194 — Book 4, Chapter 38 — The Grand Assault, Pt 1

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“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cale asked, exasperated; somewhere on the other side of the room, Damien let out a groan and covered his face with a pillow. “You can’t not have data on something you integrated with yourself!”
No data available.
“I know for a fact you’re more articulate than that,” Cale accused. The words almost seemed to be mocking him, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t imagining things. The Gift’s messages were livelier, somehow, after its integration of [Sourcefire]. There was more personality in its words. Which also meant it could tell him more than just—
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Cale groaned. “It’s just messing with me, now,” he muttered, casting the floating text a dark glare.
Damien muttered something that was muffled by his pillow, then removed it from his face. “Do you have to do this now?” he asked wearily.
Cale looked over at his apprentice, who did look exhausted; strands of shadow were tousled messily over his face. “You’ve had nine hours of sleep,” he said severely. “And you told me to wake you up if you slept for more than eight.”
“I didn’t know you were going to do it by yelling at the Gift,” Damien grumbled, though he did force himself to sit up. He rubbed at his eyes, yawned, winced when something in his neck cracked, then pulled his blankets into a pile over his lap and huddled into it. “I thought you were just going to poke me.”
“You wanted me to poke you awake?” Cale asked, raising an eyebrow, and after another moment of thought Damien shuddered and shook his head. “I thought so.”
“What are you trying to do, anyway?” Damien asked.
“I’m trying to figure out what [Sourcefire] is,” Cale said. “I evolved it during the fight with Astiviya, but I haven’t had the chance to look at the spell description until now. It doesn’t say anything useful, though. Just says it ignites an ember of the Source on a target Vessel. That could mean anything! I mean, if I cast it, am I going to make a new Source of Magic? I need to know these things!”
“What tier is it?” Damien asked, finally pushing aside his blanket-pile and heading over; Cale moved to make space for him on the bed.
“Twentieth,” Cale said, and Damien blanched for a second before remembering who he was talking to.
“Doesn’t that make it pretty likely that it does, then? If it’s a twentieth-tier spell.”
“It doesn’t make it less likely,” Cale said. “But it could mean a lot of other things, and the fact that it’s a twentieth-tier spell makes it more dangerous to cast it, not less. For all I know it’ll decide the Abyss is a willing vessel and set the whole thing on fire.”
Damien paused. “That… doesn’t sound good.”
“Exactly!” Cale exclaimed. “And the Gift won’t tell me what it does! It says it’s integrated the spell, so it has to know something.”
“Maybe you’re not supposed to know yet,” Damien offered. “A lot of things tied to you seem to work that way, um, no offense. Maybe the Gift is waiting for the right time.”
Cale groaned. “I’m so sick of waiting for the right time for things,” he complained. “I’ve spent eons waiting for the right time. Just once I’d like some answers delivered to me from a silver platter instead of having to rip them out of the heart of some lich.”
There was a slightly awkward pause that followed Cale’s mini-rant. Damien raised a hand, and after a moment, Cale sighed. “You don’t have to raise your hand, Damien.”
“Were you—”
“Yes, I was being literal,” Cale said flatly. “There was a lich that hid the cure to her plague inside her heart. It was written on a piece of parchment and stitched into the left atrium.”
“Wow.” Damien hesitated. “…Do you know, um… why?”
Cale snorted. “A lot of liches keep their own organs as keepsakes,” he said. “I have no idea why. Mortal attachment, I guess? Anyway, they love hiding stuff in their organs assuming no one will think to look there. Too bad for them, I’ve defeated like a thousand liches and made at least ten cry.”
“You seem like you’re in a bad mood,” Damien said cautiously, choosing—perhaps wisely—not to ask how he’d made undead creatures without tear ducts cry.
“I might not have slept much,” Cale admitted after a moment, looking away from his apprentice. “Had a lot to think about. I think… I think I might know why it’s been so much harder for people to travel through the Great Realms.”
Damien frowned. “You do?”
