Just keep following him.

          While Lenny stayed on Jaeryl’s trail, Caladin busied himself burning through most of the rest of his mana turning logs that the zombies had felled into clean, even boards. Carlos asked what his crew should start working on once finished with the shelves they were working on and Caladin instructed him to start whatever type of furniture he thought would have the greatest demand. Once he was sure the shop had enough work to keep them busy for the next few hours, Caladin headed back through the teleportation circle to refill his mana at Brorn’s manor.

          Caladin lost track of time at Brorn’s. He recharged quickly, then trained one of Brorn’s extra servants to stand in front of the mana well and “wait for the bottles to glow” before swapping them out for a new crate, while a second servant filled bottles with water from the pump and placed them in crates next to the other one. Pure water wasn’t enough to make mana potions by itself, so he had one of the fresher eldrin use their blood as a medium. He didn’t know how safe the resulting potions would be, but it was the easiest solution available and he wasn’t planning to charge that much for them in the first place. In time, the undead potion crew would be able to build up a decent reserve of mana potions that he could sell at Brorn-Mart. While he supervised that project, Caladin worked on another dual-harmonic spell that would use his mental link with Lenny as a means of targeting him with vocomancy. Usually vocomancy across long distances either required a circle, an anchor of some kind, or the kind of incredibly precise targeting information that only came from the wizard casting it being familiar with the area. Anything else was just guessing and would be particularly dangerous in a forest, for obvious reasons. Caladin was hoping to bypass that requirement.

          Lenny interrupted Caladin’s spell work to make another report. Hey, Cally? I think I found something.

          You want to just describe it to me? Caladin asked.

          It’s a bit burnt out and grown over, but I think there used to be a camp here. It might be… where we used to live.

          The camp! Caladin thought excitedly. Jaeryl went straight for it. That bastard! He probably knew how to get back to it this whole time!

          What should I do? Lenny asked. Do I keep following him, or stay here?

          Neither. Both. Just stay there, Caladin projected to him. And find somewhere to stand that’s wide open and flat, just in case. I’ll be there in just a minute.

          You’re coming to me? Just like that? Lenny asked.

          Yes. It’s called magic. Don’t act surprised, Caladin thought. He made sure his mana was topped off at Brorn’s well, then took the circle back to Brorn-Mart to shorten the distance he’d need to jump. Before leaving, he popped his head out of the office to see what Carlos and the other zombies were working on. It looked they were putting together simple wooden chairs. Caladin flagged down Maggie who was in the middle of arranging the chairs on the first row of shelves nearest the entrance.

          “Yes, Master Caladin?” she asked.

          “I just wanted you to pass on my compliments on all the work you two have been doing, but I also need some furniture in my office. A simple desk, some shelves along the wall, a chair or two. That sort of thing.”

          “Oh, yes! We can take care of that. I’ll tell Carlos right away.”

          “And be careful around the teleportation circle on the floor. If anyone walks through it while someone’s trying to use it the results would be ugly for both parties.”

          “Of course.” Maggie gave a quick curtsy, head nodding in respect.

          Carlos walked up to them, having noticed Caladin talking to Maggie. “Did you need something?” he asked.

          “He wanted me to tell you he needed furniture in his office,” Maggie volunteered.

          Carlos’s eyes went wide in panic. “I-I’m sorry I didn’t think to do that already!” he said.

          “It’s fine,” Caladin said. “Just get to it when you have a minute. I just need it done at some point. I’m heading out for something, but if you guys run out of pre-cut lumber before I get back, just take a break or something. Maybe go for a swim in the river. I don’t know.”

          “And then what?” Carlos asked. “Will you not need me anymore? Will I be turned off?” He fell to his knees in front of Caladin. Hands brought together in a pleading gesture. “Please don’t turn me off, Master! I can still be useful to you! I don’t have to make cheap furniture. I know how to make nice stuff, too. Stuff that requires more dexterity than the others are capable of: rocking chairs, desks with drawers in them, armoires. I can earn my keep!”

