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Book 3, Chapter 31

We settled into an easy routine over the next six weeks. In the morning, I would instruct Senica on the various aspects of magecraft. I wanted her to have as well-rounded an education as I could provide, given the resources we had available. That meant her fixation on conjuration magic in general, especially fire spells, had to be broadened to include all of the other disciplines as well.

She didn’t resist the idea, but it was plain to see where Senica’s interests were. Conjuration ...

Book 3, Chapter 30

Our first day off the island hadn’t seen much variation in the landscape. Things were a bit greener, perhaps, but it the kind of difference that would have been easy to miss if I wasn’t looking for it. By noon of the second day, however, it was impossible not to notice how much greener the ground was.

“How is there so much of this stuff?” Senica asked as we sat on some rocks near a deep, fast-flowing river and ate lunch. She stamped a foot down on the grass, which bent instead o...

Book 3, Chapter 29

Adult brakvaw were just too big to pummel with conjurations. They’d shrug off lightning bolts and fire blasts easily, and as I’d already proven, they had enough mass and speed to break through force magic without so much as blinking. For all their size, their immense mana cores, and their strange method of cycling their own mana so that they never ran out, they shared the same weakness all non-mages had.

They lacked the mental discipline to resist attacks on their minds. That was wh...

Book 3, Chapter 28

Our time at the Outlander’s Gateway was enlightening, but ultimately, not the purpose of this journey. Once dawn broke, I woke Senica—after stashing my bed away so she wouldn’t see it—and got us a meal for the road. I’d woken twice during the night to stuff more mana into my mana crystals, but I’d long since gotten used to that and was feeling fully refreshed.

“We could have slept in,” Senica grumbled as she seized a chunk of bread from the bag Eggert had given us on our...

Book 3, Chapter 27

“Mages, huh?”

Eggert was a heavyset man with a red face, a big nose, and almost no hair left on the top of his head. He was wearing a plain white apron and had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. I noted his features, but what really caught my attention was the way he smelled.

It turned out Eggert’s place was an inn, and he himself was a baker. If the flour dusting his belly wasn’t enough of a tell, the big man smelled of bread, which was unusual here. We ve...

Book 3, Chapter 26

My original plan had called for us to reach the edges of the island, to a place that was known locally as the Outlander’s Gateway, about half way through the day. It was the only spot that was almost five hundred miles wide where there was a break in the mountains. Or rather, the only conventionally accessible point. There were some spots along the east coast where a ship might find a place to dock, but they’d still be blocked from the interior of the island by mountains twenty or thirty ...

Book 3, Chapter 25

Our journey began at the teleportation platform. I’d made sure to fill the mana battery underneath to full a few days ago and swapped out all the emitters lining the platform itself for fresh ones in addition to topping off the ones in storage. That would leave more than enough mana for it to be used three or four times while I was gone, so no one was trapped inside the valley. If for some reason that ended up not being good enough, they’d have to pour their own mana into the spare emitte...

Book 3, Chapter 24

I floated across the brakvaw graveyard, my magic keeping me anchored against the wind that kept the island scoured bare of so much as a speck of dirt. Next to me, his ancient body hunched in on itself, Grandfather watched me deftly weave the fuzzy threads of magic to cast an advanced-tier spell. I still lost about a tenth of the mana, but the rest cycled back into my core to be used again.

“Well done,” the old bird congratulated. “I have no concerns about your capabilities at this...

Book 3, Chapter 23

In many ways, lacquering a mana core was similar to creating a lattice for it, only on a far grander scale. The first time I’d done this, it had taken me close to two years to complete. In my defense, I’d been dealing with a trio of mage hunters on a quest for revenge at the time – something about burning down their town and killing everyone they’d ever known. I’d never gotten the full story, none of them being terribly inclined to talk whenever they’d caught up to me.

Once ...

Book 3, Chapter 22

The chamber was ten feet by ten feet. Each corner had a massive mana crystal in it, a black pillar glittering with pinpricks of light. Individually, they held ten times as much mana as the original crystal I’d made out of a rock in my mother’s garden so many years ago. Together, they represented close to a year’s work.

A great circle had been etched into the floor, its edges inscribed with runes. A square was inside that, with another, smaller circle forming the inner-most layer. ...

Book 3, Chapter 21

Over the next few months, I divided my time between monitoring my mana sealing experiment, practicing what I’d taken to calling lossless casting, and teaching the basics of constructing a mana lattice for those budding mages living in Sanctuary who were interested in progressing past stage one. Some of them were more than ready to begin working on their own lattices, but others weren’t quite there. That did not stop them from attending, anyway.

We couldn’t confirm it yet, but Hyag...

Book 3, Chapter 20

In a way, figuring out the first step of brakvaw spell casting when I did was perfect timing, since it marked a good point to take a break and return to Sanctuary. I could have gone home, resupplied, and returned to Eyrie Peak all in the same day, but I gave myself a few days because we were coming up on the anniversary of my time in Derro four years ago.

To be more specific, in two days, the orphan group I’d gotten involved with would be observing the anniversary of the day most of t...

Book 3, Chapter 19

To make things easier, I built my own little abode on a nearby mountain. Perhaps the brakvaw would have accommodated my stay, but I wasn’t all that trusting, and, besides, my magic could very well have interfered with their unending circuit of mana. It didn’t seem likely—none of my spells had caused any problems so far—but I was planning on being there for months and that meant setting up a few long-term enchantments.

The brakvaw knew where I was, of course, but as part of the s...

Book 3, Chapter 18

Watching my sister perform alchemy was somewhat nerve wracking, if I was being honest. Though I’d made the equipment myself and it would take a giant dropping a boulder on the glass to so much as scratch it, I still winced every time Senica carelessly smacked two pieces together. Some mixtures were so sensitive to impact that even I had to use magic to smooth out the process, but if my sister didn’t learn a little respect for my workshop, she wasn’t going to have to worry about learning...

Book 3, Chapter 17

The floating island stretched out before me, nearly a mile of bare stone interrupted only by massive cairns lined up one after another. They spiraled out from the very center, where a single mausoleum sized for the enormous brakvaw stood its lonely vigil over the hundreds and hundreds of graves.

Sitting in front of that mausoleum was a bird whose feathers had faded from a full, rich black to something dull and gray. His body was stooped, his limbs heavy with weariness, and his head slum...

Book 3, Chapter 16

It was only when we got close to Eyrie Peak that I realized how much mana was coming off of the mountain, far more than was reasonable. It shot straight into the air, only to cascade back down and be absorbed into the stone. Somehow, this cycling method the brakvaw used was writ on a grand scale here, with the flow being so large I couldn’t even sense the whole thing all at once.

We passed through a curtain of mana as we approached the peak, my three escorts flying in formation around...

Book 3, Chapter 15

The mother brakvaw was clearly communicating with her children in some way, probably telling them to stay back in case she needed to kill me and things got messy. I wasn’t offended; it was a reasonable precaution and if a stranger had approached my family, I might not have shown as much restraint as she had in defending them. I liked to think that not trying to stop them from flying up to meet her when she’d arrived had been what prevented her from attacking on sight.

“I’m inves...

Book 3, Chapter 14

Author's Note: For those of you not watching on Royal Road, I've accelerated the release schedule to 7 days a week until mid August in order to get the entire volume out on Royal Road before it has to come down in September.

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The two birds circled around me while chirping and cawing to each other. Perhaps they were trying to speak to me as well, but if so, I understood none of it. More out of curiosity than anything, I tried to read their minds.

Man...