Ends of Magic
Chapter 32: Levels of Tension

Nathan stared at the place Brox had been standing until a moment ago. “Shit.”

“He’s coming back.” Aarl said, pointing at the fancy camouflage tent. “Or else we’re taking that. It’s enchanted like a Kalis artifact.” The corner of his mouth twitched up. "It's almost a good trade."

As if reacting to his words, the tent folded in on itself, and compacted down to a point that vanished with a tiny ‘pop’ of displaced air.

They all stared at the empty spot of dirt for a second. Then the swearing started.

Aarl winced, hissing between his teeth. “Muckgrabber’s asshole.”

“Harpy tits!” Sarah cursed a moment later, throwing down the wood been she'd been whittling.

“Waking Giants” Khachi said, rubbing at his forehead in exasperation.

Stella seemed to have mixed feelings, and she just sighed.

Sarah’s gaze went calculating and she looked over at the face carved into the far side of the pass. “Should we go challenge the dungeon? Think that will bring him back?”

“Nope.” Nathan said. “He’ll come back or he won’t. It was a stupid idea before, and it's still stupid. We capitulate on this once and then he’ll know he can win every argument.”

Aarl gestured toward Nathan, frustrated. “It would be better than having him leave. Part of our job was to keep him placated and out of trouble. Now Gemore faces a Questor without one of our own. It would have been better to risk the dungeon.”

Nathan threw up his arms in frustration. “Maybe so! But he was a dick, and I’m not actually sad to see him gone. We kept him occupied for a few days, maybe now it’s somebody else’s turn. There’s a good chance he just shows up in Halsmet and somebody else needs to take over Brox-sitting.”

“I’m surprisingly free of regret.” Stella spoke up, voice light. “He’s a blight. As much as I want to learn of the true nature of fire, that elemental scares me. I could feel its hunger, its greed for my magic. It’s powerful. More raw mana tere than any magic we've faced before.”

Khachi grimaced. “We must inform Sudraiel. She will need warning if he returns to Halsmet, and time to prepare an alternate plan if he does not.”

“Yeah, just throw Nathan at the army and tell him to kill the Questor.” Sarah said bitingly. "It's his deed now that he drove the Questor away." She bit off her next words, then sighed. and reached down to grab the carving she'd thrown into the dirt. “Sorry for the words, but this battle is truly a prophecy of Endings. Our parents are the obvious choices to fight the Questor. A mage beyond Endings.”

Nobody had an answer for that, and they drifted apart to separate tasks with different levels of frustration. Both Aarl and Sarah occasionally sent venomous looks Nathan’s way, and Khachi’s gaze wasn't exactly friendly.

The wolfman knelt on the ground, praying over his hammer. Aarl pulled out his unenchanted weapons and a bottle of oil, while Sarah resumed whittling the mage figurine. She’d gotten quite good at carving a small figurine of everything she’d killed, from stalkers to mages and even a siegeboar.

Everybody kept their attention on Stella as she sent a [Message] back to Halsmet to deliver the news. Judging from the petite mage’s body language, it didn’t seem like the response was positive. She flinched a few times, cast a few looks at the site of Brox’s abandoned tent, then laughed briefly before nodding with resignation.

She stood up, brushing dust off her knees. “Sudraiel’s not happy. She told me to be sorry that we’ve caused smoke and blood.” She shrugged, not looking particularly regretful. “She was pleased to hear about Cala dha Drex. But a Questor’s worth more than an archmage.”

Stella continued. “We’re to remain petrified in place. Our mission is still to guard the pass. My guess is that they want Brox to be able to return to Halsmet without finding us there.”

Khachi’s brows furrowed into a grim horizontal line. “Surely we must return before the battle. We must be able to contribute to the fight.”

“True aim." Stella said in response. "But they’ll wait to call us until Faline signals that the army has left Giantsrest.”

“No blood from our wounds.” Sarah said, gesturing down the pass with a knife. “We can watch this place for a few days.” She seemed to have uncoiled slightly, not as tense as she’d been just a few minutes ago. “Not many targets for us to hit in Halsmet anyway.”

“Blood from my wounds.” Aarl huffed. “I’d prefer to be in Halsmet.”

His sister rolled her eyes and threw a pebble at him. “Hear me but you’re hornier than a sailor of Litcliff.”

Nathan silently agreed with Aarl. He could be working on teaching antimages in Halsmet. He'd moved on from thinking about the exact Insights he wanted to teach and onto the kind of ethos he wanted to inspire.

How do I want to train them? What kind of students do I want, and how do I prepare them for being an antimage?

Nathan sighed, breaking off his thought process. “Alright, so we’re staying here for a little while. Might as well get comfortable.”

