Return of the Sealed Archmagus Soft Launch- Chapter 1

This Chapter 1 is available to free as well as paid patreons.

It's a bit of a hobby project i've been working on. Later chapters past 20k words might be paid, but it'll be coming on royal road sooner or later.

Any feedback is welcome.

Enjoy!

1: 

“Knowledge is the greatest weapon in any magus’s arsenal. Any spell is only as valuable as the average magus’s understanding of it— obfuscate that knowledge and even a cantrip can serve as a worthy sneak attack, erase that knowledge and even an Initiate spell might be able to shatter a Master’s defenses, share it freely with others and it’s value plummets to become worth less than the parchment it is written on. Remember that, Maguses of the future one and all; The knowledge you possess is the truth that will lead you to the pinnacle, it is the shackles that bind you, it is the silent blade that will slip past your defenses when you least expect it. Treat it with the same respect you would life.” 

- Archmagus Miren ‘Frostflame’ Gast, Excerpt from “An Evocation Archmagus’ guide to Battle Ethics”, 8th Novus 365 P.D.  

By the time Nicholas Sybil Anvilsong had completed seventeen cycles of age, he had reached the pinnacle of magic. 

An Archmagus. 

A power that defied all boundaries those with noble blood like to mark the world of man with, a title that makes those with daemonblood quake at the mere mention of it, a phenomenon that could only be matched in lethality by the Daemon Harbringers. 

There was one widely agreed upon definition for a Magus to transcend the Grand Magus stage and be acknowledged as an Archmagus— the creation and ability to cast a single World Rank spell, to interfere and modify the behavior of the very primordial laws that regulate and govern the known world. 

Nicholas Sybil Anvilsong only knew a single World rank spell unlike his fellow Archmaguses and unlike them, his spell could not cause mountains to crumble, could not force the sea to boil until it turned into a molten river of lava, could not turn the vapor in the clouds into ice needles thinner than the visible eye could see and eliminate a city’s world of population in the blink of an eye. 

For Nicholas had not been the son of a Noble father, birthed to a lifetime supply of elixirs and the finest magical education coin could buy. Neither had Nicholas been born an abandoned orphan, thrust headfirst into the cruelty of the world and grown colder and more resentful to it.

He had not been born into a life that would thrust the weight of noble expectation upon him nor the rage and resentment of the downtrodden. Nicholas’ da had been a blacksmith up until his dying breath, married to his ma, a leatherworker. 

It was fair to say that he had not known true rage, true hatred or a true desire for vengeance up until the day he had lost them. When latent children raged, the world would stand unmoved by their fury. When a child born with atypical Enneadic Mana Roots without affinity for any element, not even the slightest, not even a fraction of a fraction, raged, the world answered. 

To have affinity with any element meant that when his Enneadic Mana Roots called out to the world, the Ambient Mana embedded in every plant, in every droplet of water, in every wisp of wind, in every grain of soil— answered. 

When his will instinctively seeped into the ambient mana and converted it into mana that was attuned to him, it followed the single directive the eight-year-old was capable of conveying. 

Go away. 

Crouched in the bottom shelf of an old pinewood dresser whose contents had been haphazardly stuffed into the upper half of the dresser, Nicholas had peeked through the slanted planks that made up the dresser’s double-doors that obfuscated his form so long as no one peered too closely. 

Through the gap between two thin planks of wood that offered him just the angle he needed, Nicholas had watched his world end. 

Sixty-two cycles had passed since the convergence event had heralded the invasion of Daemon-kind into Mirablis, their race’s quest for a mana-rich world unfortunately ending upon encountering Nicholas’ world. He had heard the stories, as any child in their border town had, of beast-like monsters that were taller than his da’s two-storey forge cum residence and wider than the convoy of oxen-carts that visited their town for trade once a month, heard of the demons ruthless and cunning, of their twisted magics that drew upon blood and corruption— but nothing in his short life until then had prepared him for his first encounter with one. 

“You leave her alone!” His da had screamed with such a visceral rage that Nicholas had felt his own heart palpitating in response, as he charged forward to close the distance between him and the… 

the…

The man with horns, Nicholas had thought. 

