Chapter
21: Army of Stone The Spy
Torana and Jadir stare at the stone men in annoyance.
The professor mumbles something about a dry parched throat.
Vel'im puckers his lips, raises his eyebrows and says, "Now what do we do?"
Magnus looks at the stone leader and says, "Let’s make this quick." He grasps his staff and the rune flares to life in bluish-white radiance. But the flash lasts longer this time and instead of five missile coalescing a dozen appear before the stunned apprentice. Jadir and Torana look back at Magnus who pauses for a second before sending all twelve missile streaking toward the leader encasing him in ice from head to toe.
Torana smiles and gives Magnus a nod. "That's my boy." Torana and Jadir look at each other for a moment smile and begin reciting the same rune. Moving in perfect synchronization the two magi moving into a low fighting stance with feet way apart. They draw back their fists by and exaggerated about as if they were about to strike a mighty blow.
The remaining stone men charge the group.
Nahabedian stands between the professor and the charging enemy. He speaks a rune and suddenly several small meteors blast outward peppering the crowd. This slows them down quite a bit.
Torana and Jadir suddenly swing their arms forward as they shout the last of their rune.
There is a loud bang and some thing blasts forward from in front of the magi at such a high speed that dust flies up in its wake. The stone men, including the one encased in ice, shatter like so many cheap clay statues. The twin-blows strike the men so hard that the ground shakes like a mini earthquake and even the hydra is stunned.
Nahabedian mutters something about over-kill.
The Professor gestures while still mouthing something. But nothing happens he sighs, "Anyone have anything to drink?"
Nahabedian laughs hands the professor his waterskin.
The Professor takes a drink and then sprinkles some one the ground. The dry tortured ground immediately soaks it all up. "Ah thank you. Now let’s see. If I remember correctly another day or to heading north and then a few hours to the east should put us on target."
The group starts forward again but hasn't gotten more than half a league when more stone men appear to challenge the group.
Nahabedian mutters something about impeding destiny.
Again the stone men attack.
The Professor asks, "Is it starting to rain yet?"
Vel'im wraps his cloak around him and says, "No, but there are storm clouds on the horizon."
The Professor says, "Oh well, guess I'll just have to wait."
This group of stone men simply charges without saying a word.
The hydra moves forward and breathes at the group of stone men. Who after charging into the cloud stumble out of the cloud back the way they came before falling to the ground. Some dissolve under the acid others are absorbed back into the earth.
Half-a-league later a small army of about a seventy to eighty stone men appear out of the ground.
"Has it started to rain yet?" the Professor asks.
"Not yet, but the clouds are practically on top of us. Looks like it might just pass us by without dropping anything."
Magnus uses a scroll he has handy and reads the rune. Suddenly a rainbow leaps from the scroll slamming into the stone men and producing no visible effect.
Nahabedian speaks a rune and the ground before them begins oozing a murky liquid. The stone men slip and skid toward the group.
Torana and Jadir re-enact their twin-punch spell with the same devastating effects.
Nahabedian looks up at the clouds and smiles speaking a rune he gestures to the advancing stone men and lighting bolts streak down shattering the stone men like so many clay statues.
Some of the men try to flank the group and Vel'im vanishes.
Magnus pulls out another scroll and reads the rune there. The rune flashes weakly the blotches shining slightly brighter than the rest of the rune. Then it fades and shines brighter again before fading and shining yet again before exploding in a brilliance of light that nearly blinds the mage. A vague image forms in the apprentices recovering sight and he gestures sending the ice missiles toward his enemies. A sudden chill passes over the young mageling.
When his sight clears he is truly shocked as he looks to find dozens of the stone men with patches of ice on them, some on their faces, some on their legs quite a few with patches on their torso and arms. The last group although slowed are by no means stopped.
Torana and Jadir abandon the twin fist attack and begin casting other runes. It seems to Magnus that the rune Torana is speaking now is easier to follow than the rest.
A moment later a fireball erupts within the stone men's ranks blasting many to bits and heating up others to the point where they are cherry-red.
There is a loud hiss as drizzle hits a pool of super-heated stone.
The Professor jumps up and says, "Its about time!" He raises his hand and drops it. By the time the hand hits its lowest point. The drizzle has turned into a torrential downpour. Within minutes everyone is up to their ankles in mud. Several minutes later the Professor reverses his movement and the rain stops just as suddenly. By this time there is no longer an army, just a huge plane of mud.
The Professor chuckles, "One big drawback to having an invincible stone army is that if you add a little water and all your plans turn to mud."