          Caladin lifted Carlos gently by the shoulder. “There’s no need for this,” he said. The man’s reaction to being offered a break seemed pretty extreme to Caladin. The only thing that made sense to him was that maybe it was because the undead didn’t actually need a break—they didn’t get tired, they just kept going until they ran out of mana or their enchantments broke down. “I’m not Brorn,” Caladin told both of them. “I’m not going to turn anyone off just because they aren’t useful to me. You’re indispensible, Carlos. You’re the only carpenter we have. Without you, I’d be spending loads more mana doing a worse job. Don’t worry so much. Now if you don’t mind, there was one more thing I needed Maggie for before I go.” He waved Carlos off. The man ducked his head and went back to the production line.

          “Yes, Master?” Maggie asked when they were alone.

          Caladin lowered his voice. “I might need you to cover for me for a little bit. Like you did before.”

          “Cover how?” Maggie asked.

          “Just pretend to be me,” Caladin said. Maggie blinked. “Only in case Brorn comes to check on me, which he might not even do.”

          “How will you make him think I’m you, Master?” she asked.

          “By sleeping in my bed while I’m gone. Well… pretending to sleep, anyway.”

          “Didn’t you already try to trick Brorn with those two undead you made?” Maggie asked. “And he saw through it immediately?”

          “Yes, yes,” Caladin said. He flicked his wrist dismissively. “I won’t be using the same magic as last time. And if you get caught, I give you full permission to snitch on me. As long as you have useful information, Brorn won’t destroy you.”

          Maggie pursed her lips. “O…kay,” she said somewhat reluctantly.

          “Great!” Caladin said with a big smile. He pressed a scroll against Maggie’s forehead that he had already prepared. It wasn’t an illusion this time, but a mutamancy spell that actually transformed her body into a copy of Caladin’s. Her hair grew shorter, turned a few shades darker, her cheeks sunk in, she grew several span taller, and her eyes turned blue. There was still a soft green glow from the enchantments that kept her alive, but she had an uncanny resemblance to Caladin himself. It was like looking in a mirror. The dress she was wearing looked a little ridiculous though and it didn’t help that it was now several sizes too small for her.

          Maggie’s eyes went wide. She looked down. “I—I have a…” Her voiced sounded to Caladin like his own, except with a slightly higher pitch.

          “Don’t think about it too much,” Caladin told her. “Brorn saw through illusions last time, so I’m hoping he won’t see through this one. Your body will change back to normal when it wears off, but I should be back before then. Just sleep in my bed at the manor and try to avoid conversations. If Brorn tries to wake you up just pretend like you’re too tired to talk. Help yourself to some of my clothes when you get there.” Caladin pushed her gently towards the manager’s office in the back of the store.

          “What if he notices me wearing a dress?” Maggie asked.

          “He won’t do that. He never pays attention to that sort of thing.”

          “But what if he does?” Maggie protested.

          “Just think of something. Say your clothes got wet, or you just wanted to try it on. I don’t care. And neither will Brorn. Go to my room. Put on some of my clothes. Then pretend to sleep until I get back.”

          “And if he catches me, tell him everything?”

          “Exactly.”

          “And what is ‘everything’? Are you even going to tell me where you’re going?”

          “I’m just taking a trip to the woods to settle some old scores. If he makes you talk, you can tell him I’m going to have a meeting with the rebel King Haedril. I’ll, uh... see if I can get him to order some weapons from us.”

          “Why do you need to be so secret if it’s for the shop?”

          Caladin sighed. “Listen, Maggie. You’re really worrying about this far too much. All you have to do is pretend to sleep in a bed for a few hours. If you get bored, you can look through the shelf of books in my room for something to read.”

          Caladin shoved Maggie—or rather a version of himself wearing a dress—into the center of the teleportation circle. It wobbled a bit, as it hadn’t been embedded into the grain of the wood yet, like it was supposed to. Just before he pressed the scroll with the vocomancy spell against her forehead, her eyes went wide. “Oh!” she said. “I don’t know where your room is!”

          “Upstairs. First room on the left,” Caladin answered. He released the simple spell and Maggie disappeared with a pop.

          Okay, Caladin projected to Lenny. Are you in a clear space yet? I don’t want to end up losing a foot because there was a rock sticking up nearby that you didn’t think was worth mentioning.

          Uh, I didn’t know that was a possibility, Lenny replied. What if I just stand on top of the rock?

          That works, Caladin told him. I’ll just be ready to fall.

          Okay, Lenny reported. This is as clear as it gets around here.

