Book 3 - Chapter 14 (Patreon)

It was a solemn little group that left at dawn, all except for Marksi who darted around happily chasing moths and scampering up and down from Brin’s shoulders. He loved going out in the wild and didn’t seem to notice the mood of the other three.

Only Brin, Marksi, and Myra had come with Lumina. Zilly and Davi had both asked to come, and had been turned away since they didn’t have resistance to mageburn. How Myra was resistant to mageburn, Brin didn’t know. Lumina had never used enough magic during their lessons to hurt in that way. Had she trained with someone else? He would ask, but he didn’t think he should. It wasn’t the time for talking.

Lumina kept her eyes squinted nearly shut, and she winced at every single tiny sound like the squawk of a bird or when someone stepped on a branch. She had a look of extreme concentration on her face, and sometimes her mouth moved with silent words. Brin didn’t know if she was casting some long-winded spell, but he couldn’t see or feel any magic. It reminded him more of someone who was cramming last-minute for a difficult test, running through a series of terms and definitions to make sure she really had it all memorized.

So the four of them walked in silence; even Marksi in his cheerfulness didn’t make much sound.

It was a somber sort of morning. Even the weather agreed. The sky was gray and overcast, and the morning mist rising from the ground didn’t seem to have anywhere to go and just hung about underfoot. There didn’t seem to be much color in the world at all outside the people. Lumina in her bright scarlet robes, Myra in her violet dress that hung like silk, and the shifting rainbow of Marksi stood out clearly against what felt like a gray and static backdrop.

While Lumina concentrated and Marksi played, Myra was the only one whose mood matched the situation. She looked extremely worried. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, and she smiled back before going back to looking worried.

The walk seemed to go on forever, but when they arrived it felt too soon.

Marksi gave an excited chirp, and then darted forwards into the forest. Only after that did Brin hear the faint sound of water; the slow lapping waves of a pond.

Lumina sighed. “I suppose it’s now or never. Soon, I will approach. I will do so alone. The two of you will stay back. You may watch, but that is all you will do. Do not summon your magic or use any Skills, not even [Inspect]. Don’t mistake me–everything I’ve read about the Hidden Guardian insists that she is an absolutely reliable protector of children. Any action on your part may distract me, this is why I request this. Any questions before I proceed?”

Brin and Myra look at each other, and then shook their heads. Sure, he could ask a million questions, but there was nothing he needed to know right now.

Marksi splashed out of the water, and trotted up to Lumina. He gave her a satisfied nod, and Brin understood Marksi enough to know it meant something like, Mom will talk to you now.

Lumina took a steadying breath, and then reached into her robes and produced a small bottle. It shone golden, and the fluid inside looked thick like molten glass. His eyes bugged out when he realized that value sense was telling him that it was worth more than a potion of healing. He used [Inspect].

Potion of Past Glory

Lumina smirked at him. “I caught that. No more [Inspect]; I mean it! As for this, I think it must be quite rare for someone under the age of a hundred to drink one. It’ll make me as good as I ever was.”

Brin nodded in understanding. “As good as you were before the curse on your hand.”

“Even better than the moment I arrived in Hammon’s Bog, since at that time I’d already spent a good portion of mana hastening myself across the country.”

She drank it, though it didn’t look pleasant. Lumina grimaced against the taste, or maybe the texture.

When Lumina turned back to walk through the final distance of the forest, the skin on her hand was already back to its natural color.

The water of the pond was green with algae, less clear than when he’d come here the first time. Much of the surface was overgrown with little three-leafed plants like clover, interspersed with little pink flowers. He hadn’t come here very often, so he didn’t know if this was normal for this time of year. Maybe the current resident simply liked to change the decor once in a while.

“Stay behind the treeline and hold onto something and don’t approach the water’s edge,” said Lumina.

She took a slow, steadying breath, then two more. She clenched her fists, grit her teeth, and then stepped forward to the pond. When she reached the water’s edge, she didn’t stop and marched across the water as if it were solid ground.

Near the center, where none of the weeds on the surface reached, Lumina reached down where her staff and struck the water three times.

