Intricacies of Asymmetry

[Caden Law]

There are about ten thousand things to say in the situation Caden found himself in right now. For all the oratory acrobatics of Wizardry, for all the experience of adventuring, and for all the time he'd spent fighting for his life in one trauma-ridden situation or the next five after it; he could only muster one word. It was a fitting word. It was one of the Great Questions that define us all -- the fodder by which stories are told and believed, and lives are won or lost.

"How?" he asked, over and over again.

"The Hellhound's armor was merely a simulacrum of my own. Guess who the Necromancer's Forges saw fit to give the better suit, Wizard? Go on. Use that great academic prowess to guess," Ghez told him, and Caden could very well hear the smile on his face even from twenty yards out. "Mine. I was given this Armor of Champions for victories in His services. Mere rock isn't going to break it."

Caden's whole face twitched.

"Incidental to my Steed, I'm going to need a new one now. But I can forgive you for that. The Necromancer will likely just give me a better replacement as part of the bounties to be bestowed upon me for your head. Me and me alone. My thanks for murdering Kholia will be a quick and merciful death." He flicked his wrist once, and the chain-hung axe whipped up into his grasp. He brandished it with simple predatory intentions written into the very air around him. "Tilt your head back, Wizard. Xem'zund willing, this will only hurt once."

Caden shuddered once, and then stilled. He straightened from his slouched posture, then did indeed tilt his head back. Caden stared up through the fog, into the clouds, and then he let out a dull chuckle.

Ghez didn't wait for him.

The barbarian Death Lord leapt forward, hit the ground on one foot and turned into a stampeding bull elephant in the size and shape of a man. He did so without a battle cry, and even without the antilights of Necromancy to glitter and burn around his axes. He really did mean what he said.

It would've been painless. Maybe a split second's discomfort and about fifteen more spent staring at the scenery while waiting for his brain to stop functioning. It would've been honorable, since he died on the field of battle against the enemy's captain and commander. There would've literally been nothing wrong with dying like this.

It just wasn't Caden's style.

Both hands took the Wand of Nevermorrow and pulled back, low, and to the side. Blueraven sank into a stance that would've done an Akashiman samurai proud, and only then did he finally meet Felhammer in the eyes.

"Not happening."

He swept forward, and the ever malleable ground of Raiaera traced his movements. Rocks and dirt and mud; it all flooded up and took grass and trees and gods-know-what with it, forming a sharpened tentacle-like spire that arced around from behind the Wizard and slammed into Ghez Felhammer almost head on. The Death Lord had no real time to counter it and it did little to hurt him; all he could do was scream profanity as he was literally ground to a stop some yards away.

"I won't make that offer twice, Wizard!"

"You won't have to," Caden replied. "You're about to die, Ghez. I'm going to kill you -- here and now. I swear it on your own dead body."

[Caden Law]

A Wizard is as good as his word. It's the key point of semantic divergence between Wizards, Witches and Warlocks, and probably the earlier Sorcerors as well. When a Wizard gives his word, he will keep it. He will keep it in rain and in snow, in fire and in ruin, in sickness and in health, no matter what the cost is to himself and his other obligations. The only way to make a Wizard break one oath is to bind him with something else, and that's always tricky business by any standard.

The Wizard Blueraven swore an oath to kill the Death Lord Ghez Felhammer. He was obligated to do everything in his power to see it through to the end. All that was left now was the very question that Caden had asked not more than a minute ago: How?

It had no answer.

That's why Ghez was laughing like Hell at it.

"Do your worst!" Ghez invited through his chortles and his cackles. "Do your absolute worst, Wizard!"

"Count on it," was Blueraven's answer, though he struggled just to hold the arching stone spire in place between himself and his foe. With one Wand and no Circle and no martial training to speak of, there wasn't a whole lot he could do.

It was only a matter of time before Felhammer broke through...

...a matter of seconds before the cracks turned to chasms...

...a matter of instants before the whole thing shattered to dust...

...a matter of now.

Caden ducked back, lost his foot and only barely avoided tumbling backwards down the roadside incline as the Death Lord's axes came for him. Twinned swings to start with, fast enough and hard enough that they whistled through the air even without magic to empower them. Experience countered size, and though a lesser man would've fallen downhill with that stunt, Ghez did not. He planted a metal-clad foot right in front of Caden's empty hand, then drew his axes up with power surging wild in them.