Sarah clicked her tongue. “We should move camp. Don’t want to stay in the same place too long. Somebody will need to go hunt for food. I’m the most suited. Khachi, come with me? It’ll be a good distraction from this Questor muck.”

The big wolfman nodded, getting up and dusting off his knees.

Aarl’s voice was surly as he stowed his weapons, moving to start packing up the camp. “I suggest Nathan cleans dishes for the next few days.”

“Hey!” He protested, but nobody seemed sympathetic.

Honestly, that’s a pretty light punishment for pissing off our ace-in-the-hole badly enough he just up and left. And I’ve got a bit of a backlog for not washing dishes until now to avoid breaking the enchantments. But the enchanted pots were so much easier to clean!

Nathan sighed, scrubbing his hand through his hair as he moved to help clean out the cookware, thinking over the confrontation and Brox’s departure.

I was standing up for myself, for us. I’m confident that I was right, that the dungeon was too large a risk without sufficient payoff. I thought Brox would respect me for standing up to him, and I think he did, but only up to a point. Then he just found it annoying, because it was something he actually wanted to do.

Nathan internally shrugged as he scrubbed away with water that Stella doled out of a dimensional waterskin,

Just hammers home that you gotta treat Questors carefully. I treated him like I’d treat a powerful Adventurer, but he refused to accept that I wouldn’t automatically follow his orders because he was a Questor. I wonder if that’s a Questor thing, or a Brox thing.

“Oh, I just got a [Message] from my mom.” Stella exclaimed. She chuckled lightly. “She told me that she’s relieved, and that we shouldn’t blame ourselves.” Stella sucked in a breath. “And that they wish they’d refused Brox when he took them to that dungeon years ago.”

Aarl grunted from nearby. “Yeah, maybe. I wonder what dad will say.”

Stella looked across at the threatening dungeon on the far side of the pass. “Our nemesis is the Endings. We can’t have a Questor fight that battle for us. You heard Brox, they know more than anybody. They’ve lived through the Endings.”

The copper-skinned fighter just nodded, going to pick up the tripwires around the camp that had been entirely useless against a flying enemy.

Nathan shook his head, going back to the skillet Aarl had used to fry up the cubed steak.

Well, I didn’t pick [Master Assassin of Gemore] when it might have been useful to persuade Brox. I guess that means I better pick [Magekiller]. That's sunk cost thinking, but I'm convinced that the ability to ‘subvert enemy magic’ is really the prize here.

As Nathan scrubbed out his dishes, he made the class selection.

Congratulations, you are now a Magekiller. Two of your existing class skills have developed, and you have unlocked three new class skills! Class skill Regenerative Focus: Your Focus will rapidly regenerate when you are undistracted. It can be spent to enhance your attention and improve your control, or on other skills or Talents that utilize Focus Class skill Catastrophic Blows: You will be better able to identify the weak points of your foes, and your strikes against those areas are more likely to inflict lethal damage. Injuries inflicted with your bare hands will resist healing magic. Class skill Stealthy Movement -> Battle Stealth: Your movements will be harder to notice, especially in the confusion of combat. This effect can be enhanced by spending Focus. Class skill Infiltration -> Mage Infiltration: You will be able to blend into hostile environments easily, and will not seem out of place even in imperfect disguises. This skill will mimic signs of being a mage when you are disguised as one, including a fake mana pool. Class skill Forgettable: Foes will forget details about you after you leave their attention. This is a mental effect that can be resisted by someone with the appropriate skill or sufficient willpower. Class skill: Unsuspecting Strike: Your strikes against unaware targets will more easily bypass armor and other protections. New Class skill Antimagic Stealth: Your antimagic hides you from magical sensors and detection, and even spells tuned to detect an absence will not detect you. New Class skill Spell Redirection: You can use your antimagic to redirect spells. Will not enhance your ability to otherwise modify spells. New Class skill Lethal Index: You will be able to assess if injuries you cause are lethal, and how long your foes will survive them.

Magekiller is now level 89!

Well, there we go. Not as impressive as [Implacable Antimage]. But it’s not really a combat class. There's a lot of stealth benefits in there.

Nathan pursed his lips in consideration as he moved onto the utensils. The biggest thing he’d gained from this Development was better antimagic - which could now be used to redirect spells. What did that even mean? He’d have to practice with Stella to find out the capabilities of [Spell Redirection].

Additionally, it enhanced his stealth against magical sensors with [Antimagic Stealth]. He’d already been good against detection spells, though magical traps would still trigger if he got too close. Maybe that wouldn’t be true anymore? He also liked that he was already gaining counters for spells specifically tuned to find him. It was only a matter of time until somebody built a spell to detect the hole caused by his antimagic.