“The Nothing,” Cale said, gesturing vaguely toward the labyrinth door embedded in their dorm. “I told you about feeling like there was something waiting inside it, but I shouldn’t have been able to feel anything at all. My best guess is that the Nothing’s been growing, somehow. It explains why Asterion went rogue trying to suppress it, and it explains why inter-realm travel became so much more difficult. Not that it was ever easy in the Abyssal Era, I suppose.
“Think of it like. When you travel through the Abyss, you have to plot a path through its waters without running into debris or the leylines. That’s complicated enough to do by itself, but dragons have been capable of performing that kind of Abyssal math for a long time.
“But we know that the Abyss and the Nothing are… adjacent, for lack of a better word. The Streaming ritual necessarily has to account for the Nothing, so we aren’t slinging ourselves into it. It might not exist as far as magic is concerned, but its symbol still exists, right? It represents the end of all things and that which is erased.
“That means it has symbolic weight. Any spell you cast in the Abyss is going to be pulled in its direction a tiny bit. Not a lot, or we would have noticed much sooner, but at least enough to create tiny mistakes in whatever path you plot. And the Nothing has been growing and growing for who knows how long, to the point where no one can plot a path through the Abyss anymore without…”
He trailed off, noticing Damien’s horrified expression.
“Without falling into the Nothing,” Damien whispered.
Cale nodded wearily. “I wonder how many people were lost to it before they realized inter-realm travel was no longer possible,” he said, the words quiet.
“But it’s possible now, right? The Streaming ritual can do it, so people won’t… they won’t fall into the Nothing anymore.”
“That ritual works a little differently from most Abyssal travel spells, but you’re right that something changed to make it possible.” Cale glanced off into the distance, as though his gaze could pierce the veil of the realm and into the Abyss. “I’m pretty sure it’s the truebridge that leads to… you know, to the past. To the human realm.”
It stunned him still, that the gambit to help his apprentices remember who he was—that he was the last human, and that all humanity was extinct from the Realms—had worked. He had been operating off nothing more than wild speculation and personal theory, cobbling it together at the last second as they were rocketed back toward Utelia.
When he had first arrived, the Gift had marked him with a number of passive spells. One of them was [Marked], and not even Akkau had been able to tell him what it did. It meant he was special in some way, but that was nothing new; Cale had been marked in all sorts of ways in his lives. What made this mark different from the rest? Why had it appeared the moment the Gift had scanned and integrated him?
One of his guesses had been that passive was how the Gift made note of his Thread of Fate. The Gift documented all extant magical effects upon his soul, and the Thread of Fate was technically one of them.
But the Thread was more an exotic form of magic that caused his karmic root to spiderweb outward, causing anyone in his vicinity to get tangled within it, and it took effect only when he used his magic. He had been [Marked] before even using his magic, and that meant, perhaps, that the Gift had registered there was an enchantment already on him: something he hadn’t known about, that had never been detected through all the eons.
It made a certain kind of sense. There was magic at work in all the Great Realms, magic inescapable by even those experts of mind and magic. Only those who did not belong to the realms at all—those born of the realm instead of within it, such as Sternkessel, or those born without it entirely, such as some Monoliths—were exempt from its effect.
So how was Cale exempt, when he was technically one of the realmborn? He had assumed it was simply because he was human, but that had been nothing more than an assumption; it would have been difficult for that spell to work during his childhood, and yet he had always been separate from his peers in that he knew, even then, that humanity was extinct.
So it couldn’t have been his humanity that made him exempt. Perhaps it was his soul, but his soul changed and grew with every life. In that moment, as they were careening back toward Utelia, Cale realized that the answer was simple.
At some point, without his knowledge, he had been [Marked], and the spell knew not to influence him.
When he injected his mana into that passive spell, it had budded, causing all his friends to gain the same [Marked] status.