His skin was as pale as marble, as if not a touch of blood ran through his veins. His visage was one of alien perfection, of high-cheekbones, of an aquilline nose, of full lips, of a complexion untouched by the blemishes of time. Two horns that were as black as the darkest of nights rested on its crown, curling inwards a ram’s, striking an exceptionally eye-catching contrast with its luminous silver hair. 

And he had his pale, slender right hand wrapped around his ma’s neck, holding her aloft with the strength of a single arm and not appearing to be strained in the slightest. 

Nicholas had felt his heart skip a beat when his da had charged the monster clad in man’s flesh head-on, his right arm drawn back as he swung his faithful cross-peen hammer face first aiming to crumple the right side of the daemon’s ribcage inwards. 

In response, the daemon’s left hand, that had been resting upon the cruciform hilt of his daemon blade, an arming sword in this case, blurred forth with such speed that Nicholas’s senses only registered the aftermath. 

He numbly watched as he witnessed what should have been an impossible sight. The daemon had drawn its obsidian black blade in a reverse grip, a form already unsuited to battle, to not parry or force an evasion, but to perfectly catch the diminutive face of the hammer upon the flat of his blade. 

The sheer amount of calculation required to, in effect, use his sword as a shield upon which he had caught his da’s hammer blow, which given the fact that his da was a barrel-chested man with muscles as thick as a bull’s, was so uncanny and so unrealistic that it did more to reinforce the daemon’s alien, monstrous nature than its horns ever could. 

Then, as the daemon’s brilliant green eyes had peered into his da’s ordinary brown, he had spoken a single word in a rasping, breathy voice,

“Zewalt.” 

A word that he would later understand as the mana hymn for “Force.” 

What little Nicholas, the son of a blacksmith and a leatherworker, Nicholas had heard of the world of magic, of the Magus who could draw rain in the times of drought and call upon lightning to smite down the daemons that threatened all of the world of man, had come with descriptions of the implement they would shape their magic to. A wand forged from crystal, one story had claimed. A staff carved out from a thousand-ringed tree, another had declared. A gemstone necklace, a third had suggested. 

Even simple town folklore had both truth and warning embedded within them. 

For a Magus needed an implement to shape and control their mana and that was their identifier. 

A Daemon did not. 

The blood-red magic circle that came into being in the space before the daemon and his da had been cast instinctively, the pattern of two concentric circles harboring a ring of triangular constructs that chased the inner circle’s perimeter, with a single point of each triangle making contact with its circumference. 

Then the pattern shifted and all the two-dimensional triangles shifted to the center, overlaid upon each other to now grant itself a third-dimension. 

The invisible battering ram that had caught his da in the chest had struck with such violent intensity that his sturdy frame and heavy-set build could do nothing in face of the force that lifted him off his feet and sent him crashing through the far wall, the loud crack of splintering wood causing Nicholas to flinch, only to be followed by a heavy thump a few seconds later. 

Nicholas felt his cheeks grow warm, only realizing that tears were streaming down his cheeks even as he bit down on his teeth and rolled his tongue inwards to try and stop himself from breaking down into a sob. 

At only eight years of age, there was no man or woman with a beating heart that would blame him for believing that his da’s heavy-set, muscular form could endure the daemon’s evil magic, that his meaty arms that could handle hours upon hours of hammering upon solid metal to mould it into a shape of his own desire could shield him from the onslaught of the impact that had hurled him through the wooden wall. 

Yet, somehow, Nicholas knew with a burning certainty that his da was dead. 

Even then, he didn’t burst out of the dresser to confront the murderer. His da’s now final request had been for Nicholas to stay inside the dresser, ‘no matter what happens’— a command that his da had saw fit to repeat twice more after he had shut the dresser’s double doors upon him. 

As a child, Nicholas had always been earnest, always eagerly watching his da work in the forge on the days he instructed him to and sometimes even on the days he didn’t have to. He had helped his ma look for poor stitching on finished simple leather satchels that were always in demand, having gotten so good at it that his ma had started to completely rely upon him for checking. Disobedience didn’t come naturally to Nicholas, for the simple reason that his parents had shown him what love felt like and he liked its flavor. 