The sun sets on a muddy group of travelers who has just survived the muddy washout from nearly two hundred stone men turning to mud at the same time.
As the group huddles near a fire hoping to try their soaked clothing, storm clouds blot out the some of the light from the three small moons in the sky tonight.
Vel'im walks over to Magnus and says, "You did great in the battles today. Much better than myself. I just realized that I have no offensive runes. Actually, I've never needed them before. Well no, I suppose I have needed them before but they wouldn't have done much good as I would have never have gotten them out soon enough to matter. But then again, do I really need them, I mean, what can I do here? What I suppose I mean is, could I get some offensive runes from you? I'd ask Jadir, but he'd want to see the information I got on the stone men and that got washed way in the last storm."
Magnus looks up at Vel'im and replies, "Why of course I'll let you copy the rune. I hadn't realized that you may be lacking in some of the more offensive spells, I should have thought of swapping runes with you earlier" Magnus produces a scroll. As he shows Vel'im the rune he states, "Now I'm sure you have heard this many times before, but copy it precisely with no mistakes. You remember that story of how my arm got incased in ice? It's not a pleasant experience, especially during a life and death situation."
Vel'im laughs, "Working for him." He jerks a thumb in the direction of Jadir intently flipping though a rather large tome. "You don't have any choice but to get them right the first time."
"Speaking of runes, would you perhaps have any that you think I would be able to copy? The one on your cloak I think is still too advanced. If you haven't any scrolls perhaps you have a spell in your book that I may find useful?"
"Most of my scrolls are pretty much reserved for his notes. I do however have one or two small ones that probably won't make much difference in the long run."
He pulls out a beat-up, mud-stained, scratched up, brown leather book from his backpack and places it in front of him. After flipping through a couple of pages he says, "Here are a couple you might find useful. They are not offensive, but they are helpful. Now when this rune is activated a short of shimmery ball is created, *never* ever look directly at the ball."
Vel'im shows Magnus a rune from his book. Magnus studies the rune, there seems something strange about it...it seems for lack of a better word captivating.
Magnus sits back and realizes the entire purpose of the rune is actually simple. It seems to capture the attention of those watching.
When he looks away from the rune, he realizes that there is a crystal sitting next to him. Cut in the shape of a diamond, but clearly not. The crystal seems to capture the firelight and reflect it in many different ways.
Vel'im mutters whiles scribing, "Sometimes you run across creatures that aren't quite affected by the spell. I've found that the crystal gives them something more to focus on the rune will work on them. Trolls especially. Keep it, I've got dozens of them. But it's utterly useless against elementals."
Afterward Magnus grabs some chalk to begin re-drawing a rune upon his staff. He pauses as he looks at the staff. There are curious indentations in the general shape of the rune, blacker than even the dark wood from which the staff was made. They are almost like burns, but they are slick to the touch. Magnus soon becomes engrossed in his work as he works with the chalk to draw the now familiar rune.
When he finishes he looks around and find everyone asleep, Magnus joins them in slumber.
The next morning he seeks out the Professor for some questions.
"Professor? I have a questions about the last ice missile rune I used in combat."
Relieved to be in a role that he is familiar with the Professor smiles and says, "What is the question young master Kane?"
Magnus describes an incident in the previous days battle where he read the rune from a scroll and it acted oddly. Or rather he relates as much as he could remember.
The Professor frowns, thinking for a minute. "I don't believe that it was a badly scribed rune, because you said that the missiles actually took form. If you had indeed erred in the building of the construct, then other such things would have happened. For example you might go blind for a short time, suffer from severe chills, have a body part frozen, perhaps get blasted away by the force you unleashed, or nothing at all might happen."
The Professor seems to stand quite a bit straighter and he takes on the manner of a lecturer. "It has been observed by my esteemed colleagues that the energy flows seem to be of an abnormally high density in this dimension. This is simply the realization of one of many runic theories that have been around for ages. Now in theory the...'blotches' as you call them...are control points that nullify the effects of the wild flows that infest every possible rune like a plague. It is a reasonable hypothesis that the wild flow is also of a higher density and thus may at times be able to overcome the control inherent in the making of the rune. In which case, I would highly recommend against using any runes that have shown susceptibility to the wild flow until appropriate research can be done on how best to contain the overpowering wild flows. The effects could be very dangerous. But then now that I mentioned it you did mention that you felt a chill when you directed the runes?"
Magnus says "Yes".
"Hmmm. Perhaps... No I would definitely not use that rune again while we are here. The effects could be devastating."
Any further conversation is interrupted as another stone man rise out of the mud.
Nahabedian says, "I don't think water will effect this one much."