Unfortunately, as soon as they returned to Utelia, trying the same thing again no longer worked. Something about being outside of the Great Realms allowed the mark to be replicated, but once they were back within the influence of the original spell, it clamped down on the mark, making it all but invisible to his senses and no longer allowing the Gift to reproduce it.
Even now, Cale thought it was strange. All that implied that someone or something had wanted him to be able to remember what happened to humanity, but hadn’t wanted him to be able to spread word of it. Why? He didn’t think it was malicious, and yet whoever had done it had inflicted him with a terribly lonely existence…
Alas, on that particular front, Cale doubted any answers were forthcoming.
“Thinking about them again?” Damien asked quietly, and Cale startled, remembering he’d been in the middle of a conversation with his apprentice.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Uh, as I was saying… what was I talking about?”
“The truebridge,” Damien prompted. He didn’t seem to mind the pause; he knew Cale had a tendency to ruminate whenever it came to the subject of humanity’s fate.
“Right,” Cale said. “The truebridge. Lev had to do something to the Abyss to stabilize it and allow it to exist. I think that made the Abyss more real, somehow? Not sure how to put it. But basically it’s put the Nothing and the Abyss into balance again, so inter-realm travel and communication should be possible again.”
“But it’s still a problem,” Damien said, guessing where Cale was headed, and Cale nodded.
“We don’t know what caused the Nothing to grow,” he said. “For all we know, it’s still growing. In fact, it probably is, which would mean it’s only a matter of time until it’s out of balance with the Abyss again.”
Damien nodded slowly, his expression thoughtful. “All this stuff,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “Um. You know. The Darkness, the Nothing, everything that’s been happening. It has to be related, right? I mean, you’ve got your Thread of Fate at work, so…”
“Normally,” Cale said, “I would tell you that the Thread just gets you involved in important events. It doesn’t make those events happen, but it makes sure you’ll be there when they do, so it’s a bad idea to assume that everything that happens is related.”
“But?”
“But in this case…” Cale shook his head, his voice soft. “It’s one thing for Vital’s corpse to be here, out on the edges of the Great Realms. For it to be home to a fugitive of the Planar War, to hold a connection to humanity, possess a construct of magic so powerful it can handle my mana, and just—everything else we’ve seen? I can’t be sure, but I think things have been leading me toward Utelia for a very long time.”
“Yeah.” Damien glanced away from him, toward the stained glass window in their room. The sun was shining through it, scattering panes of colored light over the floor. “I think so too.”
“…We should see Vital today,” Cale said. “I’m sorry for putting it off as long as I have, Damien.”
“I know you needed the time.” Damien turned back to give him a small smile. “But, um… yeah. I can feel it, I think. The Verdant Flame is waiting.”
“Then let’s not make it wait any longer,” Cale said, standing and stretching. “We should get the others. I want him to meet you all before I say goodbye.”
Cale should have known, really, that making a declaration like that was inviting trouble. No sooner had he managed to get to his feet than a loud, banging noise rang out from their door. Cale and Damien both jumped and stared at it.
“Open the door!” Flia called impatiently.
What in the world would possess Flia to come and get them this early in the morning? Cale and Damien glanced at each other, then Cale got up and opened the door.
Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t the small army of powerful mages that filed in. His three other apprentices were first, followed quickly by Thorn, Featherstrike, and Kryva, three of the wyldfire mages that would be joining the Fettered Divinity Tournament. Dark Warrior Eviscerator was close behind Kryva, unsurprisingly.
Professor Tarbloom squished in through the doorframe a moment later, wobbling precariously and clutching at their chalkboard. Instructor Solsburn came next, carrying with him what looked like a bundle of swords; on his shoulder, tapping her cane impatiently, was Professor Imrys.
Professor Sternkessel was tall enough that he had to duck to be able to get through the doorway. Next came Headmaster Akkau, for whom this problem was much worse: he was so large he had to practically squeeze himself through the doorway, and Sternkessel gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder once he was through.
Last but not least, though—and the ones that made his heart drop and a foreboding feeling grow in his gut—was the mothfolk rescued from the Watchful Hive and two of the lizardfolk of the Golden Sands. There was no way this was somehow related, was there?
