Caladin’s Climb—Part 34 (Patreon)

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          “And the best part is,” Caladin explained to the king, “any attempt to scan it with magic to figure out how it works will automatically cause it to trigger a massive explosion centered on the source.”

          “Why is that a good thing?” King Philipus asked while studying the small black wand. “That seems… dangerous.”

          “Dangerous, but necessary,” Caladin answered with a wink. “It makes it impossible for anyone to safely copy it. It’s much more secure than some spell scroll this way.” Caladin was rather proud of the little wand. And while silver was usually the most ideal material for enchanting, Andrea had shown him how to create a metal she called “tungsten” that was much stronger and more heat resistant than anything he knew how to make. That would be an important feature if he wanted a wand that wouldn’t destroy itself.

          “How does it work?” Philipus asked.

          “Just point it and think bad thoughts,” Caladin said. “I wanted it to be easy enough that even a child could figure it out. No activation word, nothing. You don’t even need to feed it mana. You can if you want, but there’s a limiter inside it that will prevent you from even forcing the explosions to get bigger. It will absorb passive mana either from the caster or the air to recharge itself. In short, it is everything you need to cast Pyroclastic Destructions of your own.”

          “And it won’t blow up this castle?” Philipus asked.

          “Not a chance. The explosions it creates are much smaller than the ones I use. I wanted it to be survivable without even the need for wards, so long as it’s aimed at least fifty paces away.”

          Philipus frowned down at the little black wand. When he looked up, he plastered a smile on his face. Caladin was starting to be able to tell the difference. He couldn’t tell exactly what, but there was something about the wand the king found slightly disappointing. Probably the limit to the size of the explosions. “This is great,” Philipus said. “I will feel much safer while you are gone.”

          “That’s all you needed, right? Where are you sending me next? I’ve never been to Kundreil before.”

          “About that,” Philipus said. The corners of his mouth turned down and he looked to the side the way he always did before delivering bad news. Caladin braced himself. “The dwarves did not actually agree to a duel, as we’d hoped.” They were in the king’s study again. He reached into a drawer of his desk that he was seated at and pulled out a scroll. “King Draug has instead issued a proclamation that their local champion has been crowned and he cannot be defeated. He says they have nothing to prove by killing you and he has withdrawn his offer to face you in combat. I do not know why.”

          “I thought that was the whole point of their tournament!” Caladin complained.

          “Ostensibly, it was. Something has changed. I do not have enough reliable assets in Kundreil to know what.”

          “What about the council?” Caladin asked. He remembered the warning Andrea had given him that they wouldn’t be allowed to join the council. It sounded prophetic now. “How are we going to get our foot in the door without the dwarf vote?”

          “I’m afraid their vote is off the table. The king states in no uncertain terms that he will never support Haedenia joining the council, even if you defeated a hundred of his champions.”

          “But what abo—”

          Philipus held up a hand to silence Caladin. “I did not say we will be giving up here,” he said. “We will just have to get a bit creative with our diplomacy.”

          “Creative how?”

          “Go to Kundreil,” Philipus said. “Threaten them. If they are so confident that their champion can beat you, then prove them wrong. Once he is defeated, do not give them a choice in supporting us. Tell the king he will vote for us or you will kill him. Like we did with Emperor Kalokai.”

          “But that was never the plan with Kalokai. I just sort of… lost my temper there for a minute.”

          “And it worked wonderfully!” King Philipus said with a smile. He got up from his polished wood desk and circled around it to place a hand on Caladin’s shoulder and give it a squeeze. The fire crackled comfortingly in the nearby hearth. Everything about his clean white robes and warm, fatherly smile was so at odds with the next words to come out of his mouth. “Caladin, boy. Listen. We’ve run out of time, and they know it. The Conflux is only two weeks away. They mean to stall us, so they can destroy us with a wish. We cannot dicker around with half measures any longer. We must inspire fear like we never have before. You’ve said that spell of yours can level cities? Well, it might be time to demonstrate that one or two times. Compared to what we stand to lose, the lives lost would be lesser this way. The fate of our entire nation is at stake, boy! Do you understand that? What is one dwarven city against an entire nation?”