"Why is that?" The Professor asks
"This one is made of marble." He forgets to mention that it is also about 40 ft tall and still rising.
Vel'im instantly pulls out a scroll and starts writing furiously, He quietly mutters, "At least this time I don't have to worry about him leaving me to face the danger alone."
Magnus looks at the creature, his eyes cloud over as he becomes lost in thought.
Nahabedian shakes his head and says, "This is getting ridiculous." In his voice is just the slightest tinge of anger.
The Hydra moves in front of Magnus and hisses at the rising giant. The spray of acid splatters off of the marble stone, only slightly scoring it.
Jadir and Torana both speak a rune and both go flying off up and around on opposite sides of the creatures.
Vel'im looks up and up and up and says, "Where's he going? Oh no! He did it again!" He drops the scroll in his hand and scrambles for his backpack.
Magnus wakes up and recites a rune and points at the giant marble creature. He then proceeds to shrink to nearly half his normal height. The mageling looks puzzled as he realizes that suddenly everything is bigger. He turns and runs back to get some distance between him and the giant stone toes appearing out of the ground.
Nahabedian puts on a pair of bright red gloves. He crouches with his legs spread wide. His arms bent at the elbow, hands balled in fists, he barks a rune and leaps into the sky.
The creature now fully formed looks down at the rising mage and with a speed belying its size it's right hand quickly catches Nahabedian completely engulfing the mage in its oversized hand.
That same hand explodes a moment later and the two magelings, the hydra and the Professor flee to avoid the flaming red chunks that rain down on them.
Magnus seeing the Professor stumble runs over and tries to help the man up.
"Thank you kind...dwarf?!!?" The professor leaps back, "Don't attack! We don't want to hurt you."
Jadir seems to be trying to draw a rune on the giant's left arm.
Torana seems to be stamping something on the giant's right arm.
Each spy what they are doing and for some reason they start arguing.
Nahabedian past them yelling, "Incoming!" And the two magi dodge out of the way to avoid a huge hand trying to swat them against its chest. For some reason this sets off a series of small explosions along its right arm and pieces of the arm falls down in chunks. Jadir looks mournfully at his ruined incomplete rune.
The hydra has had enough as it begins picking up the apprentice magi and the Professor, dropping them onto its back and moving away from the creature at such a breakneck speed that the trio have to hold on for dear life or risk being blow off by the wind caused by the creatures passing.
After a few moments there is a huge explosion and thunder rolls across the plains. A flaming streak goes flying over head. The hydra is forced to stop when the ground begins rumbling and shaking so violently that it can barely keep its footing. It spreads its wings wide to keep its balance.
After what seems to be an eternity the rumbling stops and the ground stop shaking. The group looks back and finds that the stone giant is no more. In its place is a huge pile of boulders. A few moments later Jadir and Torana are spotted flying off to one side. They spot the group and come in to join them.
As they get close you hear Torana says, "See I told you they went in this direction."
"But where is Nahabedian?" Jadir snipes. He went flying like a giant fireball, "We should have come across his burned corpse by now." He turns toward Magnus, "Where did you get the dwarf."
Torana looks and shakes his head disapprovingly, "Magnus! What were you up to this time?"
The Professor says, "Magnus is the dwarf! Now this is what I mean about the danger of not putting controls in your runes. If you learn Control! Control! Control then these mistakes would not happen."
Jadir snipes, "But then how can you see the side-effects of a new rune you created that can lead you on to new and different things. It's the path to discovery. If you dampen and lock the rune down, then its useless for research as it will never change or reveal anything more of the universe, the source, the flow, the Gen Raze, the list goes on and on. What kind of research can you perform."
"There is nothing left to research as far as rune structure is concerned. It is simply now a matter of delving into the mysteries of what and why. The how is no longer necessary. Even in this dimension it would only be a matter of following the standard method to determine a stronger anchor to weld the power of the flows to a normal intensity!"
Jadir counters, "Why would you want to? If you are careful then the stronger flows in this dimension are a boon. Flight spells last longer, combat spells are stronger! The runes function as they are supposed to in any dimension. They are simply stronger here."
Torana says, "I've been studying your anchors and unless I'm going blind they bind not only the wild flows but all flows at each point, regardless of whether or now they have a use in the rune."
The professor nods, "That is true. They bind the most primal arcanic forces that even our current scholars have not determined yet. This forces an absolutely level, predictable, reliable and safe execution of the rune."
"But", Torana continues, "in this dimension those anchors are not strong enough to bind the wild flows as we have already seen. Isn't it possible that the rupturing of the anchors might wield unknown and unforeseen side effects that might be worse than an untamed, overpowered rune."