Brin expected subtlety. Every time he’d approached this dragon, he’d only got a few meager glimpses. A flash of sight of an enormous body while underwater. A trace of a vast figure, perfectly camouflaged and only noticed with [Know What’s Real].

The sound that erupted from the pond wasn’t subtle at all. It was loud enough to make the surface of the pond boil with sine waves. Somehow, there was no real voice behind it but he understood the words regardless.

<A mosquito does not converse with a bat. It is buffeted away by the wind of the wings.>

None of these words were figurative. With the word ‘mosquito’ Brin felt sharp pricks as if he were being bitten, and the word ‘bat’ gave him the feeling of being slapped with leathery wings. The sentence about being buffeted by wind actually summoned a terrible windstorm that would’ve knocked Brin off his feet if he hadn’t been holding on to a tree branch.

That was only the bare edge of the effect of the words. They were directed entirely toward Lumina and they hit her with a concussive force that would’ve shattered rocks. Lumina withstood it with a shield of air that she summoned intuitively without Language.

As soon as the dragon was finished speaking, Lumina replied. “<Blind as a bat, the one that cannot see what stands before her. If she is not deaf as well…>”

These words were just as effective as the dragons. He was blinded, and as soon as she said ‘deaf’, Brin’s hearing went out and he lost the rest of what she was saying. He blinked and his vision returned, the sight of Lumina standing in the air while the water of the pond swirled around her, building up to a hurricane.

“<...that stands above humanity the way that gold stands above tin. I am the bright star that guides through the dark. I illuminate the world in edifying light. To the wicked and unjust, I am the meteor that punishes, destroying absolutely. Cataclysm!> I am Lumina, [Archmage of the Mystical Elements].”

Lumina’s statement was punctuated with blasts of fire, bolts of lightning, and a furious swirling wind. All of it together made Brin start to worry that she might accidentally hurt the creature below, even as big as the Hidden Guardian was. Hopefully she was protecting all the little snakes, too.

Then he heard a low rumble. There was no language in it, just the sound of shifting earth. It took him a minute to figure out what it was. That was the sound of laughter.

The water erupted into a spray that went hundreds of feet into the air, and the dragon appeared.

The first glimpse rewrote Brin’s brain, because he thought he’d seen beauty before. In the colors of a sunset, or the smile of a friend, or the iridescent patterns on the wings of a dragonfly. That was nothing compared to this.

Her scales shown in rainbow patterns like Marksi, but unlike Marksi every single one sparkled in an intentional way, pure artistry, to please the eye and compliment her figure.

She was huge, too large for the small size of the pond to make any sense; there had to be dimensional magic at play. She stretched up and around, her long coils looping through the water until her neck stretched up and over to look down at the puny [Archmage].

Her overall posture was one of relaxation. Amusement sparkled in gemstone eyes the size of boulders.

<You are a spark from the smoldering embers of a fallen civilization. You flash brightly then fizzle out. Inconsequential.>

Her words were punctuated with a series of fireballs, so bright that they left spots in Brin’s vision. Lumina beat them away with her staff in mighty two-handed blows that cracked the air, and the fireballs went black and disappeared before hitting the water.

The word <Inconsequential> seemed to increase the gravity of the world, but Lumina stood firm.

She replied, “<My life is short. I cannot lay on my back in the cool water, growing fatter over centuries. I grab and take and kill and eat. I climb and soar. I lift myself up, to heights that strain even the wings of dragons!>”

The dragon snorted in contempt. <Can you pull me out of the water with a fishhook? Can you wrap a rope around my neck? Tame me? Force me to speak soft words and beg you to spare me? Will you put me on a leash? Or will you slay me? Divide my flesh up among merchants? Bargain over me with traders?>

This part was perhaps the most surprising to Brin. He’d seen people use the Language to cast magic, but there were no visible effects to this portion of the speech. Just simple, derisive questions.

The dragon continued. <Lay your hands upon me and remember.>

As if her body were moving on its own, Lumina lurched forward and a hand reached out to press against a shimmering dragonscale.

