The Fusionist Book 5 -- Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Standing in front of the red-robed Pyromancer who had absolutely no idea who he was, Larek glanced at Nedira. “He has no memory of me, remember? It was taken away by that Gergasi—”

“Gergasi! What do you know about those blasted giants? And what do they have to do with me?” Kimble asked, a rising anger in his voice.

“Listen, this might be hard to believe, but you used to know Larek was even assigned to be one of his bodyguards by Dean Lorraine. Do you remember the Skirmish back at Copperleaf Academy? He was the one who helped us win with the help of his Fusions—”

She wasn’t able to finish before Kimble started to shake his head, a keening starting low in his chest. Larek backed up and dragged Nedira with him as the Pyromancer began to shake, and he looked around to see that the half-dozen assistants with paperwork in their hands had stopped and were staring slack-jawed at the Faction Commander. “Run! Get out of here!” he shouted at them. At first, they didn’t move; but when the keening became louder, they panicked and fled toward the stairs, running for everything they were worth.

“Kimble. It’s alright. You’re going to be alright. It’s just the memory block that Chinli put on you,” Larek said to his former bodyguard as soon as the others had left. “Let me see if I can help get rid of it—”

“NO! STAY AWAY!” Kimble shouted, his focus suddenly on the Fusionist. Before he could do anything else, a massive Fireball that stretched from floor to ceiling appeared in front of the Faction Commander. Larek had a moment to gulp in shock before it was launched directly at him, and all he had a chance to do was push Nedira out of the way before it slammed right into him. He felt his Automatic Ice Repulsion Field activate and blocked it for all of a split-second, but there was so much strength behind the Fireball spell that it broke through it and kept going.

Fortunately, before Larek could go up in flames, the split-second delay was all he needed to dive mostly out of the way, but the massive ball of fire hit his work boots and practically melt off his feet, with his overly-long pant legs suffering from serious scorching and even ignition as the heat even pushed through their Multi-Resistance Fusion. He felt his feet get burned pretty badly, but the skin held up fairly well considering the attack.

As he landed on the floor, he rolled a few times to put out the flames on his pant legs. Jumping up as soon as they were out, he looked to make sure Nedira was fine – she was, though she appeared frightened at that sudden attack (but who wouldn’t be) – before turning back to Kimble. The Pyromancer was screaming by this point, his robe aflame apparently from the inside, as the Faction Commander seemed to be burning alive.

I can’t let that happen.

Dropping his Void Pocket sack, which thankfully hadn’t suffered any damage from the Fireball spell, he rushed over to his former bodyguard. Without any other option, especially as the Pyromancer’s skin started to melt off of his flesh, he reached out and slammed his fist into the side of the man’s head through the flames, burning himself in the process, but he didn’t care. When that didn’t work, he hit the man a little bit harder, ensuring that he didn’t go overboard, and the next smash against Kimble’s temple was enough to knock him out.

The Faction Commander started to collapse to the ground, the flames that were being generated by his body snuffing out, but Larek caught him before he landed. Patting the rest of the flames on his robe out, the Fusionist lifted the man up and headed toward what appeared to be a large cubicle space that practically shouted, “Faction Commander’s Office.” Off to his left he saw the giant hole in the wooden wall that had been caused by an enormous Fireball going through it, but he ignored it since it didn’t seem to be burning any more.

Inside, he gently placed the badly burned Pyromancer on a leather couch he found there, Nedira following after. Without saying a word, she brought his Void Pocket sack with her and he reached inside, using the proper mental phrase to pull out a large box filled with necklaces and medallions that all had Graduated Parahealing Fusions on them. Taking one and activating it, he knelt down at Kimble’s side and placed it on his old friend’s bare chest where the fire had burned through his robe, before putting the box back inside the sack.

As the Fusion began to work, repairing the life-threatening burns that had been done to him, Larek looked up at Nedira. “I don’t know exactly what that was, but I can only guess that it was from the Dominion magic that Chinli used on him. I’m going to try and do something about it, otherwise this might happen again when he wakes up.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure. Probably not. But I can’t leave him like this.”