          Caladin triggered the new spell he’d created. It used the mental connection he’d improvised as a targeting parameter. There was a pop of displaced air, then Caladin braced himself for a short fall. Both the shop and Brorn’s manor had artificial lighting, so Caladin wasn’t prepared for how dark it was when he arrived. He stumbled a bit as he hit the ground. For a second, all he could see was a pair of eerie green pin-pricks of light. Then his eyes started to adjust, and he saw the outline of a man standing on top of a squat, knee-high boulder.

          “Cally?” Lenny asked. “You okay?” It was slightly disorienting to hear Lenny’s voice in both his ear and mind at the same time. It created a slight echo with his spoken words lagging behind thoughts.

          “I’m fine,” Caladin said. “Just a little disoriented. And I’m slightly blind. I didn’t realize how dark it was going to be.”

          “Oh wow, it’s really weird when you talk out loud,” Lenny said.

          “Yeah, just ignore it if you can. I don’t want to have to dismiss that spell just yet. How close is Jaeryl from our current location? Would he see a ball of light if I created one?”

          “He might. At night even a campfire can be seen from leagues away.”

          Caladin thought about a workaround, something to see by that wouldn’t create visible light. He decided on Astral Sight. There was an umbramancy spell that also granted dark vision, but the astramancy version would allow Caladin to see through walls, which he thought was much more useful. Caladin inscribed Astral Sight onto a scroll and let it draw from the mana on his belt. His vision of the world went from a dark smudge to a black and white outline of his surroundings. The book he’d read about the spell had warned against beginners using it casually, and once Caladin activated it, he saw why. It was a lot of information to take in. He could see the trees in the nearby forest, but if he focused, he could also see through those trees. And through those trees, and through those trees, all the way to the horizon. Caladin could see a family of squirrels that had to be two leagues away. He could see an owl flying overhead. When he tried to look down, he could see through the very ground, clear to the far side of the planet, where there was a powerful storm that almost seemed to notice him look at it. Caladin tried closing his eyes, but his lids no longer blocked input. He felt hands on his shoulder and realized Lenny was grabbing him.

          “Whoa, now,” Lenny said. “You almost fell there. You sure you know what you’re doing?”

          “Yes, I’m fine,” Caladin insisted. “I just used a spell to let me see, and it’s a little more than I was expecting. I just need a second to get used to it.” He tried focusing only on exactly the information he was interested in: the old campsite. He scanned the clearing they were in and noticed charred tent poles embedded in the ground; even a few shallow graves. With his Astral Sight, Caladin didn’t have to guess at what was under the mounds of dirt, he could see the skeletons buried under them. “Huh,” Caladin said. “This spell is reallyuseful. I should use it more often.”

          “Why?” Lenny asked. “What do you see?”

          Caladin pointed towards the skeletons he could see buried underground. “There are some shallow graves right over there. I count… eight bodies.” He glanced at Lenny, and with his new sight he could see his old friend’s soul burning in his chest, no differently than any other living thing, except that binding runes had somehow been burned onto the surface of it. “Oh, now that is interesting,” Caladin said.

          “What is?” Lenny demanded, glancing down at his own chest like he thought there might be something wrong with it.

          “Nothing. I just verified a theory of mine about how Brorn binds his undead. It is directly onto the soul.”

          “Okay, does that help us here?” Lenny asked.

          “Not really,” Caladin said. “Why don’t you go catch up with Jaeryl? I’m going to poke around here a bit longer. Let me know if he leads you to his destination.” Lenny nodded, then ran off in the direction of the smoke trail.

          Caladin surveyed the burned camp with his enhanced sight. Lenny’s assessment that this had been a camp was correct, but he needed to know for sure that it was the camp. The presence of dead bodies indicated that something had happened. The fact that they’d found it in the right general area and there were bodies buried nearby both seemed like compelling evidence. Caladin knew there had been deaths, but if any of his extended human family had died, he found it doubtful that Haedril’s loyalists would have taken the time to bury them before leaving. He might have believed that they did it out of concern for sanitation, but out in the middle of the woods? Where they were never planning to return? It didn’t make sense. Either they had a contradictory sense of respect for the dead or another human had survived the attack and buried their friends after everyone was gone. That was the theory that made the most sense to Caladin.

          Careful to only focus on a few things at a time so as not to get overwhelmed, Caladin looked for more evidence. His judgment was that some geomancy had been used to bury the camp from sight. Likely, it had been completely buried when they left, but time and rain had exposed just enough random tent poles for a careful tracker like Lenny to notice. That was lucky.