<Remember the battles! You do not wish to see this again!>

A vision flooded into Brin’s mind, reminiscent of a [Bard’s] magic. He saw and felt a battlefield. A row of a thousand [Knights] in armor that practically vibrated with power. They rode steeds that looked like they could’ve pushed elephants off their feet, charging across the landscape. They were headed towards her. They were headed towards death.

It wasn’t a story, not a movie, just that one brief image of mighty of high-level [Knights] of a forgotten era, charging to their doom. Just the feeling of terrible battle, and the undeniable knowledge that it would end in their deaths.

“<I do not war with you. I speak.>” Lumina’s words came out halting and weak, clearly shaken by the image the dragon had pressed into her mind. From his spot in the trees, Brin had probably only felt a fraction of what the dragon had shown Lumina.

<Your hope is false. Your kind flee at the sight of me. Who can stand before me?>

“I am Lumina.” She spoke softly, as if to herself. Then louder, gaining confidence with each word, she continued. “<I am the light of my people! I walk where I want and stand where I wish! None can impede me. My breath shatters the trees!>”

It wasn’t a hypothetical. The dragon twisted to the side to avoid a school bus-sized fist of wind that slammed into the forest on the other side and shattered a dozen trees in its path.

“<My fury is a rising flame! My hatred boils the ocean!>” The air surrounding Lumina and the dragon turned to fire, a glowing blazing heat that burned away the last of the plant matter on the pond and made the water start to bubble. Lumina’s golden hair and scarlet robes flapped in the burning wind, but she and the dragon were completely unharmed.

“<Mountains bow to me! The hills stand at attention to mark my approach!>”

A line of stone sprang up around the pond, making the ground shake and uprooting still more trees.

Seeming impressed, the dragon grinned, showing her teeth for the first time. It wasn’t a calming sight.

<My scales are rows of shields, huddled closely in formation. If a sword reaches me, it does not avail. Spears and axes cannot penetrate me. My teeth are vengeful spears. My heart is solid stone; it will not yield to a saw or hammer. Even my sneezes are mighty flames, the sister of the sun!>

The dragon demonstrated and actually sneezed on Lumina. It sprayed her with a brightly glowing glob of sticky flame. “<Summon Water, a Shield!>” Lumina blocked the blazing phlegm, for the first time using the Language as a normal spell, not masked as part of a conversation.

The dragon looked a bit smug, like she’d won.

Lumina smiled weakly. She opened her mouth, and then shut it again. The dragon leaned forward, as if to snap Lumina up in a single bite.

Then Lumina seemed to come up with something, because she smiled and stood up straight again. She put her hands inside her pocket, and Brin wondered what artifact Lumina would use to balance the scales. She pulled out a white handkerchief.

“Bless you.”

The dragon’s mouth stretched wider, showing off more of those long teeth. Another rumble began beneath the water. It traveled up her tail and stuck in her neck. A vibrating, repetitive sound. It reminded him of something Marksi did when he was happy. No, that was it exactly! The dragon was purring.

<You may ask your questions.>

Lumina laughed in relief. She cleared her throat, and said, “<Three circles converge in a tunnel connecting life and death, one of air, one of dust, one of glue, and separated on nine degrees by glistening effervescence to pull chaos from the real into the unreal.> See the problem? How do I finish this?”

The spell she was forming bent the air with power, but something prevented it from taking form.

The dragon nodded indulgently. <An eater that lacks mouth or maw. Trees and beasts are my daily bread. When fed, I show lively life, but give me water and I perish.>

“Fire?” asked Lumina.

<Fire.> With one word, the dragon finished the spell Lumina had been trying to cast. It made a near invisible flame that didn’t seem to give off any heat, but Lumina looked at it like Prometheus had just pulled it down from heaven.

