[Beastborne: Voracious] (Book 5) Chapter 23

Author Note: Sorry about the delay, looks like I made it with 10min to spare (assuming you live on the west coast like me that is)! Last week I had a whole host of problems that I had to deal with, but now we're back on track. Hope you enjoy the chapter, it is probably one of my favorites in a long while.

Edit: Accidentally uploaded Voidknight's Ch23 instead of Beastborne, all fixed now!

Hirash screamed until his throat felt like it was ripping apart. How had he lost their guide so easily? The man was weak and yet he had slipped between two trees and vanished like it was nothing.

There was no trace, nothing for him to track. What sort of magic did these swamp peasants have?

He took a measured, deep breath to calm himself down. Think, Hirash, think. That noise was filled to the brim with magic, and he knew exactly where it had come from. There was no doubting it.

Dropping his glamour with a wave of his hands, Hirash began making the motions for another, very different spell. “I might not be able to follow you,” he snarled into the cold swamp air, “but I don’t need to if I know where you’ll be. I think it’s finally time I met this false Founder face-to-face.”

There were many forbidden spells that an Archmage was responsible for guarding. They were too dangerous for most mages. Even the highest order of mages were too clumsy, too excitable.

Any one of these spells could not only decimate an enemy, but the mage’s allies and everybody in a ten-block radius.

But Hirash wasn’t near any friends, no buildings that Rinbast found dear. He was free to wreak utter havoc. With his rage untethered, Hirash planned to do exactly that.

Summoning up vast reserves of mana from his various magical accessories, Hirash’s robes fluttered on unseen winds. The whole area of the Shiverglades around him warped and twisted.

He hadn’t dared to announce his presence before by attacking the barrier of the false Founder’s Manatree, but now there was no choice. Losing the guide was the last and final straw.

This was war.

***

Hal laughed, his heart full of joy and unburdened by the crippling pain of the [Kol’thil Bleed] that had afflicted him for so long. He was positively brimmingwith untold amounts of pent-up power.

He looked at the large swirling beacon of power that healed and soothed everything in a large radius, including his sundry wounds. The light would be visible for miles around. It extended far beyond the tips of the mountains and into the clear blue sky.

[Copper Kol’thil Sigil: Beacon]

Create a glowing orb of hope and light. All entities that feel its warmth, and can see the Beacon, slowly regenerate their health and feel a sense of hope. All healing potions and spells are increased in potency.

That was new, wasn’t it? He didn’t remember creating that ring of pure blue sky around Brightsong.

For so long, his powers had been locked up, crippled, or damaged in one way or another. With the help of a Kindred and… whatever Midarian was, he had righted one fatal flaw of Beastborne.

But fixing the [Kol’thil Bleed] was his own responsibility, and he could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

More than a dozen Copper Sigils flitted around in his mind’s eye, complicated designs and diagrams that begged him to use them. They were very unlike anything he knew about the Sigils so far.

His own Gold Sigils imposed his will upon the Weave of the world, the very basic magical network of reality that propped everything up.

But the Copper Sigils were something else entirely. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could feel the knowledge of the Balesian Mages trickling into his thoughts.

A Copper Kol’thil was considered the lowest of the Kol’thil, but that didn’t mean weak.

In fact, it was one of the most fundamental powers that seemed to directly alter both the physical and spiritual world around them in ways that even the higher order Kol’thils couldn’t.

His Gold Kol’thil could alter the way the Weave worked for a short period of time, but it struggled to change things permanently. Dominion required him to eventually let go of the creature.

They were powerful Sigils, of that he was sure, but they were fleeting. Meant to control and then release. He couldn’t change much of anything. Not really.

Even Mend simply reverted things to a different time, usually before they were damaged. Seal, Preserve, and Vault, the Sigils he had used to great effect against the Kinslayer’s Khaeros, were not without their limits.

There was a… simplicity to the way Copper Sigils worked.

Hal extended his hand toward a massive outcropping of stone. Copper lightning crawled up his arm as a new Sigil appeared, this one on the opposite hand as his Gold Kol’thil. It was so effortless that he found himself laughing like a kid on Christmas after seeing the tree brimming with presents.

Hal looked at it curiously. Interesting, two Kol’thils?

He had expected them to merge somehow, though he didn’t know why. He was fine with this. A surge of copper lightning flew out from his extended hand at the stone.

***

Dozens of faces turned to watch the burst of strange lightning lance out from Hal’s hand. Bardan tucked his thumbs into his belt and whistled appreciatively.

No few dwarves were paying keen attention to what the lad was doing. Where the lightning touched, the stone simply melted away as if it were wax and he was using a hot wire.

There were no tool marks. Everything was unsettlingly clean, as if the world had just decided that it wanted flat planes of rock all over the place.

At first, Bardan thought that the boy was going to destroy the rocks. It certainly seemed as if the lightning was unruly enough, but he soon saw that there was a keen amount of control over the copper threads. They curved and twisted as he controlled them.

Here and there, he made mistakes. Bardan, a lifelong Builder, understood how difficult it was to make anything plumb and level, but to carve away a house out of stone was… well, it was on a whole other level than what he had ever seen before.