          Caladin focused on the bodies. They were set underground in neat rows. Two of them were much smaller than the rest: children. As much as Caladin wanted to awaken one of those bodies so he could definitively confirm that they weren’t just anyhuman bodies, but humans that he’d known, that would have to wait. He didn’t have the excess mana to do both a necromantic binding and a repair with everything else he might need to use his mana for this night. He would come back for them later. He walked up to the nearest tree and brushed away some of the larger chunks of bark until he had a relatively flat surface. Once that was done, he used his lithomancy to carve an Anchor point into the trunk. It was a bit of vocomancy that would make it easier to find this location to teleport to in the future. Anchors were much simpler to make, but they were totally unsecure and didn’t help reduce the mana cost at all. It was just a point of reference, like a bookmark. He didn’t want to leave it up for too long, because other vocomancers were known to scan for those types of marks on occasion to check for abandoned valuables, but with any luck he’d be back to take the bones away before that happened.

          Hey, Cally? Lenny’s voice echoed in Caladin’s head. I think I just found a fortress out here in the woods. I don’t know where it came from, because I think we would have noticed a stone structure like this so close to camp. I used to hunt out in these woods. Jaeryl walked up to it and they let him in. I couldn’t follow. What do you wanna do?

          I know how they built that fortress, Caladin thought. They’re sitting on top of a mana well. That’s the whole reason they came out here in the first place. Caladin hadn’t intended to send that thought to Lenny, but it was hard to filter everything that popped in his head when their minds were linked. Don’t get any closer, Caladin projected to him. That’s most likely an Eldesian-designed wizard tower. They’re incredibly dangerous. Even a novice wizard can take out a small army with one of those things, and attached directly to a mana well like that it’s going to be pretty much impregnable. I think it’s safe to say we found where Haedril’s loyalists are staging out of.

          The fortress looks pretty small, Lenny thought. You sure you can’t just take it out? You dealt with all those soldiers the other day. I bet they don’t have any more than six men stationed inside.

          Those were small town guards, Caladin pointed out. They’d probably never seen real combat before. These will be hardened soldiers. There’s a pretty big difference. Don’t let the size of the fortress fool you. They’ll have incredible magic defenses and the ability to call in an entire army’s worth of reinforcements at a moment’s notice. No. Attacking them without a solid plan would be suicide. Even for me.

          Is there anything you can do about Jaeryl? Lenny asked. He’s inside that fortress right now. We don’t know what he might be saying. I don’t want anything to happen to our family because of him.

          Good point, Caladin replied. I’ll try to think of something to do about him. You’re not too far away. Get back to the clearing you left me in for now. It won’t do us any good if someone in that wizard tower spots you.

          Caladin sat down and dismissed his Astral Sight spell as well as the custom spell connecting him to Lenny. He didn’t need it now that he knew where that fortress was. Caladin had walked from this camp to his secret mana well in the woods many times. He knew the route well. He racked his brain for anything he could do to stop Jaeryl from spilling every little detail he’d learned about him since he was reborn. There would be some confusion at first, maybe an interrogation to make sure he was who he said. With any luck the soldiers would be cautious in believing any story told to them by one of Necro-King Brorn’s undead minions. That would buy Caladin some time, but not much.

          Cerebromancy was an obvious option. He’d already improvised a mental connection to Lenny. Caladin had been around Jaeryl enough that he thought he could manage to form a mental connection to him as well; it was just that he didn’t think the spell would work. Now that Jaeryl was behind heavily fortified magical defenses there was no way a cerebromancy spell would be able to get through. The same would hold true of any spell he tried to penetrate the tower’s defenses with. Worse yet, once he tried, there was a good chance his location would be revealed. In most situations like this Caladin would have tried to use his mana bars to overwhelm his enemies with raw power, but that wouldn’t work when they had an entire mana well at their beck and call.

          On the surface, attacking the fortress seemed like a completely insurmountable problem. Caladin realized that was probably by design. Even if he tapped into Brorn’s mana well he wouldn’t stand a chance. The massive distance between the two locations would severely hamper any attacks. There were, of course, limits to how much power wards could withstand, regardless of who constructed them and how much mana they had access to. A powerful enough attack would either overload and burn out the enchantments or break through them if they were designed not to be overloaded. Caladin’s little belt of mana bars wasn’t nearly powerful enough for an attack like that…

          But what about something the wards weren’t designed to defend against?

