BT IV - Chapter 26

Micah twisted his hands together impatiently.  Servants were bringing in another stack of reagents, piling crystal rods and candles rendered from the tallow of powerful monsters onto a nearby table.  At his feet, 20 chunks of glass, all pulled from the desert sand after his fight with the greater daemon, sat at the center of a ritual circle.  The glass was covered in runes, the first steps toward the enchantments that Micah sought to imbue into the objects.

Gwen stood just inside the door, her back ramrod straight as the Empress paced back and forth, hands locked together as she mumbled to herself.  The ruler wasn’t even looking at Micah or the ritual circle surrounding him, instead her eyes were locked on her feet as she fretted incessantly.

“You are sure this will work?”  She barked out of nowhere.  “We have never heard of another spellcaster capable of turning back time and removing years from a blessed.  It seems like the sort of thing that would have become news if anyone were capable of it.”

“I’ve done it hundreds of times,” Micah replied, walking over to one of the circles to adjust the positioning of a rare piece of wood that was being used as a reagent.  “Just never in this timeline.  Half the reason I never brought it up was that I spent 5 years in Pereston enslaved and doing nothing but rejuvenation treatments for their elites.”

“But have you ever performed the ritual on someone over level 80?”  The Empress asked, a hint of nerves in her voice.  “Our mother is… an irritable person.  If you have made promises that you are unable to follow through on, I doubt she will care about the services you have rendered to our nation.  She is liable to kill you on the spot.”

“I doubt she could manage it.”  Micah was barely paying attention to the anxious monarch, instead focusing most of his attention on the lines and runes of the ritual circle.  There were no major mistakes, that much was clear, but given the scope of the rituals he wanted to perform, even minor errors would lead to losses in temporal energy.  He wouldn’t have a problem with enchanting the glass rods, but anything after that was up in the air.

Of course, what constituted ‘anything after that’ was an open question.  Trevor’s advice still hung heavy in his head.  He honestly didn’t know whether he could trust himself or Dakkora.  It seemed like an easy question to answer on first pass, but the more he thought about it, the more indecisive Micah became.  After all, the best of intentions hardly made up for the number of times he had made major, life ruining mistakes.

This time, there weren’t any second chances.  If unleashing Dakkora destroyed him, there wouldn’t be any time magic based mulligans.  His friends and family would have to live with his mistake.

He shook his head, trying to clear the intrusive thoughts out of it.  Simply staring at the ritual circle wouldn’t reveal any more mistakes.  He’d drawn the runes and placed the ingredients carefully.  If he had erred, it would have been in the calculations to design and place the circle’s components.  Right now he was just pensive, fretting in indecision over an impossible choice and trying to externalize his anxiety.

“You do know that I’m only going to perform this ritual once per person, right?”  Micah asked, glancing up to look at the Empress.  “I’ll return you, your mother, and your two uncles to their twenties, and that’s it.  I’m a little touchy about the possibility of being tied down and turned into nothing more than the imperial youth doctor.”

“Not that we’ll have time,” he continued.  “I have no idea what Pereston’s main army looks like right now, but given how quickly their infiltrators are working inside Sandrovok, it would be foolish of us to not launch an attack within the month, regardless of whether our forces are completely ready.”

“No promises boy,” a withered voice called out from the hallway.  Micah forced a smile onto his face as an elderly woman in a wheelchair was pushed into the room by a huge and overly muscular attendant.  “If you can do what you say you can, it would be a shame to just let you go.”

Coils of energy, visible only to Micah, sprang up around the little old lady and lashed out at him, looping themselves around his body before tightening.

He glanced at the Empress, raising a single eyebrow as the magic pressed in on him.  It was a blessing.  The same blessing that she had tried to use on him twice, albeit with a slightly different feel to it. Where Gwen's mother’s intrusion had been forceful and direct, her grandmother’s blessing felt more sinister and calculating, like it was waiting for him to become complacent before it would strike.