She only took a few seconds before she nodded. “Then you better hurry, because my guess is we only have a minute or so before his sudden lightshow brings curious and angry Faction members here.”

Without bothering to respond, he reached out with his hands and placed them around the man’s head, which was still in the process of healing. The damage was so extensive that it was going to take a little while for it to be complete, but he ignored the feeling of the flesh rebuilding underneath his fingers as he closed his eyes and sent whatever senses he had inside of his former bodyguard.

Thankfully, finding the problem was easy and he located it almost immediately. A resonance with the Dominion magic used on the Pyromancer, reminding him of Chinli, was plainly visible throughout his mind. The issue he now had was how to get rid of it, because it was a lot more complex than he was expecting. Instead of something simple like a blanket laid over Kimble’s cloud-like mind, it looked more like a lightning bolt made of crystal had branched and wormed its way through nearly every facet of his memories, skewering them so that they no longer worked. Quickly assessing the situation, he realized that there wasn’t a single part of the Pyromancer’s mind that wasn’t influenced by Dominion magic in some way or another.

There was also one particular section of the cloud that throbbed with some sort of damage, and the crystalized lightning bolt of Dominion magic appeared to have shattered in just that section inside of his mind.  He intuitively realized that this was likely some sort of failsafe that had triggered upon being reminded of Larek’s existence, and the Fusionist cursed at how ruthless the Gergasi were to have included something like this on the off-chance that Larek ever saw them again.

If I ever see Chinli again, I’m going to kill her. He didn’t feel that way just because of what was done to Kimble, but because he knew that the same thing had likely been done to Nedira; fortunately, it didn’t seem to take completely, and her harrowing experience with the Umbral Demons had eliminated what Chinli had done to her. At the same time, it also took away many of her other memories, and now that he could see exactly what had been done for himself, he knew she was lucky to even remember her name when that magic was forcibly removed by the shadowy Demons.

But now he had to find a way to do essentially the same thing, but while still maintaining all of Kimble’s memories. He immediately attempted to use his own Dominion magic to remove Chinli’s work, but the foreign influence was too strong; as soon as he pushed against it, it pushed back 100 times as strong, rebuffing his efforts as if he was a small child. In some ways, he supposed that was exactly what he was when it came to his fledgling use of Dominion magic, but hoped that he would at least have some sort of skill with it.

Unfortunately, his ability to wield Dominion magic was relatively poor, and while he’d gotten better at it over time, it certainly wasn’t his strongest asset. It was more “subtly influencing” than the “overbearing hammer blows” of the Gergasi; each had their effectiveness, of course, but in this case overwhelming might was an effective counter to his own subtle approach and meager strength.

Larek wasn’t an expert on Dominion magic, obviously, but he could be considered an expert in something else: Fusions and Pattern Cohesion. How could he use what he was good at to help his friend break free from the Gergasi’s memory-suppressing effects – all while simultaneously maintaining the Pyromancer’s mind?

With a brief thought, the Fusionist quickly attempted to use his Pattern Cohesion similarly to what he’d done with the Umbral Demons, slicing through the crystalized lightning bolts of Dominion magic… only for them to pass through as if there was nothing there. In essence, the foreign influence wasn’t something physical or even metaphysical that needed to be removed; the Demons didn’t exactly have a physical presence when they attempted to take over his body, but were more of a metaphysical force that tried to subvert his individual pattern. It was this connection that allowed him to hurt and kill them with his Pattern Cohesion, but Dominion magic was something else entirely.

After his failure to remove the memory-suppressing influence using his own Dominion magic and his Pattern Cohesion, there weren’t a lot of options for Larek. The only other thing he had any experience and expertise in was Fusions, but how was that supposed to help?

As he heard shouted voices in his periphery, which he immediately blocked out so that he could concentrate, the Fusionist had an epiphany. What was a Fusion other than an Effect that was enhanced by a formation and an aided by his Pattern Cohesion? In the past, all of his Fusions had been based on spells or learned formations, but he’d just recently proved that he could take a concept or an idea that he had a little knowledge of and create a Fusion that was based around that concept. He hadn’t had any spells that used the void, after all, but his knowledge of it was enough to create his Void Pocket Fusion.