          King Philipus didn’t know that Andrea had told Caladin that Haedenia’s population numbered at about two thousand, and almost all soldiers. There were dwarven cities with ten or even twenty times that population. Try as he might, Caladin couldn’t balance that equation. Even with his own family on the other side. Not when it would be nearly entirely innocent victims. He’d experienced first-hand the pain caused by just a tiny encampment in the woods being attacked. He couldn’t bring himself to inflict that kind of pain on tens of thousands. “I’m… not going to do that,” Caladin told his king. “I’m not going to destroy a city.”

          “Well, I can’t very well do it myself. Not with this weakened version of the spell you gave me.”

          “You wouldn’t!”

          King Philipus waved a dismissive hand. “You mistook my meaning. I do not possess the ability to even convincingly threaten to do so. Nobody would believe me capable of it. But you, my boy. You could make a threat that others would believe. You need not actually follow through. If you can convince the king that the threat to level his cities is genuine, I am confident he will back down. If he does not, then you can come back here and we can discuss other options.”

          “Fine,” Caladin agreed. “An empty threat. I can do that. But this better not be like the time I was only going to have to threaten to fight Queen Rusalia’s champion, and then it became a certainty. I mean it. We can discuss other options if the bluff fails, but none of those will be actually leveling cities.”

          The warmth in the king’s gaze evaporated. His eyes went flat. “Careful, boy,” he warned. “If anyone hears you talking like that to me, they might have questions about who is really in charge around here.”

          “You are in charge. Of course you are,” Caladin recovered quickly. “I am only counseling restraint. What if I just killed the king instead? If he says no, I’ll kill just him. Nobody innocent has to die. I’m sure whoever succeeds him will have a different opinion.”

          The king’s smile returned. “There, you see? I told you we could come up with a different solution.”

          “I can threaten his cities, though,” Caladin offered. “If that gets him to back down without a fight. Now, what can you tell me about this dwarven champion? Where can I find him?”

          “Their champion is named Trunt. He is a famous artificer, not a warrior,” King Philipus explained. All hint of conflict between them was forgotten as soon as Caladin began discussing how their plan would be pulled together. “The local tournament he won to be declared Kundreil’s champion was closed, so I don’t know what happened at it, but my spies tell me that in the weeks leading up to the fight there were large volumes of gold being purchased all over the kingdom. Prices have hit record heights, and I believe it is related. I do not know how it relates to this champion, only that it does. Perhaps a large purchase was made, though of what I can only speculate.”

          “Gold huh,” Caladin said. “It’s a great enchanting material. But silver is superior in almost every way. Paying for something is a good guess, but why would they need gold for that? Don’t the dwarves make large volume purchases with mana crystals, like everyone else?”

          “Interesting,” Philipus said. “I hadn’t considered that. You think the gold is being used directly?”

          “That seems like a better guess,” Caladin speculated, “but I’m trying to figure out what gold is better at doing than silver. There are a few niche applications, like chronomancy, but I seriously doubt Kundreil has a champion who is using chronomancy. Silver is also more plentiful, so I doubt they’d be using gold if it wasn’t a requirement. Perhaps they invented some kind of super weapon that can kill from a distance. Dwarves aren’t like the dyrads. They’re too honorable. They would never try to kill someone that was participating in an official duel. Maybe that’s why they didn’t agree to fight me. This could be a trap. If I had permission to have a duel, they would honor the terms, but if you send me to challenge without permission, they could just use whatever thing they’ve invented to kill me as soon as I show up. They’ll eliminate the biggest threat with their honor intact. Say I was trespassing and they were defending themselves.” Caladin shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. It’s just a thought. Otherwise, I don’t know how a huge volume of gold could come into play during a duel of champions.”

          “If they wish to subvert the rules of fair play, then so can we,” King Philipus said. “Why don’t you just go to where they shipped all this gold and steal or sabotage whatever weapon they made? Galeonis has shown me where the shipments were all taken to. Here, look on this map.”

          Philipus spent a few minutes making sure Caladin knew where this city was on the map. It was far to the Southern end of the mountain range the dwarves occupied. They were interrupted when that new Hateno lady from the Eldesian court came in. She’d settled into her new role quite quickly and already had a reputation for being blunt to the point of rudeness. She wore a much more modest dress than the night clothes she’d had on when she first arrived. Caladin let her claim the king’s time and dismissed himself. He knew what he needed to take care of the dwarf problem. Whatever they’d done with all that gold, Caladin would go there and find out. If it was some kind of weapon, as suspected, he would take it. If anyone tried to stop him, he’d blow it up with Pyroclastic Destruction and be done with them. Let their king try to refuse to change his vote then.

