tobiasbegley

The Archmage: Chapter Thirty-Four

It took a while to wrangle the class back into working on artifacts, but once we did, I passed out aura crystals to each of them. They were the smallest on the market, low quality, and not particularly expensive, but I’d had to purchase them out of pocket. Still, I wanted to get my students used to wielding artifacts and foci both, as that would give the best possible grounding in enchantment that I could give them. 

Once everyone had their stone, I headed to the board. 

The Archmage: Chapter Thirty-Three

After Seth appeared outside of the room, Osheen, Oracle, Bridgette, Tara, and I headed back in to clean up, making ample use of solvent potions to scrub away at the extra chalked in lines, dried bits of blood, and soot from burned components. Once we were finally finished, it was nearly midnight, and Osheen and I collapsed into bed. 

That Sunday, I looked over the three spells that Oberon had given me, as well as the crystal. That had been waiting for me on the dining room table ba...

The Archmage: Chapter Thirty-Two

“This is what you think I need, just to clarify,” I said.

“Correct,” Oberon inclined his head. “I want you as a companion. I know you’re married, but such things are trivial. Three nights of companionship as such things are measured here in the Meeting Place, and then you’ll be able to go your own way.” 

“Why, so that you can take my power like you do with everyone else?” I asked. “I’ve a better idea.” 

Oberon’s eyes flashed, and thunder...

The Twin Trials: Chapter Fifty-Six

I rushed over to the tub to see Kene shifting and looking around. Siobhan shot to her feet and let out a yip, nosing at Kene’s hand.

“Where’m’I?” they asked. 

“We’re on the boat home,” I said. “You’re currently in Dusk, your grandmother set up some sort of powerful healing bath.” 

“Oh,” they said, then blinked and looked at me. “Oh, it worked. I was…” 

They shook their head, while scratching behind Siobhan’s ears with on...

Witch won?

For clarity. As the chapter says, both are a risk:

"It was a risk either way, I just had to figure out which risks I was willing to accept."

I use "risk attack" to mean "possible attack", not indicate higher risk.

The Twin Trials: Chapter Fifty-Five

When the witch reformed, she muttered something about holidays being made of eggs, butter, lemon, and pepper. I thought she meant hollandaise at first, but she was very stubborn and insisted that a beach vacation should absolutely be made of those ingredients. 

I wasn’t sure what to make of it, honestly. I thought the old witch was probably suffering a drawback from her immortality, but I honestly couldn’t tell. She did attempt to teethe on my arm, as if she were a toddler, but...

The Twin Trials: Chapter Fifty-Four

If she was coming after me, that meant she wasn’t coming after anyone else. 

And I couldn’t let her go. 

She was a cold contract killer. She needed a mentalist, because there was clearly a problem here. I hoped she could get it – mentallists were the largest pillar of Mossford’s prison system, unlike in somewhere like Nightflock, so I thought she would, but with the fact she was a murderer… it was hard to know.

I stepped forward, prepared to fight. I knew...

Orykson vs Draven Deathmatch

Draven understood power. At least, he thought he did, until the world around him warped, and he appeared in a stone cell. 

He didn’t panic, but he was… Concerned.

Had someone abducted him from within his wards? He knew there were powers strong enough for such an act, but why the stone room? 

He activated a boon he had received from a demon, one he didn’t think any other mortal or quasi-mortal alive today had: the planar map. 

Astral magic of the hi...

The Archmage: Chapter Thirty-One

Oberon was… filled with color. 

His hair was a rainbow of colors, but not constrained to the rainbow. Within red alone there were a thousand different shades, within the blue there were ten times as many. And there were so many colors too, beyond the rainbow, beyond the shades, there were colors that humanity was not meant to see, colors that were not real at all, and more. 

And his eyes? His eyes were a shifting and swirling vortex of pure blackness that sucked in all...

The Archmage: Chapter Thirty

Leaving to return to school, to the enchantments, the summoning of Oberon, and the work of saving Paerús felt… anticlimactic… after my proposal. 