The Professor thinks for a moment then nods, "Yes that could be true."
Torana continues, "And could not such a rupturing say in a simple light spell, in theory, might invoke a surge in either the wild flows or say a necromantic flow or a combination of flows."
The Professor is silent a moment. A small drop of sweat forms on his brow as a look of horror comes over his face. "Until we can determine the proper anchors it would be unwise to use any magic within this dimension as there would be no way to guarantee our safety margin. But we must use our runes to survive the dangers of this dimension."
adir smiles and says, "Now you're talking! By Gaea I think he's got it!"
"I do not think your goddess can hear us here in this far dimension." A deep voice rumbles.
Everyone looks up to see Nahabedian walking heavily up to the group. The red gloves gone. His clothing is burned in multiple places and scorch marks as well.
Vel'im leans over and whispers, "Do you have any idea of what they are talking about?"
Magnus looks up and says to Vel'im, "The gist of what they are saying I believe is that both types of magic at the moment are unpredictable and perhaps dangerous, but the orc magic even more so. Excuse me for a minute."
Vel'im nods and writes down, "Orc rune method had inherent weakness to rune flow surges..."
Jadir says, "She's not my goddess. I just can't remember the name of that other goddess that everyone's always whining to in order to get their second-rate control over the flows. Let’s face it they have to babble incessantly just to get their minds to wrap around a single rune. And then they talk..." He throws his hands up, "It's just more trouble than it's worth."
Magnus walks over to Nahabedian. As he does he notices out of the corner of his eye that Torana is trying to suppress a laugh while patting himself down looking for something in one of his hidden pockets, which for some reason aren't hidden any more, the result looks rather... disturbing. Magnus asks Nahabedian, "Would you like me to take a look at those burns? I may have something in my pack to make them less painful and heal quicker?"
"Eh?" Nahabedian looks down at himself as if just noticing that he has been badly burned. "Oh, yes, sure. Thank you." He settles himself down sitting cross-legged.
While Magnus is tending to the burns, he says, "By the way, would any of the more experienced wizards like to return me to my full size or do I have to wait it out?"
"Why? I'm sure you'll return to normal size soon enough." Jadir shrugs and looks back at the stone pile.
Vel'im looks at Jadir's back and mutters, "Typical."
"Also any ideas on why my spell effected me instead of the golem would be appreciated as well. At least I didn't make it any bigger."
Torana moves to tower over his apprentice, "Which rune exactly did you use?"
After Magnus tells him he asks casually, "Did you memorize the enlarging version or the shrinking version?" There is a strange glint in his eye.
"Enlarging version." Magnus replies.
Under Magnus tender administrations, Nahabedian sighs, "You tried to mentally invert the rune didn't you."
Magnus nods.
"It's a nice trick to be able to do but, you must be careful which runes you try to invert because you inverted the entire rune! You wanted shrinking instead of growing, which you did. But you also inverted the target. Instead of inverting the statue, you became the target. I wouldn't recommend trying to invert just any rune. Some have nasty side effects. Unless you know what you're doing it's generally not a good idea not to try to mentally invert a rune."
Torana says, "I think we'll just leave you like this for a while." He pats his apprentice on the head then quickly floats out of reach.
After Magnus finishes bandaging him, Nahabedian says, "There is a spell I have that might help us with these creatures I'll just check it out." With that he pulls out a leather bound book out of the relatively small sack. The book is bigger than Magnus’ current size. After flipping a few pages he finds what he wants and begins to memorize the rune. Curiosity overcoming them. Jadir and Torana, float over the giant mage and peer down at the rune.
The Professor says, "Well this sounds like the perfect time to determine new Genata for this dimension."
Vel'im raises an eyebrow and says, "Ummmm."
Magnus says, "I think it would be preferable to continue traveling until we can at least get out of the stone men's territory or at least get to our destination so that we can return to our correct plane."
Magnus looks around to see if anyone is paying attention.
Vel'im says, "Too late. We've lost them." He smiles evilly and pulls out a sling. "If we get attacked. I'll stand in the general direction of the creature and hit Jadir. I'll hide the sling and we'll blame it on whatever hapless creature picked that moment to attack. Of course I'll need you to slow them down. Trust me it works wonders. We were attacked by a pack of trolls once while he was studying." Vel'im laughs, "Those poor trolls didn't know what hit them. He chased one troll for most of the day."
