Spellscribed: Ascension
Read Spellscribed: Ascension Online
Authors: Kristopher Cruz
Spellscribed: Ascension
By Kristopher Cruz
With thanks to Wendy Fink for giving encouragement when I was
feeling overwhelmed, and to my family for being there to support me when I make mistakes.
The fates are an indecipherable sort. Their plots and plays cross the destinies of all men, human or otherwise. To them, time and life are but threads they weave together. They hold the strings; they know when certain ones weave and when all strings are cut.
Of those strings, there are the ones who are considered heroes. They are beacons of light to those who live in darkness. Where their threads travel, others weave around them to form powerful cords which alter the flow of the destinies of hundreds if not thousands of lives. These great heroes are whispered about even in the years before their coming, to those whose minds and hearts are closely attuned to fate…
A shockwave of spell clashing on spell caught Ethan in the back and knocked him ten feet through the air. He hit the ground running and managed to maintain his footing. He heard the sound of fire roaring through the sky and ducked as he ran. Errant flames shot harmlessly a few feet over his head, but ducking caused him to stumble as his stride was off balance. His heel caught on something and he pitched headlong, tumbling across the grass as he tucked into a ball. He popped back onto his feet as he completed the flip, hardly losing stride.
He would have felt incredibly stylish and just as lucky, but he was so terrified of what was transpiring behind him he felt nothing but anxiety. His legs and arms pumped with fervor as he hurtled across the battlefield, trying to get as much distance between himself and the two mages as possible.
He wasn't in his military gear; he had been traveling and was wearing a simple white tunic, cloth pants and traveling boots. He had a long knife on his belt but that was the sum of his offensive equipment. His travel pack was already irrevocably lost in the initial exchange of spells. Compared to the force of two opposing mages, it was as useful as throwing a bucket of water into an erupting volcano.
All around him was carnage and death. The gently sloping hills of the western expanses of Ironsoul were littered with bodies of opposing forces roasting in the heat of the suns high overhead. The lords of the Veridian kingdom and the Amber kingdom were fighting over territory again. This time it was over possession of some five-hundred acres of fertile fields. Whoever owned the fields could use the crops to increase their yearly trade profits by a few percent.
Ethan never did understand how a few percents would be worth a skirmish between two occupational forces, but he did understand how poor his luck had to be to end up stuck between the two.
Sure
. Ethan thought as he took cover behind an overturned wheelbarrow. Take the next caravan off. Go home, meet the folks.
He winced as the air shrieked a split second before the earth shook with a boom whose shockwave blew splinters off the exposed side of the wheelbarrow. Ethan's eyes went wide as bits of his cover rained down several feet in front of him. Apparently fifty yards was not far enough.
He lurched to a forward scramble. Maybe you'll meet a nice girl and settle down. He considered. Ked, you've always got good advice, huh?
Ethan saw a ditch where excess runoff would drain if there had been rain. He dropped onto his side as he approached, sliding on the dirt to drop neatly into it. He realized it was more of a canal than a ditch when he landed. The thing was almost five feet across at the bottom and ten at the top. There were also four Amber kingdom men at arms crouched for cover in it.
Most of the soldiery throughout the kingdoms looked the same; it was easier to train military smiths to forge the same style of armor and weapons that could be easily interchanged among troops as they cycled in and out of service; which meant that the difference between most kingdoms’ troops were their colors.
For most satrapies, like Viridian and Amber, it was simple enough to dress them and trim their armor in colors corresponding to their names. The Amber troops stared wide eyed at Ethan as he brushed some of the dirt off his pants. He looked at the men and sighed, rolling his eyes.
The men looked him over nervously, but not seeing him in Viridian colors, dismissed his presence. This was not the first time that troops had taken shelter alongside civilians when mages got involved.
Ethan was pretty sure that neither side had intended on their troops needing the mages to act; traditionally a mage's job in military service was to counteract anything the enemy mages did, and throw out whatever they could sneak past the opponent. It typically meant that both sides' mages engaged in an extensive staring match where neither
did anything useful for fear that the other would prevent it.
Ethan peeked up over the lip of the canal, and his eyes lit up with the reflections of fire and glowing lights. Dimly, the arcane words of power echoed throughout the air as the two battled, their power bending back and forth as they tried to gain an advantage over the other. He couldn't begin to tell who was winning the fight.
He had just been walking by when the fighting broke out. The two mages had met to discuss some form of peace, and things had gone the way they naturally do when two people of supernatural willpower and ego refuse to compromise. The normal men fought it out around the two as they dueled, though from what he could see, more men had died from the backlash than from each other. As he watched, the sky around them began crackling with expended power.
Silently he cursed his bad luck as he sank back into the canal. Not able to climb out and escape from the area, he moved away from the soldiers in orange and ran along the canal bottom. Perhaps if he got far enough away he could clamber out and continue his walk without being reduced to ashes just because he was still within line of sight of them.
He slowed as the ground under his feet squished and his boots sank slightly into the dirt. The earth was moist and clumping, but was still not wet enough to be considered mud. He didn’t want to risk slipping and falling in the canal-
Six men in green trimmed armor and weapons slid into the canal behind him, and he nearly flung himself to the ground, spinning to spot the source of the sudden noise. He exchanged a sympathetic look with his fellows from the Viridian satrap, and continued on his way. He heard them moving towards the men from the Amber satrapy. He briefly wondered whether they would even care to fight anymore. At that point in a battle between wizards, the winner typically determined the course of the skirmish.