There wasn't any witty banter when he brought the things back down. Caden rolled to the side along the hill, then scrabbled back up towards the road as the Death Lord's axes killed twenty or thirty feet of assorted plantlife just by hitting the ground.

"Breaking your oath already, Wizard?" Ghez called without looking. "Shame!"

"Hardly!" was Caden's response, though...it didn't sound all that brave when he was running away. Ghez straightened up with a laugh and started back up to the road.

Then stopped as Caden spun around and fired a bolt of lightning at him. By all rights he should've missed. By no rites did he hit. The only reason the spell slammed into Ghez was because the Death Lord wore a few hundred pounds of metal on his body -- arcane or otherwise. The mammoth hide pelt on his back finally gave up the ghosts. Literally. It exploded into hard, ugly red and blue flames, and in the smoke could be seen the faces of the men, women and children whose skins had gone into making the inner lining of it.

Ghez himself didn't even stagger. He stopped for a moment, and then walked the rest of the way onto the road with a fire burning on his back. He crossed his axes, and over the sound of battle gone bad near them, called out.

"I've been waiting to do this for a while now, Wizard!"

There wasn't a faux spell this time. Just axes. Being thrown. On chain that grew hundreds of new links to accomodate them, quickly enough that they were able to reach cannonball speeds without the slightest hindrance. They moved without flips or spins, more like missiles with bladed rutters on the underside. Caden dodged them both by the skin of his teeth, sidestepping one and then stopping short of faceplanting into the other. An instant later, he ducked. Which was good, because if he hadn't then they would've taken his head off when Ghez flicked the chains a little, turned them inward, then yanked them back into his hands. They still came within an inch of ripping open his Hat on either side.

Now, and only now, was when Caden finally put his goggles back on.

He stood again, thrust his Wand forward and spoke. By the time the Death Lord's axes were coming in for another go, the words hit the air with Blueraven's Voice to empower them.

"Thermal Lance."

The air between the axes suddenly contracted. It froze in a long thin line all the way to the space in front of Felhammer's position. Then it shattered and expanded and caught fire into one ridiculously long tunnel of fire around a boiling vacuum, hitting the axes and their chains and driving both far apart. It wasn't the exact Spell as Caden had intended, but it would do.

The axes missed and there wasn't anything Felhammer could do to make the return trip count. So he didn't.

He charged head long into the remnants of the Spell and plowed right through it like it wasn't even there. Fire scattered around his armored chest and shoulders as the axes lashed through the trees at roadside on their way back to him. In far too little time, he was at point blank and one axe was held high--

Caden didn't dodge it. He pointed down and twisted the Wand and the ground at Felhammer's feet wrenched to one side in an ugly turn that ended with him tumbling end over end for about ten feet more. He landed sideways, sprang up to his feet and immediately counterattacked with a blind double-swing.

Caden did dodge it, if only by precious inches. As he turned away, he raised the Wand again and didn't waste time aiming. Arcane Blast at point blank. He hit Ghez right in the face.

It didn't even blind him.

"Enough!"

The Death Lord caught Caden right in the chest. They could both hear bones cracking. Blood shot out of Caden's mouth in a pitiful spray, and more came out of his nose than anything else. The world turned violently red with that, and Caden lurched to his knees, gagging up more blood after the fact. Ghez didn't give him time to rest.

Whatever he hit Caden with, it was fast and hard. So much so that the Wizard literally accelerated right out of a Hat enchanted specifically to stay in place at all times. One of his boots even flew off. Whether it was a kick, a punch, a full arm or the back of an axe, Caden didn't know or care. All of it would've sent him flying just the same.

He hit the ground about twenty or thirty feet later, rolling along the dirt and gravel of the road for a few more yards after the fact. It was bloody and bruising and just plain painful, and Caden honestly didn't know how he stayed conscious through the ordeal -- much less thinking.

"Just lie still and die already. I've broken too many of your bones for you to mount a comeback now, and you never had a chance in the first place."