So why couldn’t he use his knowledge of Dominion magic to do the same?

Larek took that idea and ran with it. Without any handy materials to use for his new Fusion, he instead turned to his friend and started to design something that would utilize the man’s skin to absorb the new formation. Thankfully, the Pyromancer’s earlier self-immolation had burnt off all his hair, leaving the man completely bald and presenting the Fusionist with a blank template to do his work.

His design was very simple, with but a few Inputs, Variables, and Effects. The first Effect was a variation of the one he used for mental phrasing, but this one simply detected any uses of Dominion magic influencing the target of the Fusion, which in this case was Kimble; upon detection, the Effect would then activate the main Effect of the Fusion, which was an inversion of the Dominion magic concept. This was probably the hardest Effect to fully establish in the formation, because it was basically the opposite of the ability he shared with the Gergasi. As soon as he had a sturdy idea of freedom, clarity, and independence, he inserted it into one of the Effect sections of the formation and felt it click into place.

He quickly added in an Input that would detect outside mental influence as well as one for internal and existing influence, as well as Variables that would filter out anything that wasn’t Dominion magic. For a Magnitude, he hurriedly set it at 5 and hoped that it was enough to take care of the problem already inside of Kimble’s mind, and then had a Reactive Activation Method connected to everything. He almost finalized it before he realized he needed some way to actually neutralize any existing influence, because what he had now would theoretically prevent anything new from happening, but not affect anything that was already there. The patchwork insertion of the void concept was probably a bit dangerous, but he could feel that he was running out of time; not only was there a commotion that he could sense Nedira was dealing with, but the Faction Commander was starting to stir and would likely wake up at any point.

Here goes nothing.

He only checked over everything once instead of triple-checking to ensure he had constructed everything correctly, but he had confidence enough in his Fusion-creation ability that he wasn’t too worried. The overall Fusion formation wasn’t that large for what it was intending to do, after all, so the biggest challenge was keeping all the concepts straight in his mind as he began to funnel Mana into the Mana Cost section of the brand-new formation.

In less than a minute, which surprised him because it didn’t take as much Mana as he thought it would, he felt that the Fusion had completely filled and was now ready for completion. With a quick adjustment for the correct placement, Larek settled the formation onto Kimble’s head, letting the Pattern Cohesion he had invested into the Fusion sink deep into the skin and flesh, disappearing to any casual scrutiny; the Fusionist and most Mages could probably see that it was there, buried just under the surface of the skin like a tattoo, but it wasn’t too obvious.

It *clicked* into place just as Kimble’s eyes snapped open and his mouth gaped as if he was about to scream again, but something stopped him from releasing the rage and prevented the flames from covering his body once again. There was silence all around him as Larek stared at his friend, before the Faction Commander’s eyes rolled back into his head and his entire body started to twitch uncontrollably. Larek could see the Fusion at work, sucking in ambient Mana, but whether it was actually performing the job it was designed to do was something he could tell for sure without looking a little closer.

Unfortunately, it was at that point that two pairs of strong arms wrapped around his own from behind and dragged him backwards, away from his friend. He felt that he could easily break free if he wanted to, especially with his current Strength stat, but a glance around saw that Nedira was in the same state and he didn’t want her to suffer if he decided to break out. He barely had a chance to look at who had him restrained other than to determine that they were Martials, but the shouting and accusations of him harming the Faction Commander overwhelmed his attention.

Other than worry over Nedira’s safety, there was one thing that prevented him from breaking free and knocking everyone out in order to escape: it was that his Automatic Ice Repulsion Field hadn’t automatically operated, meaning that they weren’t intentionally trying to hurt him by restraining him as they were. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t try in the future, but he felt fairly confident that they weren’t going to try and kill him right away; instead, he figured they were waiting just the same as he was for proof.

For himself, he was waiting to see proof that his Fusion worked.

For the Martials and Mages of the Defend Faction standing around him, they were waiting to see proof of guilt.

Only time would tell one way or the other.