The air went suddenly still around him and all Ethan could hear was a high pitched whine growing louder. He threw himself forward, landing on his side and rolling with the impact. The maneuver saved his life; the ground and canal exploded upwards in a several yard stretch. Ethan stared up at the dirt, rock, wood, and four of the green armored men. Careening skyward, the debris stopped in midair. It hovered in place for only an instant before everything shot off in the direction of the mages.
He couldn't cover his ears to block out the resultant whump of impact, nor the screams of the men who had been suddenly snuffed out. If he covered his ears, he couldn't be picking himself off the ground, nor could he be listening for more signs that he needed to run faster.
He did move, though he was sure that all it did was make it hard to get caught in the fallout. Everywhere he looked he saw the backlash of the mages' spells colliding. Liquid fire sprayed over the canal, sticking thickly to the far wall like some kind of gel. Sections of the air would turn black, and when it faded, everything within looked drained of color.
The sounds and lights of the fight had grown faint, so he figured it was safe enough to get above dirt level. Pulling himself out, he was able to see that while he had gone three dozen yards
further away, the sound had diminished not because they were farther away, but rather because it was almost over.
The air was mostly clear of smoke and debris, and Ethan panted as he watched the conclusion. Of the two mages, the male remained standing. Dressed in robes trimmed in amber, the scorched sleeves and hem only added to his fierce demeanor. The air about him wavered with the coruscating power that rolled about them, never quite seen clearly by mundane eyes. The light of the suns gleamed off the man’s bald head. His scowl was made more terrifying by the burnt patches of mustache and beard.
His nearly vanquished opponent was on her knees, in viridian-dyed cloth. Her arms hung limply at her side and trickles of blood ran down her face. Long black hair hung in a mess around her face, and she seemed to be having trouble breathing. As he watched, she drew one last deep breath at the same time he raised an empty palm towards her.
Ethan heard the beginning of a screamed curse, and the world around the mages exploded outwards in a hail of light and dirt and rock. He stumbled back, feeling the force of the blast deep in his chest. Tumbling backwards, he rolled down the steep drop into the canal again as rocks the size of fists rained down around him.
Ethan groaned as he struggled to right himself. Despite the aches and pain he was feeling, he couldn’t help but chuckle. It was not the first time he had been blown on his ass by a mage. It was, however, the first time he’d been put five feet under by one, but here he was, still alive.
He tried to pull himself up, and found the hem of a burnt robe within arm’s reach as his head cleared the edge of the canal. He looked up, and saw the mage standing in front of him, his glower bracketed by the light of the suns. A wave of ice washed through him as he realized that the mage was glowering at him. How did the mage get to him so quickly?
He stared up at the mage, and the mage stared down at him. Ethan slowly swallowed; his throat was suddenly dry. The mage remained motionless for only a moment before stooping to reach down to him. He looked up to the mage, and recognized he was offering a hand up. Unsure what was going to happen, Ethan reached up and took his hand.
The mage was surprisingly strong, pulling Ethan to his feet again. Letting go of his hand, the mage brushed some of the dust and loose clumps of dirt off his shoulders in a way that strangely made him think of a father. He looked quizzically into the mage’s eyes and the sympathy in his gaze made Ethan remember that mages, while godlike, were still human.
The mage raised a finger and opened his mouth to speak at the same instant the crater behind him rumbled. The both of them paused, the mage turning at the waist to look while Ethan leaned to his side to look past him.
Out of the crater of what used to be an acre of clear farmland the female mage climbed out, her body strangely distorted and broken. The Amber mage took in a sharp breath as he turned to fully face her, his face becoming a grimace. Ethan wondered why he could feel so cold with the suns right over his head.
She was dead; she had to be. Her rib cage was crushed, her face was a mess of blood and the woman’s left arm hung dislocated from its shoulder. Though a noise came from her throat, she wasn’t sustaining it with breath.
“E...n...d...” the word hissed from her mangled lips only heard because of the unnatural quiet. Neither man had remembered to even breathe.
As they watched, her body began to restore itself slowly, her chest crackling as bones returned to the correct positions and her arm popped loudly as it reset itself. Though her eyes had been ruptured by the Amber mage’s finishing blow, pale green fires guttered in their bloody depths. The shattered rictus of a grin put itself back into place as her head straightened.
“This is not the end...” her susurrations became louder, more easily heard.
As she took more and more certain steps towards them, the resonant thrumming coming from her body was having even more effect on the world around her. As she passed the corpses of the slain soldiers from either side, the same pale green sickly fires began to flicker and flare through their wounds. Like disjointed, grisly marionettes, the dead rose in her passing.
Ethan’s panic instinct tried to claw its way out of his mind and run away without him. He was inclined to follow its direction, but for some reason his legs would just not work for him. If only he had his armor and weapons.
And a platoon of men. And a ballista. Maybe it would have made him feel better.
The Amber mage raised his hands. Ethan could swear he heard him utter a prayer. This must be one of the taboos that mages can commit. He thought grimly.
“Son of a..." Ethan exclaimed.
The Amber mage nodded.
"Litch."