          Cerebromancy was obvious, and a favorite form of warfare for eldrin, but there were a number of harmonics that weren’t considered threatening. It was rare for defensive wards to be constructed for things like oneiromancy, aeromancy or nidomancy, for example. Aeromancy was a known weakness, since warding against it for any length of time would cut off the defender’s air supply, so they’d likely have reactive wards ready to go if Caladin tried to create a tornado or something. But what about something completely unexpected? Something they wouldn’t even have reactive wards ready for? Something that… didn’t neatly fit into one harmonic?

          Caladin pulled out a large sheet of paper and got to work inscribing a spell of such complexity it put his previous mental-smell spell to shame. The last combination of spells he’d constructed had taught him that there was a sort of underlying rhythm to the language of magic. Spells didn’t just flow at a constant rate, they were cyclical. It was the rising waves that caused the issue, as whenever they coincided, differing harmonics could disrupt each other, causing both to collapse. But... if he could predict when those waves would form in each harmonic, and time the rising waves so that they occurred when the other harmonics were falling, they did not destroy each other. At first he’d tried only to introduce two harmonics at once, but quickly found even that was becoming too easy for him, so instead he just thought of the ideal custom spell—holding nothing back—then tried to see if he could make it. It turned out he could. He worked in elements of necromancy, oneiromancy, lithomancy, cerebromancy, visceramancy and even nidomancy. The trick was to create so-called “holding patterns” the harmonics could use while they were unwinding, something that wouldn’t collapse the spell, but would allow it to jump to a rising wave to layer in a new effect when he wanted. By inserting these holding patterns, Caladin found he could make sure only a single harmonic was rising at a time. It was difficult, of course, since he had to invent new holding patterns depending on where in a spell’s activation it was, and some of them couldn’t last as long as others... but it was enthralling! A real challenge. Caladin had learned the language of magic when he was a child, but that was the first time he ever made music with it.

          After an indeterminate amount of time, Caladin stepped back from his work. He’d had to expand his sheet to make room for all the runes. It was chaos. There were runes on top of runes: some small, some large, some small ones written on top of large ones. Lines flowed sideways, diagonal, in circles… wherever the music took them. When he was done, Caladin had no idea if the spell would even work, he only knew that he feltlike it would. Looking at the big picture, though? He briefly wondered if he’d eaten one of those poisonous mushrooms that was supposed to make you insane without realizing it. Maybe it wouldn’t do what it was intended to, but it would at least do something.

          “You finally done?” Lenny asked.

          Caladin turned around and saw that Lenny was just watching him with those creepy green eyes. He no longer had an inkling of Lenny’s thoughts since somewhere in his spell crafting he’d forgotten to keep concentrating on the spell linking their minds and it had dissipated. “When did you get back?” Caladin asked.

          “A while ago. You seemed busy, so I didn’t want to disturb you. What is it?” Lenny pointed to the sprawling bed sheet trying to pass itself off as a spell scroll.

          “It’s a custom magic spell,” Caladin answered. “At least it’s supposed to be.”

          “What do you mean ‘supposed to’? It looks like you drew symbols at random. Some of them are on top of each other,” Lenny said. “I know I don’t know much about magic, but you’ve never made a scroll like that before. It looks wrong.”

          “I know,” Caladin said. “It kind of is wrong. But on purpose. I tried to make something that can slip through the defenses of that fortress. It should work from here. It’s going to use my familiarity with Jaeryl’s mind to find and target him.”

          Lenny scratched his cheek, which appeared to have a dark mark on it where it looked like he’d been doing that a lot. Caladin tried to make a mental note to give Lenny a proper Repair when they got back. “What’s it supposed to do, anyway?”

          “Take care of Jaeryl,” Caladin said. “We’ll just have to hope he doesn’t tell them anything sensitive before it does.”

          “And what do we do if it doesn’t work?”

          “Run, probably,” Caladin answered. “I can’t be sure if I’ll have enough mana left to teleport us out of here until I cast the spell. I’m flush with mana now, but it would probably take me a couple hours to calculate how much this spell is going to burn.” Caladin leaned down in front of the scroll, gently set his hands on it, and activated it. Immediately a rainbow of swirling color erupted from the face of it, rising into the night sky and over the trees towards the tower.