“Uh.” Cale shoved the thought to the back of his mind; best not to panic until he was sure. He focused instead on staring at the massive group of mages squeezed into their dorm. It was a big room, but it wasn’t that big. “Is there a reason you’re all here?”
“Of course there is,” Flia said impatiently. There was an edge to her voice that made Cale frown and straighten. “Instructor Solsburn spent the last night interrogating Eli and Mia. We know what the Red Hunters have been doing.”
“They found the temple,” Leo said in a rush. “We think the Grand Magus wants to turn the Source of Vitality into one of his relics—”
That was all Cale heard before the roar of blood in his ears drowned everything out. Power snapped out from him, raw and violent, and it was only by sheer force of will that he redirected it enough to avoid killing anyone in the room. It blasted out through the window instead, leaving a smoking hole in the tower.
“Then we’re going to stop him,” he said.
To their credit, no one in the room tried to argue or calm him down. Instead, they nodded at him, as if they’d been prepared to do exactly this—as if it was the entire reason they’d gathered.
Oddly enough, it was that fact that grounded him enough to dull the rush of blood and adrenaline. It reminded him that he had people, now, that would stand by him in these matters. It reminded him that he did not need to rush in alone.
This must have been why the Grand Magus had sent only two archmages to Brightscale, and weak ones, at that. With the corpse of a Monolith to play with, the idea of being able to capture Abyssal Ones from the Abyss must have felt like a mere passing fancy.
He would have the bulk of his forces in the Golden Sands to back him up. No doubt the most elite of the Red Hunters were there, casting anti-scrying and anti-karma spells. No doubt the remaining three Red Sentinels would be there, those twisted mage-constructs that were the Red Commander’s secret weapon.
The Icon of Battle had been among them until Cale had freed it, and if the others were anywhere near as powerful, then—
Cale glanced at the mages that had gathered to help him and snorted.
If the others were anywhere near as powerful, they would still be far from enough to protect the Grand Magus from what was coming. Cale would have felt sorry for him if not for the anger still pumping through his blood.
Instead of speaking, he summoned the [Fortress of the Gilded Storm]. Sand gathered outside the window, building and building until it coalesced into a monumental fortress of golden sand. It was larger than the ones he had built before by sheer virtue of the mana he had poured into the spell; by the time he was done, it gleamed as if made of true gold rather than simple sand, and it was nearly as large as half of Brightscale.
Beneath his feet, Brightscale Academy reacted to its presence, shuddering as though in jealousy, and Cale shook his head. He glanced around at his apprentices.
“Normally,” he said, “I would tell you not to come with us. But I get the feeling you’re not going to take no for an answer.”
“I need to be there,” Flia said simply. She clenched her fist, the water in them rippling with the movement, and within her Cale felt the power of the Abyss beginning to swell; her Spark was developing, drawn to the Grand Magus as the crux of all things that had been left behind on Utelia.
To deny her would be to deny her magic its opportunity to grow. He saw it clearly, her determination, her anger at what the Grand Magus had done and the lives he had discarded in his pursuit of power.
The others were the same, a quiet anger simmering in them at the knowledge that the Grand Magus had orchestrated so many of their troubles. He had backed the Red Commander. How many had been hurt by his magic already? More than they knew, surely.
Beneath him, the academy shuddered again, this time in what seemed like sympathetic rage. Some part of it understood now, it seemed, what they were doing and why they were here. A small tendril of its magic extended toward the fortress, and Cale felt it passing into the structure, granting it a fragment of the academy’s very soul.
“Thank you,” Cale said to the academy, to the walls that had housed him from the moment he first arrived in this realm. Then he raised his head. “Time to go, then.”
He stepped into the conjured fortress, and a moment later, it shot off toward the Golden Sands, ready to descend upon the Grand Magus and his Hunters with all the fury of the Brightscale Academy and its mages.