Eventually curiosity overcomes Vel'ims' good sense and he wanders over to take a peek at Nahabedian's book. A few seconds later he turns away holding his head. "Man that must be an awesome rune. Last time I had a headache this bad is when I tried to copy that gate rune."
Moving back toward Magnus he says, "I have a question, I've seen you use that rune on your staff pretty quickly. I mean you don't read it or anything. How do you get it to work so quickly?"
Magnus explains what he knows of the control points, showing Vel'im where they are on a copy of the rune. He raises his staff and points the blotches out on the staff saying, "I only need to adjust my grip so that I am touching all of these points and the spell is activated."
Looking at his copy of the ice rune, Vel'im says, "So I can just touch these blotches...control points and the rune activates even faster than reading?"
"Yes, but using it that way will ruin the scroll it's on. I've been using chalk to lightly scribe the rune onto my staff, but even then it still burns a little bit of the wood away with each use. On a scroll it will burn straight through. Because of the control points, you can also hold the arrows as long as you please without the slightest bit of strain. I once kept the rune activated for hours. But, if get surprised you'll lose control of them."
While Magnus and Vel'im stand guard, the three magi stare at the rune within Nahabedian's great book. The Professor however seems to be trying to figure out something as he makes writing motions in the air occasionally muttering what sounds like names to himself.
Finally the Professor says, "Now where did they put the scrolls today?" He reaches around looking for something, before comprehension dawns on his face. "Does anyone happen to have an extra scroll?"
Magnus and Vel'im look at each other before Magnus scrounges through the backpacks for the extra scrolls he packed. He sets the scroll and quill and ink in front of the Professor. The Professor checks the quill and asks for a knife. With quick sure movements the quill is sharpened to a point that normally Magnus would have considered unusable and much too brittle.
The Professor however lightly dips the pen in the ink and proceeds to scribe a small rune onto the scroll. When he is done he scribes another rune below the first. Magnus and Vel'im look over the Professor shoulder. At first glance the runes are identical to the ice rune of before, but the lines are much, much finer and the blotches seem smaller, but oddly shaped, more oval-like.
When he is done with the second rune he says triumphantly, "You see, using the standard method I have developed the proper anchors necessary for you to safely use this rune. The increased power of the wild flows of this dimension are no longer a problem. However, since the strength of all flows seems to be approximately 2 to 3 times that of our dimension, you shall see an increased number of missiles. If you were to take this back to our dimension you would still see the same number of ice missiles as generated here. But the effect of the rune should be delayed due to the necessity of the rune requiring twice as much of the energy flows than is normally available within a similar rune structure in our dimension."
The Professors fingers lightly scan over the top rune careful not to touch more than one anchor at a time. When he is done he "reads" the rune.
The blotches on the rune glow. The glow spreads to the rest of the rune. Suddenly several bits of light streak out of the rune, arc over the Professors head looping and coming to rest just barely above his head. The lights coalesce into a series of icy blue arrows. The arrows soon form a halo. As each new arrow forms, the halo grows larger and they rotate around in a circle.
In the space of a half a dozen heartbeats a dozen blue arrows have appeared above the Professors head.
"Hmm a little less than two and a half times normal flow strength." The Professor mutters "My, my, this is a confusing perspective. Its been a while since I've seen much of anything."
The Professor turns toward the giant rock pile that was the giant. "You know he was right rain and lighting would have done much damage to that thing."
He then looks around and spots Vel'im and Magnus looking at him strangely. "Now let's see which is which." As you watch he arrows move from a halo floating around his head to a upright circle the base just above his head.
Vel'im asks, "Which is what?"
The Professors' face brightens, "Ah you must be Vel'im." He walks up to the elf and puts his hand out, far to the left of the elf. When Vel'im reaches to take the hand he moves it to the right just over the elf's hand then down and back to the left then again in the box pattern until he latches on to the elf's hand. "Ah so that's the perspective. Don't slouch boy it's bad for your posture and it makes you look like a second rate charlatan. We do have a reputation to maintain. You are going to be a mage boy. Look the part!" He makes patting motions that just barely touches Vel'im's shoulders.
He turns to Magnus and says, "You must be Magnus Kane. Finally I can see the man behind the voice."
"But to tell the truth I actually through you'd be much taller" he quips.
He turns and looks at the three magi. Nahabedian reading, Jadir floating just over his shoulder, and Torana who seems to be reclining against the sky, instead of the ground, also staring at the rune.
The Professor looks at them for a moment then says, "I didn't realize we were travelling with an ogre."
Vel'im laughs, "He's not an ogre, but he's almost as big as one. I'm surprised I figured he'd be a much better fighter than mage, but divination seems to be his strong suite."
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