          “What was that?” Lenny asked.

          “A bunch of stuff, don’t worry about it,” Caladin told him, not really willing to admit that he didn’t have the slightly clue why the spell manifested in that way. “It’s going to reach the tower in another minute, so I’ll need you to stay quiet. I have to be half-asleep for the oneiromancy elements to work right.” On the page beneath Caladin a trail of white fire was snaking across the paper like a burning fuse. When it reached the part with his oneiromancy harmonics inscribed on it, they triggered a cantrip to force Caladin’s mind to drop into a waking dream state. His head slumped down, hands still on the page, but eyelids drooping.

          Caladin was pulled into a mental connection to his spell. He became a multicolored spire of shaped mana, spiraling at a relatively slow pace across the sky. He could see the fortress and it was just where he knew it would be, over his old mana well. It was just a circular tower with slits for windows at regular intervals. It was maybe two stories high, with a footprint not significantly larger than Caladin’s office back at Brorn-Mart. A soldier was up on the roof, pointing at the approaching kaleidoscope, not seeming to know what to do about it. Purple armamancy wards went up. There were other wards, too, but those were the one most visible.

          Caladin’s spell struck the wards. It was the moment of truth. If the wards were designed properly, they would completely stop Caladin’s attack. They did not. Half of the spell’s shaped mana phased right through. That was fine for Caladin, as he’d designed the spell with that in mind. In theory it would continue to work as long as a third of it was still intact when it reached its target. The wizard on the roof wasted no time throwing fireballs at the colorful swirl of slow-moving danger approaching him. The pyromancy disrupted a tiny fraction of Caladin’s spell, but not enough to stop it.

          Now that it was inside the fort’s wards the spell had one objective: find Jaeryl. It could feel his mental signature pulling on it, so that was going to be no problem. The spell was practically immune to disruption. It passed through the fireballs being thrown at it, it passed through the wizard throwing them, then it passed through the very walls of the fortress. The spell found Jaeryl… and entered him. As it did, Caladin’s consciousness was pulled in too.

          Caladin blinked his eyes open. He wasn’t a moving mass of semi-intelligent mana anymore, he was an undead eldrin. He was Jaeryl, and he was strapped to a wooden chair with enchanted chains of iron. Before him were three men, faces slack with surprise. All of them had the glowing white eyes of eldrin.

          “Did you see that just now?” one of the men said.

          Another eldrin came running down the stairs from above. “Captain Feydack! There was some kind of multicolored illusion! It came from the forest, sir. The wards barely slowed it down and—”

          “We saw,” another of the three men seated in front of Caladin said. He held up a hand to stop the other man from saying more. This eldrin had to be their leader. He had dark green hair, trimmed very short, and a bit more gold in his red outfit than the other soldiers. “It was nothing,” he insisted. “It passed through this room without doing anyone any harm. A light show. Now get back to your post. If you want to be useful, figure out who threw it at us.”

          “And check those wards!” another of the eldrin insisted. “They’ve probably been damaged.”

          “Yes, sir,” the watchman from the roof said. He climbed back up the stair and was soon out of sight. Caladin had to chuckle at their poor attempts to figure out what was going on.

          “Is something funny, Scout Jaeryl?” the captain asked.

          Caladin flexed his arms to test the chains binding him. They were strong. “Oh nothing,” he said. “I just think it’s funny that you let me inside and then didn’t even realize it.”

          “What are you talking about?” the third man in the room that hadn’t yet spoken asked. “Of course we realized it. You presented the correct passphrase and everything.”

          “Just answer my question about this Caladin person,” the captain insisted. “Did you or did you not witness him using all these different types of magic while True Sight was active? Is it not possible he was just an illusionist?”

          Caladin laughed aloud. “It wouldn’t matter if Jaeryl had used True Sight or not. He would have seen the same thing: me using any and every harmonic of magic I want. Why? Because I am an archmage. There is nothing I cannot do. No wards that can keep you safe from me.”

          “I?” the captain asked. “Why are you referring to yourself in the third person, Scout Jaeryl?”

          “Jaeryl is gone. It is I: Archmage Caladin. You let my servant into your walls, just like I planned, and now you will learn why that was a mistake.” Caladin triggered the visceramancy spell controlling Jaeryl’s body and crunched both of his thumbs into his wrist, then pulled them out of the shackles. When the hands were free, he popped the thumbs back out and started unwinding the chains so he could stand up.