          These days, Caladin carried everything he needed on his person. He could depart immediately without packing, so that’s what he decided to do. He didn’t even really want to go back home, so he headed straight for the castle’s teleportation circle. Out in the courtyard, Galeonis was waiting for him. Caladin remembered him from the time he had teleported to his location while floating over a sea of lava he’d created with Pyroclastic Destruction. Early in his stay with Philipus, the vocomancer had also given Caladin some lessons in his specialized harmonic, but his knowledge had quickly been tapped out. He was responsible for teaching Caladin the trick that made his pockets larger on the inside and that was about it.

          “Mr. Caladin!” Galeonis greeted him. He ran up and shook his hands, just a little too aggressively to be comfortable. “The king asked me to wait here for you. I have the coordinates for a vocomancy jump for you. I already scouted it and confirmed the landing as safe. That was a few days ago, so I can’t guarantee nobody will attack you, but at least you won’t end up with your feet in the ground! Haha!” He laughed nervously, like he was trying to force the joke to be funny. Caladin didn’t have a particular problem with the skinny eldrin, he just found his personality a little abrasive. His unfunny jokes were just part of that.

          Caladin took the proffered slip of paper and read the line of runes carefully. The coordinate system Haedril’s people used always had Fort Sumnter’s teleportation circle as the zero point, which had taken some adjustments for Caladin to get used to. He’d been taught using the teleportation circle in Brorn’s manor instead, but by now he’d changed all his formulas to match the new system. The runes indicated a precise location many leagues to their West. “I don’t get it,” Caladin said, “why are you giving me coordinates? Don’t you have the access key for their teleportation circle? Going this far without a circle is going to be expensive, let alone coming back. If it’s a matter of getting caught, I have many disguises.” Caladin waved a hand and released a simple sensomancy illusion to make himself appear as a dwarf, a good head shorter than him and with a thick braided beard. “See? I can even lock this form in with mutamancy to be even safer.”

          Galeonis frowned. “You can use a disguise if you want, Mr. Caladin, but I can’t get you the access key to their teleportation circle. It has a lot of security features I wasn’t able to crack. If you tried to use it, you’d be killed.”

          “Then these coordinates aren’t safe either,” Caladin said, pushing the note back at the man.

          “They are!” Galeonis insisted. “These are coordinates for the town, not the circle itself. I tested them a few days ago.”

          “And do you realize what happened since then?” Caladin asked. “Their king sent a message saying he was refusing to let his champion challenge me. Don’t you get it?”

          The skinny man blinked his pale glowing eyes. “Get what?”

          “When he sent that message, we have to assume he was setting a trap for me. All he has to do is increase the drawing range of his circle and I’ll get pulled into its security wards if I try to teleport anywhere even close to it.”

          “Why would they do that?” Galeonis asked.

          “It’s what I would do.” Caladin didn’t bother mentioning that he’d learned his lessons about teleportation circles through some pretty bloody mistakes. He wasn’t about to risk having his body turned inside out, even if there was only a 1-in-10 chance his paranoia was justified. Galeonis was like almost every wizard Caladin had met. He repeated and memorized spells others had designed without understanding even a fraction of the underlying magical theory. That came with a certain lack of imagination. The trap that seemed so obvious to Caladin hadn’t even crossed his mind. That fact that he didn’t understand such a simple trap was embarrassing for a supposed professional vocomancer.

          “Well, um,” Galeonis stammered. “I copied these coordinates from—”

          “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” Caladin said, waving him off. “I’ll make some adjustments myself.” He stepped on the circle and saw Galeonis’s eyes go wide. Caladin knew just what kind of warning he was going to give. “I said don’t worry. I’m an archmage. I know what I’m doing.” Caladin was, of course, going to set his new coordinates to be further from the target, but in the sky, so he didn’t have to risk appearing inside anything. He moved the coordinates a further half league East and quarter league up, then released the teleportation spell.

          Pop.

