9 – Glacial Wrath
Victor and Tes spent their last night on Fanwath back at his estate. He hadn’t wanted to say goodbye to Thayla, Tellen, and the girls, but he was thankful for the pleasant visit, and he thought it had been good for Cora and Deyni, in particular. They’d gotten to see that he still thought of Fanwath as home and meant it when he said he’d be back to visit whenever possible. He wasn’t under any sort of delusion that Cora loved and missed him, but he felt like she thought of him as responsible for her, and some consistency was important in that regard.
In the morning, considering their travel time home would be instantaneous, he and Tes decided to go down to the beach again so he could practice his last couple of elder magic spells. One of the remaining spells was a modification of a System-granted spell, like the one he’d cast with Thayla, but the other was something else: the spell Azforath had gifted him—Glacial Wrath.
He’d spent a long time studying the complicated pattern—several days. That was nothing, however, compared to the weeks Tes had helped him puzzle out how to apply the elder magic modification that Azforath had written for him separately. It was a component that would allow him to remain conscious and free-willed while the deep rage of the glacier simmered under the surface. Of course, he’d done other things in those weeks; Victor’s mind could only focus on the twisting, multi-faceted spell pattern and its intricate lines for so long.
In the end, they’d succeeded, but only with the Glacial Wrath spell. He’d tried to apply what he’d learned to Volcanic Fury, but there was something about the folds of rage-attuned Energy in Glacial Wrath that fit more easily into the modification. Tes theorized that the rage was different, that the anger of a glacier had a different quality than the fury of a volcano. Victor thought she might be right, but it didn’t matter to him; he was happy with the success and would continue to work on Volcanic Fury as his skill with elder magic progressed.
As they walked down the path toward the beach, Tes skipped ahead but slowed after only a few steps, turning to walk backward, graceful as always. “You had a nice day with Thayla?” Her eyes were bright, her smile impish.
“What does that mean?”
“I mean, you were much renewed after your time hiking in the hills. It was nice, was it not?”
Victor shrugged. “Yeah, it was nice. I trust Thayla, so it’s easy to talk to her.”
“Mmhmm. That’s good, Victor. It’s not so common to meet people who’d put your interests above their own. I think Thayla would do that for you.” She laughed, a light trilling sound, then added, “You know, there are quite a few folks you’ve told me about who might do that for you. Maybe I should say it hasn’t been easy for me to cultivate such friendship.”
“I’d do anything to help you, Tes. Valla would, too.”
“Yes, but I think you’d struggle to name someone you wouldn’t aid—”
Victor started holding up his fingers, “The Sojourn Council, Warlord Thoargh, any kind of pinché Death Caster—”
Tes laughed and darted forward to poke him in the chest. “You can’t just list off enemies. We’re not talking about those. Besides, half of that is bluster; you’re spending a fortune to help a Death Caster who happens to be waiting in your palace back at Iron Mountain!”
Before he got dragged into a frankly bizarre tangent, Victor asked, “How was your time with the kids? I know you told Thayla and Efanie it was a lot of fun, but was it really?”
“It was! Those girls are something special, Victor. I can feel karmic ties forming between them. They’ll be hard to separate. Already, Deyni talks about seeking out her step-sister across the sea, and, of course, the other girls want to join in the adventure.”
Victor frowned. “Yeah? Well, according to Thayla, Chandri plans to return before winter. She’s found dungeons, mines, ancient ruins—all manner of resources—and charted them all. Thayla thinks Chandri will try to sell her maps to me, Rellia, and Lam.”
“A reasonable thing to do, don’t you think? She risks much adventuring into unknown lands.”
“Yeah, definitely. I’ll have Gorro check them out to see if he thinks any would be a good investment for me. As for the girls, I won’t approve of them running off with Chandri until they’ve reached tier two. Don’t you think that’s also reasonable?”
“Well, Victor, Chala’s nearly a woman grown, but as Cora’s guardian, you have the right to keep her home. As for Deyni… I’m sure Thayla would listen to your opinion, but you should respect the fact that you aren’t that girl’s father.”
“Yeah.” Victor sighed and roughly rubbed his fingers through his hair. “I spoke before thinking. I know I don’t control them. I just—”
“Relax, Victor!” Tes laughed. “It’ll be years before Thayla and Tellen think Deyni should go off exploring. You have time to adjust to these sorts of ideas.”
Victor nodded, laughing. “Right.”
“What spell will you try first? The Glacial—”
“The other one. Let’s save the big one for last.”
“Well, you should step into the surf a ways before you cast it. If it works as we hoped, it might make a mess of the beach.”
“Yeah, all right.” Victor reached into his pathways and severed the Energy threads that maintained his Alter Self spell. As he surged to his normal size, he strode across the sandy portion of the beach into the rougher, rocky area closer to the water, and then he waded out nearly a hundred yards until the water was up to his chest. He shivered a little; one thing the Silver Sea wasn’t was warm.
When he turned, he saw that Tes had waited on the beach, watching him, the ocean breeze flapping her yellow skirts around her knees. Her hair, woven with matching ribbons, streamed behind her, and Victor stared for a while, admiring her beauty.
“Well?” she called, her voice muffled by the crashing waves and wind.
He lifted a hand to wave, and then he summoned his elder magic book, glad for its many enchantments; he could drop it in the ocean, and not a molecule of water would cling to its pages. He turned the page to the spell he wanted to cast, and then, after carefully studying the entire pattern, he began to craft it in his pathways.