One of his goggle lenses had busted open. He was bleeding from the back of his head. His vision was blurry in both eyes, more so than usual. But Caden looked around as he struggled up on hands and knees, and though he'd lost his Wand in the fall, something just as good -- if not better -- lay within his reach.

Aldinar's Spear.

Blueraven grinned like a maniac as he took the thing, and said with a tattered Voice, "Now why would I ever do that?"

[Caden Law]

Tembrethnil Forest is an old, old place. It's a realm of magic and power dating to ages long passed from even the memory of the first peoples in the world. Tens of thousands of leylines congregate here, old and new and entirely local from the sheer build-up of energies inherent to every single centuries old tree and decade aged blade of grass.

There is power here. There is life here. Beneath the soil, within the trees, pulsing even the fog-muddled air.

...and with Aldinar's spear as an impromptu Staff of Power, Caden reached out to it. He dug deep -- into the earth, into the air, into the running streams, and into all the plants he could find. He reached out with his senses and he made contact, and he didn't waste time with incantations or dramatic gestures or rites or any of the nonsense that usually makes magic work in the first place.

He called out to Mother Tembrethnil, and in all her matronly wisdom, the Forest herself answered.

With a proper staff, however improvised and second-hand it was, the whole process took only fractions of a second. Where Eluriand had ravaged him to the core with centuries of proud living and tradition, Tembrethnil Forest gave only the purest power of life itself. Bones knit back together in an instant, flesh wounds healed and the Wizard Blueraven came to his feet as if someone had tilted the entire planet to put it in place for him -- with the added benefit of facing the Death Lord who still sought to destroy this place.

"Oh, fuck," was all Ghez could think to say, his Voice literally blown out like a candle in the wind as magic surged and warped and shaped itself to Blueraven's intent. "Oh, fucking Hell..."

Blueraven took the Staff in both hands, and then pointed it deliberately at Felhammer. The light that built there was stark white and green around a growing core of bluish-black.

"Magic Missile," he said, because you just can't beat the classics.

Especially not when they go nuclear.

[Caden Law]

What happened next is the kind of thing that passes into myth and legend, sung about and romanticized by bards and told to small children to inspire them to greatness. It was the kind of image that ends up on national flags, and gets painted again and again through the ages.

In the simplest terms: A great blue raven flew from Tembrethnil's breast, erupting from the forest in much the same slow way a mushroom cloud shoots up out of the desert. The difference is that when it spun and beat its wings, there was no massive gust of wind. When it opened its beak to crow, the sound was so loud that it couldn't actually be heard. Fog billowed into nothing around it, and the clouds split in a perfect ring overhead.

It drifted up, a thing of pure blue light with black edges, leaving a trail of feathers the size of a house in its wake. They drifted to the ground, one by one, and faded not long after they touched it. The raven itself didn't last much longer, as it flew on gusts of nothing into the sky and slowly but surely faded away.

A red sun rose to gold in the morning hours of Raiaera.

The battle ended not long after that.

[Caden Law]

There is a cliche that almost everyone knows by heart. They say, The silence was deafening... like they know what it means.

They did not.

Not until they stood in Tembrethnil Forest right here, right now. As ghouls crumbled to dust and revenant trees collapsed in on themselves, there was a silence so great as to be mythic in its own right. It was serenity; equal parts passion and apathy, ignorance and enlightenment, relief of life and sorrow of death. There were three Rangers left on the road in that moment, another starting to move in the forest proper, and somewhere out in the wilderness, maybe one Seer still drew breath.

And at the epicenter of something that most would call a miracle, there was just a Wizard staring through half-broken glasses at the burnt shadow where Ghez Felhammer once stood.

...and only now, without the blinding light or the surging euphoria of the Forest's energies, did Caden see that he wasn't using Aldinar's spear at all. A cracked Eye stared back at him -- into him -- from the head of Kholia Horren's old Staff, and though it had no lids and was attached to no face, Caden could sense it smiling.

He dropped the Staff immediately.

Then he stomped on it.

And he screamed at it.

And he left it there, to go find his boot and put his Hat back on. By then, the clarity of his vision was starting to fade, but he still didn't need glasses to see the side-effects of the most powerful spell he'd ever cast in his life. Hell. A blind man could've seen it.