          Caladin arrived above an open plain. There were woods behind him and a mountain range in front. He had a good look around as gravity started to pull him to the ground. At the base of the mountain, he could see several trails of smoke billowing up from behind walls of stone that almost blended into the mountainside. A dwarf city. This one seemed different than those he’d read about, given the tall towers that rose above the city’s walls. He thought true dwarf cities were all supposed to be underground. Maybe it was new. He cast a simple invisibility spell on himself, followed by Flight. Teleporting in might be risky, but he doubted they’d be ready to detect invisible fliers.

          It seemed a good guess to Caladin that this special champion the dwarves had selected would be here along with whatever weapon they were designing. Every trap had two parts. If Caladin ran into anyone while trying to find this magic weapon, he’d try to take care of them quietly, but if one of them claimed to Kundreil’s champion, all the better. He could collect the man’s unconscious body and drop it at the feet of his king. Caladin was beyond curious what could be worth collecting a nation’s supply of gold to create. Visions of a gaudy golden cannon danced in his mind’s eye, blasting beams of fire hot enough to melt stone and overwhelm defensive wards. Andrea would probably approve of such a weapon, given her cultural fascination with gold. Caladin preferred silver.

          Midway across the open plain toward the city’s walls, Caladin was surprised to hear the tolling of bells signaling an alarm. So… they had been ready to detect invisible fliers. Armored guards popped into existence along the battlements of the city walls by the thousands. If there was any question before that this place had been a trap meant to lure him in, that just about confirmed it. No city was that prepared! He hadn’t even gotten inside yet. There was no sign of any massive golden structures. He turned around, ready to retreat and try again with a new plan.

          A voice boomed through the air, enhanced with sonamancy. “Unknown wizard! You are entering Kundreil airspace. Leave at once or be destroyed.”

          He had been leaving! That command just pissed Caladin off. Now they were going to brag that they’d scared away the great Archmage Caladin. He hadn’t been turning around for his sake, but so he wasn’t forced to destroy them. But now they wanted to act tough? Fine. They could see what it was like to face an archmage. He used a mutamancy spell Andrea had taught him to change his form to that of an evanesor, then surrounded himself with a Ward Net. Only when he was thusly prepared did he drop his invisibility to face the city’s defenders. The evanesor spell was a neat innovation that let him change his form only once, then shift it any number of times just like a shapeshifter, but without needing to expend further mana. He chose the form of an eldrin, as that’s what they would expect. Evanesors were even capable of mimicking the glowing eyes without the need for magic. If an enemy wizard used True Sight on him, they might be able to see some residue of a past mutamancy spell, but his shifting form would appear to be mundane—which it was.

          “I am here to negotiate,” Caladin shouted back across the sky with a sonamancy enhancement of his own. “On behalf of King Philipus of Haedenia!”

          “There will be no negotiations,” came the reply. “Leave at once or be destroyed. This is your final warning.”

          The nerve of these dwarves rankled Caladin. “You speak to the great Archmage Caladin! If anyone is in a position to make threats, it is me. Is the champion they call Trunt here? Send him out to face me. I want to see the best the dwarves have to offer.”

          The response was immediate. There was a loud boom as a giant, black golem teleported into position just outside the city gates. To call it giant was too simple a description. It towered above the city gates so high it looked like it could turn around and step over them, and they had to be at least four stories tall. It was nearly as tall as the insufferably gratuitous Eldira Savings and Loan bank, which before today was the tallest building Caladin had ever seen. Surely, the fact that it happened to be shaped like a man with arms and legs was done for intimidation. Something so large had to be a fixed tower of—It lifted one of its arms! It could move! The palm of the hand it held up had what looked from Caladin’s distance to be a hole in it but was probably closer to a tunnel that he’d be able to walk through without even stooping. While he was still trying to figure how the massive golem was even moving, something launched out of the palm of its raised hand. It was a large crystal, about thrice Caladin’s size. It crossed the distance between itself and Caladin in less time than it took him to blink.

          Phwoom!