          “He’s getting loose!” one of the men shouted.

          “Burn him,” the captain said disdainfully. The third man in the room held a hand out towards Caladin, palm first. Fire erupted from his hand, engulfing Caladin’s body. The flames burnt Caladin’s flesh to crispy charcoal in seconds. Caladin felt no pain.

          When the flames stopped spewing, Caladin continued extricating himself from the chains. Without as much flesh in the way, it really got much easier. As he scraped his body against the chains, burnt flesh crumbled away to reveal bone. Caladin stepped out of the last loop of the chains and let them drop to the floor. All the enchantments in the world could do very little to stop someone from mundanely slipping their bonds.

          “He’s still moving!” one of the men said.

          “B-burn him!” the captain sputtered, sounding far less composed the second time.

          More fire erupted. Caladin could not feel the heat so he ignored it. He walked forward and grabbed the pyromancer by the throat. The flames stopped. “Did you think fire could stop an archmage?” Caladin asked. His voice creaked and came in a whisper. He squeezed the bones on his hand, crushing the pyromancer’s windpipe.

          One of the other men produced a sword of glowing purple energy and started slashing at Caladin’s back. His sword sliced right through bone with no resistance, cutting his spine in half. Caladin should have dropped on the ground, but he did not. His magic was controlling Jaeryl’s body like a marionette. He pressed the two cut halves of the spine back together and dropped the pyromancer’s flailing body. Ignoring the swordsman even as he tried to take another chunk out of him, Caladin dived on the captain, stabbing into him with his boney fingers, treating them like little knives. It was the best he had to work with.

          “I can’t stop it!” the soldier with the sword called out. He slashed at Caladin again, but he just easily rejoined the broken pieces like nothing happened.

          “I will take this fortress!” Caladin said with a creaky voice as he stood up. “King Philipus is a murderer of innocent humans and a tyrant. He is not fit to rule!” There was clearly no sign of the family Caladin had hoped to rescue, but he did intend to make good on his promise to claim the fortress. He could use the teleportation circle to breach the king’s network and track them down through it.

          The soldier from the roof came down the stairs and fired a blast of flame at Caladin. He let it splash over him. His bones got hot and started to smoke, but that hardly made a difference.

          “G-get to the t-tower,” the eldrin captain moaned from the ground. Caladin wasn’t sure who he was trying to talk to, but he looked down and saw he wasn’t quite dead yet. He had dozens of finger-sized holes in his chest, but was somehow able to speak. He smashed his foot—which actually had a little flesh on it—down on the captain’s head until he stopped moving.

          Caladin heard a heavy whump. He looked across the room to see a steel door leading to the next room over had just slammed shut. The heavy scraping of metal-on-metal announced the bolt sliding into place.

          Of course. Caladin had only ever read about Eldesian wizard towers, so he wasn’t familiar with their configuration. He just knew that if the last two enemies were hiding in it, he wanted to get in there with them. He slammed his boney fist into the door. Nothing. It was solid steel. He tried digging his fingers in under the jam.

          Boom!

          A hole appeared in the door, surrounded by molten metal. Caladin looked through the hole and saw one of the soldiers he’d been fighting with holding a two-handed silver device with a tube on the end of it. It was attached to a glowing cable that went into the floor. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what he was doing. Caladin was just surprised he’d be willing to use a weapon like that against his own tower. He reached for the hole in the door his enemy had just created for him. By breaking down the last of this body’s bones down into tiny pieces, Caladin thought he could flow through the hole and reform on the other side. It seemed like his best chance.

          Boom!

          Caladin’s vision went white.

          He opened his eyes, back in the dark forest, with Lenny standing in front of him.

          “Dammit!” he cursed.

          “What happened?” Lenny asked. “Did it have anything to do with that thunder I keep hearing coming from the direction of the tower?”

          “Yeah, that was definitely because of me,” Caladin said. He heard another rumbling boom roar by them, disturbing the relative peacefulness of the sleeping forest.

          “Well, did it work at least? Did you take care of Jaeryl?”

          “I did,” Caladin confirmed, “but our family wasn’t there. To find them, we’re going to have to go after King Philipus next. I hope he hears about what happened here tonight and loses sleep over it.”

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