I supposed that it said something about my life and priorities that proposing to someone that I was – in some ways – already married to was more tense and worrying than contacting someone who was powerful enough to kill me without much effort.

Honestly, though, that was far more in my element. I’d been working with things...

The Archmage: Chapter Twenty-Nine

Osheen and I left Yesgol to return to the capitol, and spent the season with Aldvarri, spending a lovely winter season together. On the first day of the solstice, we made a lovely mulled spice wine with cinnamon, cloves, and even oranges that had been imported all the way from Elderglass, and used the wine to poach some pears, and made a salad with toasted nuts, poached pear, greens, and salty parmesan cheese. 

On the second day, while Osheen was out to buy a basket of changa mushr...

The Archmage: Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Alright kids,” I said as I walked into the introductory witchcraft classroom. “Midterm time.” 

I was met with a series of groans, and smiled, then raised a hand. 

“No need to worry,” I said. “This class isn’t very well suited to it. We’ve only handled basic potions, burners, familiars, and languages so far. I’m not going to expect you to be able to combine those in some sort of new form. What we’re going to do instead is cast some basic divinations...

The Twin Trials: Chapter Fifty-Three

I dropped my sensory spells, allowing the Magister’s Body to chug along and replenish where my energy had been drained, and turned to face the portal. I was tempted to chain some foxsteps and get there quickly, but I didn’t want to leave Araceli and Roh behind. 

Still, I moved through the crowd as quickly as I reasonably could until I spotted Liz and Dusk walking through the crowd. When Dusk spotted me, she started running, slipping between people’s legs and under their feet ...

Symphony or Sour Note?

The Twin Trials: Chapter Fifty-Two

The valley was swarming with people. Some were leaving their own trials, emerging from the portal behind me, while others seemed to have been set up for some time, with tents and even roughly constructed earthwork buildings. 

The food resupplying depot that the ship unloaded with was swarming with people, and as I channeled my mana through Surveyor’s Eye, I was eventually able to pick out Octavian, and made my way through the crowds and over to the lanky man. 

As I app...

The Twin Trials: Chapter Fifty-One

The lights dimmed, and four items appeared on the altar: a smooth stone disc covered in runes, a slip of paper, and two burlap bags tied with leather cords. 

I picked up the paper, hoping it would have an easy description of what it did. Instead, there were three letters on it: I O U, followed by a doodle of the craftsman winking, sticking his tongue out, and giving a thumbs up. A thin lattice of mana ran through the paper – ungated mana, yet woven so finely that I didn’t even ...

The Archmage: Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Lemme see!” Mellt demanded, and the moment broke. I shook myself and took a breath, then laid out the spell, describing how it would allow moisture, air pressure, and charge to all float together in the air, even when it missed, then all come back together for a powerful attack. 

As I explained and started listing out the components, as well as their interactions, something lit itself in Mellt’s eyes. My faerie aura, suppressed though it may be, started to shiver and twist, ...

The Archmage: Chapter Twenty-Six

I drew the spell for the memory packet creation on the sheet of paper, followed by the spell that would let it slip into the dreams of a person the moment that the portal opened, then passed it over to Tara. She studied it with a critical, curious eye, then slowly nodded. 

“Alright,” she said. “Interfacing the sympathetic link with that will be an interesting challenge, but even if I have to add half again as much spellwork in order to get it operational…” 

She...

The Archmage: Chapter Twenty-Five

It took me the better part of two weeks to reach competency with both the compression of mental packets, and the method to slip them into dreams. 

Even then, I wouldn’t call myself a master of either. I didn’t think I’d be able to cast a divination through a sleeping mind, in order to seek the hidden meanings that lay in some dreams. 

But I was functional enough to cast this spell. And if there was one thing I’d proved since I started my career as an enchanter, i...

The Archmage: Chapter Twenty-Four

“In dreams?” I asked, raising an eyebrow while keeping my face a mask.