“Sometimes that’s just the way of the world,” he replied philosophically, reaching out with his mind to shred the mana surrounding him.  She jerked back in her wheelchair, eyes narrowing as she stared at Micah.

“After all,” he continued.  “Karell is a fascinating place.  So long as you know what to look for, you’ll find something to surprise you every day.”

“Who are you?” The Empress’ mother hissed, mana bubbling around her withered body into a tsunami of power that flooded across the room toward Micah.  Both Gwen and her mother staggered back a pace, gasping for breath as they tried to deal with the outpouring of magic from the old woman.  “You talk like a chosen, but we can’t feel that kind of power coming off of you, instead it’s something… different.”

Micah shot her a tight smile, waving his hand as he created a bubble around himself free from the crone’s pressure.  That was the power of 4 specializations and a rare class.  He probably had a larger mana pool than the old woman, but Micah kept the energy leaking from his body under tight control.  After all, it didn’t really cause any damage, and it was only useful in cowing and intimidating other humans, not something he was terribly interested in.”

“I’m just a person that wanted to live out a quiet retirement in Sandrovok,” Micah replied.  “I don’t really have any urge to press or jockey with the royal family for power.  Hells, you wouldn’t even know that I could make people younger if it wasn’t necessary to defend the country.”

The old woman glared at him, but Micah ignored her.  She looked like she wanted to dissect him with her eyes in order to figure out how he worked, but Micah had said everything he was going to on the topic.

“Empress,” he continued, nodding slightly in the monarch’s direction, “is the army ready to go after the rituals are done?  The weapons we will make here need to be in the hands of your strongest blessed, and-”

“And we need to move immediately,” she finished for him.  “Pretty much everyone who isn’t guarding the palace is mustering right now.  We will be ready to move within 3 days.  I’ve reviewed the report from Baron Harris, and I tend to agree with both of your conclusions.  We aren’t ready for conflict, but the more we wait, the stronger Pereston becomes.  One quick last push before attacking while they’re off balance is the best plan.  Not a good plan mind you, just the best option we have available.”

One last glance around the ritual circle confirmed that everything was in place.  Barring another 3 hours of fruitlessly going over his notes on the phase of the moon, altitude and barometric pressure at the time of the ritual, there was nothing else to do but start the chant.

The old woman’s attendant wheeled her into the center of the circle.  The entire time she glared at him, not having given up her intense expression from when he had first refused to answer her questions about himself.

“Be ready to switch her out,” Micah said to the attendant, taking his position beside the Empress’ mother.  “The ritual circle will be lit by green flame.  The minute it flashes red, I need another subject.  I’ll be in an almost dream state while I finish the casting so I won’t be able to call out cues, but I hope it’s clear that we’re tinkering with fell powers here.  Bad things happen if the spell carries on for too long without a focus.  I’ve rehearsed the ritual for four people, no more or less.  If we try and change that midstream, well.  I’ve torn a couple holes in reality in the last couple of months.  I doubt that my actions have thrilled the gods, but I’d like to avoid doing it again, especially with this many members of the royal family around.”

“Get on with it boy,” she hissed up at him.  “We aren’t so fragile that a couple of daemons can worry us.  Keep that in mind when you cast your spell too.  I’m a married woman.  Hands to yourself unless you want to lose one of them.”

Micah bit back a reply.  He had a feeling he could go on at it for hours with the old woman, and there were more pressing matters at hand.

He extended both of his arms outward, holding them parallel to the ground for a second before closing his eyes.  The first words of the ritual slipped from his tongue, slick and wriggling like a ball full of eels as they fought against the rules of reality.

Mana began to tingle inside Micah as he made a connection to the woman in the wheelchair next to him.  Temporal energy thrummed in her body.  Potions and magic had kept her alive for almost 120 years, and most of that time had been spent ruling one of the three or four largest nations on Karell.  Decades of thought and focus had coalesced on the wrinkled old woman until she was far more than a battery of energy.