She asked another question, and Brin didn’t understand that one either, or the next. The dragon answered them each with simple, childish riddles. “What fills up the sky and covers the whole earth, uproots trees and shakes all foundations, but cannot be seen by eyes or touched by hands?” The answer was “Wind.” Except the answer wasn’t that simple, because when the dragon said <Wind>, there were layers of meaning and power to it that Brin couldn’t even begin to parse it out. Lumina could, though, and bowed in sincere gratitude after every answer.

Eventually the dragon seemed to grow bored. <No more questions> she said abruptly.

“Just one more,” said Lumina. “Is there anything I can do for you? I would repay you for this knowledge if I can.”

<Remove the rotted ones from this land. They upset the balance of the soil.>

Lumina bowed. “I will do all I can.”

The dragon’s exit was a lot less dramatic than her entrance, though no less impressive. She tiredly sank into the water, all the while growing transparent. She was already invisible to all his senses except [Know What’s Real] before the crown of her head went under the water.

Lumina walked away beaming, while Marksi lounged on Brin’s shoulders like all of this was normal. He’d tracked mud all over Brin’s clothes, but that wasn’t exactly his biggest concern right now.

His mind reeled at all the amazing spellwork he’d seen, and he had new appreciation for Lumina’s training. Before she’d returned, that amount of spellwork flying around would’ve killed him from mageburn.

His heart hammered in his chest, and everything seemed more real somehow. How had he thought this world looked colorless? The gray sky just made the bright greens of the trees stand out more.

Maybe it was his unusual state of mind that made him take the risk. He said, “May I ask a question?”

The answer came immediately as a real voice, not the overpowering Language the dragon had used with Lumina. “Friend of my child. You may ask me about him.”

“So he is your child?”

The voice sounded a bit like the fluttering of leaves, a bit like the chirping of birds. “I do not bear the fruit of my flesh so easily. He is many generations removed. But a female human would understand: Whether they are offspring or grandchildren or a hundred generations removed, they are all my children.”

“How can I help Marksi to be his best? I want him to be like you someday. I don’t buy the story about how no dragon’s child can be as great as its parent,” said Brin.

“We regress. On the day of my birth I snapped a crocodile in half between my jaws. This child is not a one such as I. It matters not. My only wish for him is to be happy.”

“I want him to stay with me, and he wants that too. If he’s going to go the places I go, he needs to get stronger when I get stronger.”

“Fool. That is a dragon. Can you make him stronger? No, you could only prevent it.”

There was a sense of finality in that last sentence. The conversation was over.

He looked at Lumina to ask her what she thought the dragon had meant, but she put a finger to her lips.

They walked in silence, for maybe half a mile. Lumina must’ve decided that amount of distance was enough, because all at once she threw her hands up into the air. “Yes! Yes, yes, YES! I found it! Ghostflame! And the Tibault’s Wandering Armor! Master is going to go green when I tell him. He’s been trying to rediscover this spell for years and all I had to do was ask!”

“I take it that went well?” asked Brin.

“Better than you can imagine. I won’t lie, there are many factions that will be more than a little upset that I’ve been away for all this time. But with this, I can prove it was time well spent. By Noctis’s Cowl, they couldn’t argue if I said I want to do it again!”

“I’m glad. It was pretty impressive from my end,” said Brin. Even if he’d only understood the surface of the conversation, it had still been enough to expand his comprehension.

Through training, you have increased the following attribute:

Magic +2

He looked at Myra, who walked with her head down.

“What did you think?”

“She wasn’t there,” said Myra. Her voice was deep, the sound of someone near tears.

Brin stopped in his tracks. “What?”

She looked up at him with red eyes. “My mom. All this time, I thought she was still there, trapped in a hibernation Skill. But she wasn’t there, and I don’t have any idea where she is!”

Brin wanted to tell himself that it was only because he was stunned by magic that he didn’t know how to respond, but the truth was, he’d never been very good at this. “We’ll find her.”

“No.” Myra shook her head. “I’m done. I’m done with all of this. With her, and with this town. They’re all snapping at the bit to get new cloth from the merchants. Better to pay the out-of-town markup than have to deal with the weird [Weaver’s] daughter. Well I’m done. When you leave– no, before that. When the merchants leave, I’m going with them.”