So he had continued to stay hidden in a decision that Nicholas would regret for the rest of life, as a muffled snap added one more sound to the sickening cacophony of battle cries and screams, the crackle of fire and the groan of wood, the clashes of metal on metal and the whistling of arrows.

It had all happened so fast, Nicholas could barely come to terms with how easily the daemon had snapped his ma’s neck, not letting anything but desperate gasps for air serve as her last words. 

Just like that, she lay on the floor with a crooked neck, her lifeless eyes turned outwards. Their eyes met and something in Nicolas snapped with that. 

The fear that had been threatening to overwhelm him up until moments ago ebbed, leaving his body entirely without any resistance. 

His gaze scanned the demon’s visage as he swept his gaze across his parent’s room. He searched its expression for any signs of glee or satisfaction, but he found none. There was no mirth playing upon it’s lips, no manical grin or triumphant expression, no pride or horror at the actions that he had committed. 

All Nicholas found was a dull apathy in its gaze, reinforcing the fact that the daemon was well and truly a monster incapable of understanding right from wrong, incapable of feeling or caring for anything upon a human wavelength, a creature that was diametrically opposed to the world of man just by its mere existence. 

Nicholas still managed to remain silent, for it was hard to hate a creature incapable of feeling. 

Yet, even that would not have been enough, as the cunning, cautious demon tried to utter another mana hymn. 

“Zerkenn-”

The daemon paused, sharply turning his gaze to the right and seeing something more than an unadorned wooden wall.

Then he turned around and left, as abruptly as he had arrived.

Zerkennen, he had meant to say. The mana hymn for detect. 

After taking everything from him, the Daemon had left— its expression not having changed from start to finish. As if it were another work day for it, as if the lives of his ma and da were so insignificant that their lives could be taken at the whims of a foul creature from the damned plains. 

Yet the cacophony of battle continued to sound out in his ears, the chaos being inflicted upon his town, his neighbours and his friends, on the nice baker lady that always gave him an extra muffin whenever he ordered anything, on his da’s supplier who always managed to procure a toy for Nicholas from actual cities. 

So when he felt the magic that was present in the air all around him, Nicholas didn’t question why it was that he could suddenly feel its presence. 

He commanded it instead, instinctively knowing that his command would not be ignored. 

He was not a magus. He could not shape magic into novel forms, making it adhere to the specific bounds of his requirements. He could not draw and store magic, for he simply did not know how to accomplish such a feat.

Nicholas didn’t know what he was, but that didn’t matter—- all that mattered was that he wanted the daemons to go away. 

For them to go so far away that they could never return. 

Thaumaturgy— A branch of magic that was considered more of a natural phenomenon than a discipline of it. Wild Magic, in layperson speak, was the domain of mana beasts that could draw mana from the environment and instinctively cast spells without the use of magic circles to define the parameters of their spells. 

Nicholas Sybil Armstrong used a Master-Rank Thaumaturgy Spell that had no name  besides the only thought in his mind while casting it, as he used his Enneadic Mana Roots to draw upon vast quantities of ambient mana, his body as both the vessel and the conduit to compress the now attuned mana to a density that matched that of his blood and then expel the heavy mana outwards with a single command embedded into it. 

The dresser he was concealed within exploded as the heavy mana began to leak through Nicholas’ body, the wooden splinters leaving him unharmed as he hovered a meter above the floor. 

He watched as the same daemon that had killed his parents returned to the second floor of his parent’s home. 

“Flamme!” He roared, his eyes wide with the first emotion they had displayed since their unfortunate encounter. 

So they do feel surprise, Nicholas recalled thinking. 

He watched as an incandescent reddish-orange magic circle took form, a smattering of arrow tips forming in the centre that felt sluggish as they tried to rearrange themselves into the correct form. 

Then the magic circle shattered, disrupted by the heavy mana permeating the room and the daemon’s jaw dropped wide open in shock. 

He reached for his blade and lunged at Nicholas. 

Had the daemon done so from the start, he would have died. 

I wonder if they feel pain, Nicholas thought, as the world turned azure.