Finally, [Lethal Index] seemed fairly pointless for him. He wasn’t in the habit of leaving his enemies with survivable injuries regardless. Part of the class description indicated it would help “finish off difficult-to-kill enemies” but Nathan had been expecting some kind of deathblow skill, not a diagnosis one.

Sometimes you whiff on a skill. They can’t all be bangers. I bet it’s because I’ve had this class for so little time, there was no time for Insights for better skills. And maybe it'll be more useful than I'm initially assuming to know if somebody is getting back up or not.

The two skills that had upgraded were a bit more exciting. [Mage Infiltration] specialized him more towards sneaking into a place with a lot of mages, which would be handy for sneaking around Giantsrest. And [Battle Stealth] did reflect how he’d been using the skill, trying to make it hard for people to keep track of him in the middle of a fight.

Now it’s really an established strategy. I can hide from spells, this skill will help me hide from eyes in the confusion of a fight.

He shrugged internally and got back to washing dishes. He wasn’t over the moon with his new class, but he was happy. It wasn't revolutionary, but it offered important new capabilities that would help him going forward.

Nine more skills than I’d have if I hadn’t gotten a second class. I’ll call that a win.

—

A few hours later, Nathan was bored. Khachi and Sarah had returned with some more game, and they’d moved their camp higher up the slope and farther east, towards Giantsrest. Nathan had explained his new class and the Heirs had been appropriately interested, but none of them had been blown away either. [Spell Redirection] had been the only skill to raise eyebrows.

Stella agreed to do some practice, and they spent some time exploring his new skill. It seemed to give Nathan’s antimagic a new intangible authority, an ability to control magic as he absorbed it. He could reach out and grab a spell with his aura, then throw it in a new direction with a flick. It didn’t work very well, since he tended to mostly absorb anything he redirected that way. It was also much harder to pull off with more powerful and complex spells. Nathan could return a fireball back to sender at one third its original strength, but he wouldn’t be able to do the same with a [Disintegrate] until [Magekiller] leveled up quite a bit to improve the skill.

After a little while, Stella’s attention seemed to waver. Her spells were fine, but she didn’t seem excited about further experimentation, or even learning about more science.

“Do you want to keep going? It’s fine if you want to be done for today.” Nathan said, watching her with concern.

Stella rolled her neck around, closing both eyes. “Yeah. I feel like a torch burnt near to an ember. Hear me, I’m glad we saw our parents in Halsmet, but I haven’t had time to think since… the Fortress Foundry.”

Nathan resisted the urge to pat his friend on top of the head. “Yeah, Halsmet was a lot. It might be a good idea to talk about everything? It doesn’t need to be now. We’ve got a few days out here on our own.” Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ ɴøᴠel Fɪre.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

“No, maybe later.” The short mage turned away with a yawn, walking a short distance before sitting down and looking out over the beautiful mountain landscape.

Nathan glanced over the other Heirs, thinking about walking over and chatting with them. Unfortunately, recent events seemed to have depressed everybody’s mood, and nobody was feeling particularly talkative.

I considered myself an introvert back on Earth. What changed?

That evening Nathan told some more stories from Earth, just to keep people entertained. He tried explaining the plot of Mass Effect, but the Heirs kept getting hung up on his descriptions of space and planets. They understood the concept of ancient death robots just fine though.

—

The next morning, Nathan looked around. Everybody still seemed a bit quiet, and he was still getting a bit of a cold shoulder, though it wasn't overtly hostile. They watched the pass. Nothing moved except for wildlife, as well as clouds and the streamers of flame from the stone face across the pass.

It reminded Nathan of the carefree time they’d spent together in the town of Bridgeguard, back when they’d first left Gemore. It had been a break from the politics and training of Gemore, a time to train and relax and enjoy each other’s company. Back then he'd wondered if he would ever look back on that time with longing.

And he did, but not because what was happening now was worse. Sure, the food and lodgings weren’t quite as ideal, but they were fine. The Heirs had time to rest and recuperate, and it was nice. But a tension hung in the air, a knowledge that battle was only days away. A battle that would see a lot of death, one way or another. They had risked their lives before, but it felt different. Previously they'd mostly fought in situations where they knew they stood a chance at success. This battle, that wasn't so certain. There were hundreds of mages of Giantsrest and a Questor on the other side of the field.

Even if they survived, the Heirs probably know some of the people who were going to die. Maybe somebody they loved. It was hard not to brood over it,

After a few hours, Nathan couldn’t stand it anymore. He turned to his teammates. “Does anybody have any paper, or anything I can write on?”

Stella cocked an eyebrow at him. “I got some paper from Halsmet for working through spells. Giantsrest makes it, so there's no more once I run out. What do you need it for?”