It was like she was an inferno.  With his eyes closed, Micah could barely see anything around her beyond the all consuming corona of energy that pulsed out with every breath before being absorbed back into the pores of her skin.  Her tiny body easily contained as much energy as four or five luocas, more than he had ever seen in a human being.

He went down to one knee, gently putting his hand on the cranky royal’s wrist while planting the other, fingers splayed, in the center of the circle.

The cadence of the ritual increased.  The sounds escaping Micah’s throat became harder, more angular.  Short guttural shouts and grunts full of consonants that didn’t resemble any living language ignited the circle.

Green flames shot up around the two of them, and Micah opened his mind to the temporal energy, gripping onto the latent power stored in the old woman’s body and using the altered reality of the ritual to channel it into the circle beneath his hand.

Lines of green light expanded in a webwork on the floor, forming complex runes as they spread outward, enmeshing the rows of glass rods.  As one, the cylinders of daemon forged glass thrummed with energy, twenty sub-rituals activating at once.

A wave of exhaustion washed over Micah as he struggled to contain the torrent of temporal energy gushing out of the old woman.  While none of the power charging the ritual and enchantments came from him, serving as a conduit for the magic was taxing.  Every fiber of Micah’s being was suffused with raw temporal energy as it began to overload the ritual, pouring into him faster than it could be converted and transferred back into the lumps of glass at his feet.

Distantly, through the eldritch intonations and off key buzzing noises that were emanating from his aching throat, Micah heard the Empress’ mother shifting next to him.  He didn’t know if the ritual was causing her pain, or if she was simply trying to get a better look at his actions, but he didn’t have the mental capacity to check.

The first ritual reached its crescendo, and Micah felt his blood turn to lava.  However much temporal energy he had expected the wheelchair bound crone, she had at least doubled it.  His entire body screamed in distress, and the iron taste of blood crept into his mouth.  Without checking, Micah knew that his hit points were ticking rapidly downward as the rigors of the casting tore at his body like a feral jackal.

He continued.

Theoretically, Micah could stop the ritual halfway through, but he had no way of knowing for sure what would happen, and none of his guesses were particularly pleasant.  Rituals were carefully regimented affairs.  Magic on Karell was tame.  It felt like the creations that Dakkora had made in their soulspace, an artificial working of will forced upon the natural world.  They followed discrete rules put into place by their creators.  Protections put in place by the gods to keep an errant sorcerer from cracking reality apart with a couple misplaced words or a careless substitution of components.

Ritual magic was something deeper, darker but more rewarding.  It opened doors that the average person didn’t even know existed while at the same time exposing them to dangers that were beyond their understanding.  Most people didn’t even know to fear their respiratory system spontaneously filling itself with ash or the ground beneath them to turn into the hungry maw of a creature that shouldn’t exist in mundane reality.

Exciting?  That might be a better word for it.

Days had gone into researching, planning and rehearsing the ritual.  One slip of the tongue could be enough to breach the careful web of magic containing the titanic forces at work.  With something as drastic as stopping a casting halfway through?  Micah would be lucky if the energy he was channeling didn’t hollow him out before breaching reality and summoning a swarm of daemons.

In front of him, the glass rods cracked along carefully etched fault lines as green fire sank into their depths. Hundreds of hours of hard work and careful crafting bore fruit, and one after another weapons covered in glowing glyphs and sigils began to take shape.  Glass turned to dust that whipped itself into a sparkling vortex that battered Micah’s face and stung his lips.

Micah closed both of his hands into fists, body shaking like a leaf in a hurricane as mystical wind and fire buffeted him.  There wasn’t any more energy coming from the elderly royal woman beside him, but that didn’t mean he was out of the woods.  Micah could feel his heart stutter, struggling to pump the molten ichor that clogged his veins as he sought to dispose of the power still coursing through him.