          Caladin was knocked straight back and down as the projectile slammed into his protective shield with enough force to punch a hole in a mountain. While Caladin was sent slamming into the ground, the projectile that deflected off the round dome of his shield ricocheted into the sky and disappeared from sight. His vision went black—not because he lost consciousness, but because he’d been forcibly burrowed into the ground so deeply the sun was lost from sight. Physically, he was fine. Suspended in his cocoon, there was no chance of him even scuffing his knee from such a powerful force. Mentally? He was shaken. Never had he imagined he would face such power. The worst of the pyroclastic explosions that he’d tested, short of willfully killing himself while in the time loop, had never buffeted him with so much force. He checked his mana belts and was appalled to find an entire mana bar had already winked out. A full bar of mana just deflecting one of those attacks.

          The only silver lining was that Caladin strongly suspected the dwarves thought they’d killed him. He would enjoy nothing more than to prove them wrong. He inscribed a simple geomancy spell to move the dirt out from on top of himself, then flew out of the hole in the ground. The golem was already turning back around. Slowly.

          “Tell me that was just a warmup shot,” Caladin shouted back at his enemy. “Because if that’s all you’ve got, I’ll admit to being a little disappointed.” Perception. That’s what Philipus always said. It was all about perception. He obviously wasn’t going to be able to steal the massive golem if it was in fact the weapon they’d been building, so he’d have to destroy it. “Now it’s my turn!” he said. He judged the distance to the golem and the proximity of the city walls to where the blast radius would be and unleashed the largest Pyroclastic Destruction he thought he could get away with. A few of the closest guards lined up on the battlements might get caught in the blast, but at least the city would be spared. He wasn’t a monster.

          Kaboom!

          Ready for it, Caladin turned his head so the flash of light wouldn’t blind him. He snickered at the thought of how many dwarf soldiers would need to go see a healer after this for staring into the explosion. He could hear the stories they’d be telling about this already. “That Caladin guy flew in and took the golem’s strongest attack dead on, then obliterated it in a second! We never stood a chance!”

          Ha. He’d head to the dwarven capital after this and demand their king surrender. With any luck, he’d be back before Philipus even finished his meeting with the new chamberlain. Wouldn’t that be a sight to see when he showed up and told his king he’d already received the dwarf king’s surrender while he’d been reviewing a list of repairs Fort Sumnter needed.

          Dust and debris were thrown into a massive cloud. When it cleared the golem was… fine. It was fine. It didn’t even have a scratch on it. With not even the slightest sign that its functions have been impaired, the golem raised its arm at Caladin again. He glanced to the wall, confused. Had his explosion been smaller than he’d intended? No. There was even a half crater that had taken a sizable chunk of masonry from the city’s massive walls. Any more and he would have broken them. Another crystal launched out of the machine’s hand. This time Caladin tried to fly over it, but it was impossibly fast. All he managed to do was turn a direct strike into another deflection, and this time he was launched clear into the stratosphere. Never in his life had Caladin flown so fast. If not for his Ward Net cutting the wind the friction of the air might very well have flayed the skin right off his bones. It was like he blinked, and the city became a dot far beneath him.

          Another bar of mana was depleted, and the Ward Net had narrowly avoided destabilizing. He considered teleporting back home. He could recharge his mana, maybe think through his options. No. Hell would freeze over before he went crawling back to Philipus to cry that he was bested by a creation of metal. There was something else he could still try. He used a luminomancy cantrip to enhance his sight back down to the city. The golem was still down there, though it looked like it was aiming at him. As interested as he was to see if the creation’s projectiles could even travel that high, he didn’t want to risk being tossed into space if another one hit him. Using his enhanced vision to measure the distance, Caladin used a vocomancy teleportation to send himself back down to the ground level. He found himself floating right in front of the golem’s outstretched arm. Just as intended. It turned out to in fact be a tunnel wide enough that he could crawl through it, though he would have to crouch.

          “Let’s see how you like it,” Caladin said. He unleashed another Pyroclastic Destruction. This one was aimed right down the barrel. Before it even went off, Caladin blinked away with another teleport. This explosion would be contained within the creation’s inner guts, so he used twice as much mana as the last one. There was real risk he might destroy a sizable portion of the city, but Caladin hoped the golem’s body would absorb most of the explosion before the stress caused it to break apart.

          From half a league away, he heard the rush of the explosion he’d caused roar past him. There was no dust cloud this time, though the golem did direct a column of flame out the tube of its gun canon. That was all his explosion did. No damage. None. It took a second to find him again, then started aiming the giant cannon arm in his direction as though nothing had happened at all.

          It was as though the golem was… indestructible.

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