He smiled. “Writing down the Insight of [Regeneration].”

Khachi turned with an aggrieved expression. “Insights are not written down. You said you couldn’t teach that months ago.”

Nathan shrugged. “I did say that. But that was then, and this is now. I've got to try, since my antimagic Talent is pretty useless without a self-healing Talent. I also understand Insights better than I used to. People don’t need to know every detail for a low-tier version of the Talent. I’m also hoping that it will be easier since my teaching skill is high-tier now.”

“You have a teaching skill?” Aarl said, turning his head to look at Nathan in bewilderment.

“Yes?” Sarah said, looking at her brother with even greater confusion. “Have you listened to anything he’s said to Stella? Has he never explained anything to you?”

Aarl scrunched up his nose, thinking back. “Yeah, he did. It was easy to learn.” He nodded towards Nathan. “No wonder Stella’s magic is flaring like it’s been fed dragon shit. I never listen when you talk about that stuff.”

Stella rolled her eyes and sighed heavily, reaching into one of her innumerable dimensional pockets, pulling out a thin sheaf of papers along with a quill and inkwell. “Here. That’s what I have, I hope it’s enough to kill the problem.”

Nathan frowned at his writing utensils. He’d have to write small and take care so that the words didn’t get smudged, but it was something. “Thanks.”

Khachi walked over and sat down next to Nathan. “You have explained some of your healing Insight to me. I wish to know more, if you would teach me.”

“Sure.” He considered the paper for a little while, and how best to communicate the essence of his healing Talent. Part of what had stopped him before was not knowing where to start. Would he have to go into chemistry, teach how proteins worked? How much detail was required for [Regeneration]

That also leads to a bunch of really dangerous Insights I’m not sure I want to spread.

Since he’d first considered the issue he’d had a lot more experience with Davrar, and how Insights worked. A lot of the reason he’d originally gotten [Regeneration] at high-tier was because of the depth of his Insight, and the severity of the wound he’d healed with it.

It might be true that people trying to learn [Regeneration] would always need to be hurt, to try to heal something that would otherwise be permanent. But they wouldn’t need to know all of the things he knew.

“The core Insight of the [Regeneration] Talent is that the body is capable of healing from any wound, because all of the information needed to grow the body from scratch is still present in even a tiny piece of flesh.” Nathan said, falling into [Lecturing]. “But once the body is grown, it doesn’t know how to regrow it, or have the energy to do it quickly. It's not supposed to happen, but it's not impossible ether."

He pursed his lips, considering how to translate the lecture he was giving Khachi into words on a page. “The solution to both of these problems is Stamina. It interfaces well with physical process of the body. If channeled appropriately, it can guide the healing process and provide the necessary energy."

“From there, it’s important to understand how the healing process works. The body is composed of tiny parts, called cells, and each of them contains the entire body plan as well as…”

High-tier Lecturing 6 achieved!

Old class skills:

Class skill Stealthy Movement: Your movements will be harder to notice. This effect can be enhanced by spending Focus.

Class skill Infiltration: You will be able to blend into hostile environments easily, and will not seem out of place even in imperfect disguises.

New class skills:

Class skill Stealthy Movement -> Battle Stealth: Your movements will be harder to notice, especially in the confusion of combat. This effect can be enhanced by spending Focus. Class skill Infiltration -> Mage Infiltration: You will be able to blend into hostile environments easily, and will not seem out of place even in imperfect disguises. This skill will mimic signs of being a mage when you are disguised as one, including a fake mana pool.

Status of Nathan Lark:

Permanent Talent 1: Aura of Antimagic 7

Permanent Talent 2: Perfected Body 8

Talent 3: High-tier Slow Fall 10

Class: Implacable Antimage level237

Deepened Stamina:7392/7410

Antimage’s Impassivity

Antimagic Momentum

Raging Thrill

Implacable Inertia

Unarmored Resilience

Improved Antimagic

Strenuous Agility

Hand-to-hand Expertise

Class: Magekiller level 89

Regenerative Focus: 990/990

Catastrophic Blows

Battle Stealth

Mage Infiltration

Forgettable

Unsuspecting Strike

Antimagic Stealth

Spell Redirection

Lethal Index

Utility skills:

Battle Meditation 9

Leadership 6

High-tier Sprinting 8

Magical Perception 8

Alertness 2

Magical Intuition 8

High-tier Dodging Footwork 10

Mental Fortress 4

High-tier Lecturing 6

High-tier Tumbling 8

Mid-tier Noticeability 8

Low-tier Quiet Movement 4

Low-tier Disguise 4

Mid-tier Battle Cry 3

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