He bit back a grunt, not wanting to interrupt the ritual with an aberrant noise as he pushed more of the magic out of himself and into the glass rods.  Even without his eyes open, he could feel the weapons sharpening under the whetstone of the enchantment, filling with power until each and every one of them was as strong as the swords and axes of myth.

There was still too much temporal energy.

He’d miscalculated.  Micah knew that now.  It was hard not to notice through the pain in his chest and the quick, sharp breaths  that were laden with the heavy iron flavor of blood.

His hit points were below half, more than enough to kill a dozen normal blessed.  As much as he wanted to cast Augmented Mending or Regeneration, Micah held himself back.  Even if he didn’t need to use words or hand motions for Augmented Mending, altering the flow of mana within his own body would be deadly at this stage.

It was possible that he could simply absorb the temporal energy coursing through his veins.  That he could take on some measure of the weight that had pressed down on the old Empress’ shoulders for decades.

But.

He barely thought the word.  But.  It hung heavy in his mind, outlined in the cool green fire that and typhoon of wind that surrounded him.

There was another option.  The door that Dakkora had left open for him called out invitingly.  He could feel his blessing and soul, a pair of bottomless wells set deep in his chest.  All he needed to do was pour energy into them.  She’d begin unlocking the seals from inside while he went to work on the gods’ bindings.

Micah hadn’t made up his mind yet, but Trevor’s words came back to him.  Did he trust Dakorra?  She was part of him, he knew that, but the real question was, did he trust himself?

She claimed that her goal was to unify the two of them, to blur their rough edges and make them both whole, but Micah had his reservations.  Not only was Karin one of history’s greatest villains, but he saw his own recklessness in her.  Even if she meant well, leaping into the unknown and then trying to fix any mistakes later would be incredibly apt.  He’d already tried that once and almost destroyed himself and all of those around him.

He bit back a cough, swallowing the throat spasm like it was a lump of red hot coals.  It burned in his throat, yet one more pain to accompany the agony of the temporal energy ravaging his body.  Micah dug his nails into his palm, trying to use the familiar sensation to center himself.

It was a struggle to clear his head, but Micah needed to try.  The risks of going through with Dakorra’s proposal were endless.  She could take over his body and use him as a meat puppet, the ritual could fail and he could turn into nothing more than a smoking puddle of bubbling flesh, or, and he struggled to even confront the prospect, it could succeed too well.  What would happen then when he merged with his past selves?  Would he still be Micah Silver, or would he become something else?  Some sort of amalgam that wore his face and memories like a mask but wasn’t him on some hard to describe level.

Thoughts and concerns whirred past, almost too quickly for Micah to track through the pain.  Gods, what if it did all work out only for him to erase himself?  Would that be a bad thing?  Would that be too great a sacrifice for him to make in order to save the world?

He wanted to shake his head.  To run in circles screaming as he tried to let the anger and pain out.  Hells, more than anything he just wanted to reach up and itch the side of his nose, but the ritual wouldn’t allow it.

Micah needed to stay perfectly still until he vented the temporal energy, and each second it lingered in his system, it tore at his fragile internal organs.  If he wasn’t careful his indecision would literally kill him.

There were so many things that could go wrong with either decision.  Micah couldn’t even process the potential failure points on either side.  All he knew for sure was that his body had reached its limit.  He needed to complete the spell, and he needed to complete it now.

So he let go.

Reaching deep down, he directed the temporal energy at the seals hemming in his soul.  His Arcana skill had developed to the point where it barely took a twinge of mental energy to reform the throbbing sphere of power into a chisel and jam it into the glyphs and chains that constrained his blessing.

Next to him, Micah heard the Empress’ mother yelp in surprise, but it was alien.  Like it was happening to someone else in a memory. The sound just didn’t feel real to him.

Somewhere, he thought he saw Dakkora’s mouth curve into a smile.  Then everything faded to black.