Even dwarves deep in the Anvil, who were often considered the best of the best at this sort of thing, would have been in awe at what Hal managed in just a few minutes.

The lightning died and there stood a house, hollowed out of stone. There were windows, doors, steps, and out of the spare rock that he had hewn away with no more effort than flicking a finger, he had created flagstones, a porch, a stone awning, doors. A flat and mostly level path traced its way through the clearing and to Hal’s feet.

It was astonishing, to say the least. Who knew the lad had it in him?

Bardan caught Hal eyeing the trees with the same interest as he had looked at the stone. How fast could he put up these structures if they supplied him with the materials needed?

Was this the power of a Founder? To make a whole village overnight as if it were mere child’s play?

This was like watching a boy stack block for little dolls, only they were the dolls, and the blocks weighed several tons and could crush a man flat if handled wrong.

“Yank me beard,” Athagan whispered in awe. “Do ye ken what this means, da?”

“Aye, lad,” Bardan told him, putting a thick hand on his son’s broad shoulder. “But it’s the Founder’s choice how he uses his powers. Ye know it caused him no shortage of pain and woe. Ye must not ask him to use it unless he offers it, ye understand?”

He could see Athagan want to argue, but he swallowed whatever complaint he had and nodded his shaggy head.

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with me own durned eyes, and I still can’t believe what I seen!

Durvin, however, was watching the display with keen interest. Hal was breathing hard, sweat pouring off his face, but despite his condition, he didn’t look like he was about to take a bow for this little miracle.

“He ain’t done,” Bardan said, realizing that Hal was doing something more with that new mark of his.

“The durned fool don’t know the meaning o’ the word,” Durvin said with paternal pride.

“Then what—” Bardan began, but his voice cut off as a thunderclap echoed out from the clearing.

He blinked and rubbed his eyes.

Hal was gone.

He was there one moment, then suddenly he was not. The grass rippled toward them. Orrittam, the great golden dragon, lifted his massive head and looked to the south.

Without a word, the pair of dragons beat their massive wings and were airborne. They skimmed above the trees, heading south. The dwarves were hot on their heels.

***

“He has not the strength to do this!” Naitese called out to her father. “You saw how he used the Dragonfire to break himself and reforge the pieces! He should be unable to move for days or weeks! He should be dead.”

Orrittam beat his wings hard once or twice to gain a bit more altitude. He nodded to his daughter, who watched him with a piercing gaze. To think that the boy had grown so much when we weren’t looking. And who could have thought that you would have caredabout his wellbeing, daughter of mine?

Naitese flapped her snowy-white wings and went higher. She folded them to her sides and dive-bombed ahead after Hal.

How he had managed to skip from the center of Brightsong all the way to the south, Orrittam didn’t have any clue.

Teleportation magicks were remarkably finnicky, and even the best mages across the Shardrunes needed to account for wind, weather, the spin of the planet they were on, and countless other things.

You couldn’t just disappearand then reappear somewhere else. That sort of thing only happened in books.

You saw him with your own eyes, you old coot, he chided himself. Your Dragonfire unleashed something long held back. Perhaps the Shard itself wanted his powers diminished?

It was a sobering thought.

Dragons, as a rule, were in-tune with the Shard’s desires and wants. They were, after all, guests in each world they found themselves in and it would not do to ignore a host’s pleas.

Try as Orrittam might, he could not feel the Shard’s dismay. Its voice was faint, weak, and thready at the best of times, but he did not think it had done this to Hal apurpose.

Naitese streaked ahead, and Orrittam flapped his wings to surge ahead. She was young and full of fire, but Orrittam was no slouch either. He caught up to her without the fancy maneuvers in time to see what had caught her attention.

Both dragons wheeled higher and craned their long necks to look below.

There was a small figure of a man, copper lightning striking the southern sierras as they spread out into the gap and vanished into the Shiverglades.

Stone that had stood for thousands of years, that had endured the Flood and even the Cataclysm that precipitated it and had caused the Balesian Mages to fall into decay, were sheared and manipulated like hunks of clay.

The figure danced with the lightning, blasting it across the sharp teeth of the ranges and creating flat tops, walkways, and even crenellations.

Isn’t that just like him? Orrittam thought fondly. He learns a new trick, and he just goes off running full-tilt without ever a thought for what might happen next.

Far below, the ground quaked and trembled as the tiny dark figure surged at the center of a storm of coppery lightning. The jagged peaks of the mountains were wreathed in dust and debris, hiding what Hal was doing even from the keen sight of the dragons.

“What is he doing?” Naitese asked once they had climbed to a sufficient height for a good view. “I cannot see through that blasted smoke!”

Orrittam wanted to ask the same question, though for a very different reason. He knew what Hal was doing. The Founder had talked about it often enough, but the actual undertaking would have taken long enough that even with several clans of dwarves, they would have to pass the project down to their great grandchildren, and still, it wouldn’t be done.

Hal lacked the refinement of the dwarves, but even through the smoke, Orrittam could see the shadowy lines taking shape.

With a large grin, the dragon turned to his daughter high up in the sky and said, “He is making a place to call home.”