Internally, I was kicking myself. I had no idea how locking information behind a seal like that would work, since I’d never really looked into mind magic outside of the applications I’d stolen from house hawthorne, and getting a mind bubble to protect myself, but it was definitely possible.

It was just the idea. Putting it in a dream was such a simple idea, and yet it had never even crossed my mind, and...

The Twin Trials: Chapter Fifty

Over the remainder of the prep time, I made fourteen firebombs, a half dozen healing potions, four strength potions, and four of my blended strength and regeneration potions. I would have made even more, but I needed to overcharge my mana to handle the higher gate materials, and in the case of things like the firebombs, materials were limited. 

When we could see the knight – who was literally in shining armor – approaching over the horizon, I handed one of the strength and rege...

Dusk and Liz

This short story is set during the events of the Twin Trials. If you’ve not read up to chapter 44… Watch out. Here there be spoilers!

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Dusk found herself awake on a pebble beach, one that reminded her of the ones in Mossford, and glanced around. 

Oh, interesting. 

There were lots of bodies on the beach all around her. The closest one was Liz, and she scampered over and poked the tall woman’s cheek over and o...

Should Liz and Dusk

This poll exists cuz there isn't one for the normal chapters this week.

The Twin Trials: Chapter Forty-Nine

I appeared in a gray stone room, facing off against a large minotaur. The monster let out a bellow, and red light exploded around it, then it rushed me.

I doubted that the lesson would be the same as the last one, but I also wasn’t foolish enough to bet everything on that, so I spent some time dodging back and forth, teleporting out of the way of attacks, waiting to see if anything changed. 

When nothing did, I shifted to go onto the offensive, slicing at the minotaur with ...

The Twin Trials: Chapter Forty-Eight

I stood at the crossroads for some time, contemplating. 

On one hand, I was worried that if I chose temperance, my reward from this trial or floor or whatever it was would be lessened. But on the other hand, I didn’t think that the Sage’s idea of justice would match mine. 

There was a chance that the Craftsman had redone the justice floor, much as he’d turned learning to dodge thrown stones into dodgeball, but then again, maybe he thought temperance was stupid and ...

The Archmage: Chapter Twenty-Three

Whoops, I had it at 8pm. Sorry for the delay!

-

Going back to work after three nights with almost no rest wasn’t fun, but after a full pot of coffee – much cheaper now, thanks to some of the new initiatives that Eira and Dormer had been pushing – I was able to at least somewhat function. I fumbled through my lectures, and was immensely grateful I wouldn’t have any office hours until Friday. 

That night, I finally got some real sleep, and my Tues...

The Archmage: Chapter Twenty-Two

Mrs. Barbier wasn’t someone I’d thought about in a long time. 

A tall, older woman, with steely gray hair, gray-blue eyes, and weathered skin, she looked every part the charming, caring, old lady, who would be perfect for working with children. 

She even acted the part. Every time that parents came in, looking to adopt, Mrs. Barbier was the doting, kind, matronly headmistress. 

The reality, of course, wasn’t that simple. 

It’s not that she w...

The Archmage: Chapter Twenty-One

As the week ticked by, I ensured that each of my students got a familiar. A few of them, mainly those who came from high-class enough families, had enough money to purchase slightly more curated familiar summonings and their materials, and I helped those students set up their rituals, coaching them through each step of the summoning. 

That weekend, I started looking into more powerful water and wind spells that would mesh well with my lightning staff, reaching out to Emilia for the...

Since the vote tied

Here's the roll for it

The Archmage: Chapter Twenty

Before anything though, I headed down to Seth’s office. 

“Hello Evan,” he said, smiling. “Hard to believe how fast the time has flown. It feels like only yesterday I was having to drag you into the ring just to get you to fight, and look at you now.” 

“Seth,” I greeted. “Good to see you. Even if I never took any further combat courses, I did appreciate what I learned, and tried to put it to good use. Are you still teaching it?” 

“Indeed,”...