For as far as the eye could see in every direction, Tembrethnil Forest had died. For as long as the senses could reach, its leylines had been severed. What remained were withered corpses that used to be plants and trees, and streams that were slowing to a dead creep alongside them. There was no magic left here -- no life left here. It wasn't because of Xem'zund. It wasn't because of Kholia Horren. It wasn't because of Ghez Felhammer.

A Wizard did it.

And his Name was Blueraven.

[Caden Law]

Tembrethnil, Raiaera
Day of the Mourning Stars

I do not necessarily believe in gods.

Strike that. I do believe in gods, but I do not believe in their divinity. I do not believe in their moral superiority or their right to define what is right.

But, should the day ever come that I do believe in such things, then I hope they can forgive me for what I did yesterday. Sway have mercy on me, I honestly do not have words for the thing I did yesterday. I still cannot wrap my head around it.

I used Necromancy.

I used Necromancy.

I used Necromancy.

It doesn't matter how many times I repeat that to myself, I can't accept it. I know the story of it. I know its origins. I know the gist of its mechanics. But I can't accept that I used it. I can't accept that I used it or that I was empowered by a Necromancer's Staff to do it.

I tore the life out of Tembrethnil Forest using Necromancy.

It was an accident. I didn't mean to do it that way. I was trying to summon up energy for a spell that could beat Felhammer and and and and and

The page stops here.

Blueraven spent almost an hour before moving on to the next one.

No sense crying about it. Which I haven't.

After the battle, we (by which I mean the Elves, since none of them would dare come within arm's reach of me) set about tallying the living and the dead. I handled all the burials they'd let me do. Which ended up being one: Kholia Horren, the Wizard Blightcrow. Felhammer didn't have a body left to bury and neither did most of the leftover ghouls. We (They) buried Aldinar with his spear and Eledier with what remained of her sword and helm.

Vara got lucky. She survived her battle with the succubus, but only because the light of my spellwork burned it out of this world. I expect she'll return at some point, added to the growing list of women who would like to tear my spine out and beat me with it. Vara survived though, as I said, and her injuries were relatively minor.

She was also the only one of the Elves to commend me for my services. And she forgave me, with a hug, after I explained what had happened. Shaul Karna, the Ranger who guarded me during part of the battle, also forgave me and offered me his Wand. I declined. After what I did to the lands they were all dying to protect, I couldn't accept gifts from them. For what it's worth, I stood shoulder to shoulder with the survivors and provided my own bumbling eulogy for Eledier.

She believed in me when no-one else would.

That's what I told them.

After the funeral, we walked through the newly christened Deadlands. It looks bigger than it actually is. I hope. When we reached the edge, we came upon a wall of actual forest. Vara and the Rangers communed with the trees (I wasn't allowed to touch them), and it turns out the damage I inflicted wasn't as bad as I believed. Kholia's logging operation tore up almost a two fifths of the forest on its own. My magic* killed another fifth on top of that. Two fifths remain, more or less, with the likelihood that the areas ravaged by Kholia will grow back if given the chance.

Maybe someday, the area I scourged will grow back too.

Vara didn't slap me when I suggested it, so. You never know.

* I still shudder to call it that.

Another hour ticked by. Blueraven stared into a campfire light while trying to order his thoughts again.

I don't think I have it in me to hate the Elves anymore. But I think it's time that I leave these lands. As I write this, I sit with what's left of Farstrike Encampment, sharing late night guard duties with Shaul while the others mime sleep with the deepest 'meditations' I've ever seen. I guess enough exhaustion and stress will make even an Elf snore.

After the battle, Vara and I destroyed Kholia's old Staff. I Circled it to diffuse its power, then Vara broke the gem. We burnt the rest of it afterwards. It was the only real relief I've had lately. I spent most of last night and today repairing what's left of my gear; I threw away my Conscript Breastplate, and my Bazaar Wand was broken in the fighting. I'll have to find another to replace it. I had to use alchemy to fix one of my boots, and both my glasses and goggles.

IthinkImaybeabletodonecro

The lead broke. The page ripped. Caden threw what was left of the old pencil into the campfire, got out a new one and returned to work on a different page.

I believe that, after all this, I may be able to do Necromancy.

Saint forgive me.

I need to go home. I need to talk to Greyspine -- my Greyspine, from my Time. I need to see my family again. I need to heal from this. I need to be sure that I haven't got someone's hooks into my soul.

Starting tomorrow, I'm going to go to Salvar.

He closed the Grimoire, took off his Hat and then crammed it back inside. Caden put it back on, adjusted his glasses and sniffed the air.

"Smells like a storm's brewing," he pointed out.

"It's already here," said Shaul.

[Caden Law]

Intricacies of Asymmetry

Not far from the edge of a once mighty forest, there stood a grouping of just five people; four Elves and a human Wizard. The Elves wore traveling clothes now; all grey pants and shirts under traditional green Ranger's Cloaks, even for Vara the Seer. All of them wore swords at their sides, though only Vara didn't carry a spellstaff. Caden stood apart from them, and in front of them. He faced them, and they faced him, and it was all over but the parting words.

"We could use a man like you," Vara said, though it wasn't much of an invitation.

"No you couldn't," Caden replied, though it wasn't much of a denial since she hadn't been offering in the first place.

"Where will you go now?" Both of them asked at once. Vara inclined her head for him to speak first, but Caden was going to talk right over her whether she did or didn't. "I'm going to Salvar. I have to do..." He motioned with his hands, as if trying to convey ten thousand things without a word. Then he asked, "And you?"

"We will leave this place for the surrounding towns and villages. Spread word of what happened here. Evacuate the willing to Tirinost, where a new power may yet be rising. Or perhaps an older, better one -- an echo of the things we have preached for centuries. I feel--" and here, Caden noted, she almost said fear, "--our paths will cross again someday, Blueraven."

"Probably," Caden replied with a shrug.

"I wish you best of luck on your journey to Salvar. May you find your own Caesai Maer," she said, placing a fist over her heart and bowing with something kin to respect as she did it.

Caden stared at her.

"What is the Zero Step?" he asked.

"When you learn, feel free to tell me," Vara answered with a smile that was equal parts cryptic, unknowing, and flat-out cute.

Someone go update the score card.

-----

There wasn't a long good-bye between Caden Law and the Elves of Farstrike. He shook hands with the Rangers -- Ringo, Shaul, and Erral. He hugged Vara, though she didn't exactly put enthusiasm into hugging him back.

Then they walked away from each other without so much as a backwards glance.

Caden didn't have a horse this time, and that was okay. He wanted to be alone for the time being After hours and hours, it was still okay. After a day and a half spent walking, it was just fine. Horses, after all, are big and stupid and eat a lot and they're always shitting and they smell awful and they spit at you and oh gods did his legs hurt.

He kept walking for a week straight until he finally hit a mountainous rise in terrain not far from the city of Trenycë, or from the coast. The night was spent watching the city burn under siege of Xem'zund's forces -- some other Death Lord with some other game to be played, and Caden didn't have it in him this time.

So he sat down on the darkened hillside, made a light glow from where there should've been an eraser on his pencil, took out his Grimoire and started writing the lifestory of a Wizard who had tried to kill him. Because he dared not eulogize Kholia Horren aloud, let alone in the presence of the Elves, and it had taken him this long just to get the vision of stabbing Kholia to death out of his dreams.

It was, in any respect, just a simple eulogy. A summary to the intricacies of asymmetry between a young Wizard and an old one, a good Wizard and a bad one.

I could've been like that.

END

Losses: The Bazaar Wand and Raiaeran Conscript Vest are no longer part of Caden's inventory. I'll remove them with my next character update.

Requested Gains: Nothing material. Caden now has a working knowledge of basic Necromancy. He will never be able to pull off a stunt like he did in this thread, short of direct Godly intervention or the mother of all plot devices. Incidentally, he only managed to pull it off in the first place because Raiaera is so bloody full of magic, and its forests even more so. Most of the forest will recover, but the next hundred years or so (bar the direct intervention of some other RPer fixing it) will probably see a great big randomly shaped hole of dead land smack in the middle of it.

At the moment, I can't think of anything else. D:

EDIT: And actually, just to clarify: The Necromancy he used was tied to his Geomancy skills. Divination of energies and such. The mass-death was more of a side-effect/tainting of the spellwork by Kholia's former Staff of Power.