This spell didn’t have a matrix that would differentiate Energy types and provide varied results. It would behave the same way no matter what Energy he fed into it. Even knowing that, Victor chose to craft the pattern for the first time using inspiration-attuned Energy. He wondered if his preference for working with that Energy type was due to its nature; was it more willing to go where he wanted it to? Was it the Energy that guided him, or was he guiding the Energy? He chuckled at the thought, then flipped the page to finish the second half of the spell.
Ten minutes later, the pattern flared with Energy—another success—and the System froze the world around him, blaring its usual warnings:
***Warning! The spell being cast incorporates and alters another System-granted spell. If you complete this casting, your System-granted spell will be removed.***
***Warning! The spell being cast does not follow System-designed iterations and may be too powerful for you. Proceed at your own risk.***
***Warning! Non-System spell pattern detected! You will only receive this warning one time. Do you wish to halt this process? YES/NO.***
Victor watched the waves around him, fascinated by how they seemed to hang in place, even the frothy bubbles refusing to burst in the System’s iron grip. Before he received a scolding demand to make a decision, he looked at the question and selected NO. The world moved again, and Energy rushed out of his Core to fill the pattern.
The waves that had been jostling him suddenly stopped having any sort of effect. They broke on his back, and he didn’t move even a millimeter. A second later, the world exploded in steam as geysers of lava burst out of the ocean floor. They sprayed in fan-like eruptions in every direction around him, sizzling and popping as they instantly cooled in the endless supply of salt water. As soon as the eruption started, it was over, and Victor once again felt the push and pull of the waves as the enormous cloud of steam slowly wafted away in the breeze.
***You have discovered a new spell: Roots of the Angry Mountain – Advanced.***
***Your new spell renders a System-granted spell obsolete. Removing.***
***You have lost the spell: Roots of the Mountain – Basic.***
***Roots of the Angry Mountain – Advanced: You have harnessed primal Energy to anchor yourself to the very fabric of the world. When activated, the spell will render you immovable, making you as unyielding as the mountain itself for several seconds. Any force—physical, elemental, or magical—will struggle to shift your position during this time. The spell will call forth the mountain's roiling blood, causing it to erupt violently from the ground in an explosion centered on you. This explosive release will not discern between friend and foe. Energy Cost: 7,000.***
***Warning! This spell is not System-designed! Use it with caution—there are no safeguards in place. This is the only time you will receive this warning!***
When the steam cleared and he’d wiped away the System messages, Victor looked to the shore to see Tes clapping her hands and whooping. Victor grinned and jogged toward her, easily pushing his legs through the chilly water. “That was spectacular!” Tes cheered. “Imagine your foes surrounding you, thinking you overwhelmed—what a bitter pill you’ll make them swallow!”
“That was pretty cool in the water, wasn’t it? Like a bomb going off. It wasn’t epic, though. Just advanced.”
Tes laughed, repeating his words, “Pretty cool. Don’t complain about an advanced spell. A bit of tweaking or maybe adding in additional functionality, and you can make it epic.”
Victor smiled at her teasing tone and looked past her, down the shore and to the east, where some of the village buildings were visible in the gray morning light. “You sure it’s safe for me to try the spell from…you-know-who?”
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“Your titan friend? Yes! His design was flawless, and I’m quite certain we integrated the modification he gave you properly. Besides, if you lose your mind and threaten innocents, I’ll pick you up and carry you into the ocean!” She winked at him, and Victor shook his head, narrowing his eyes at her.
“Could you pick me up like that, or would you have to take your true form?”
“Oh, we’ll have to see how large this spell makes you, but I fear there might be some villagers who would witness their first dragon.”
“All right, well, here’s hoping that won’t be necessary.” Victor pulled out his elder magic book again, but he only had to study the spell for a few seconds before he began crafting it in his pathways. He’d grown intimately familiar with this pattern over the last few months. Even though it was more complicated, he found it easier to weave than some of the other spells simply because he was working with two types of Energy. He drew a thread of blue ice out of his Breath Core and, of course, rage from his Spirit Core. With those two threads in hand, he focused his will and got to work.
Tes watched him, her eyes glowing faintly, and he wondered if she could see what he was doing with the Energy in his pathways. As he worked, he asked, “Can all veil walkers do that? See into a person’s Core or their pathways?”
“No. People who reach that level of power are as varied as iron rankers. They—we—vary in power too. For instance, I’m much stronger than most veil walkers you might find in Sojourn. And, as you no doubt have guessed, there are stages beyond. Remember our talk about your titan kin and the ivid queen?”
“Yeah.”
“So, focus on your task at hand. There’s an ocean between you and the need to worry about what a veil walker can do.”
Victor smirked; he wasn’t so sure it was as wide an ocean as she implied. He could feel the power he was awakening with each of these epic spells. He was determined to reach level 100 and begin his “steel-seeking” journey as soon as possible. The veil walkers of Ruhn constantly watching, judging, and controlling him felt like a collar around his neck, and Victor didn’t like collars.
As part of his mind went down those prideful paths, most of his concentration remained on the spell he was building in his pathways. He thought it was beautiful. The pattern was a delicate, multi-pronged galaxy of bright blue and smoldering red suns interlocked with a weave of glittering, contrasting ribbons of Energy. When he finished the final loop, sweeping the rage through the control structure Azforath had designed for him, the spell flared brilliantly, and Victor felt a rush of accomplishment as the System slowed his perception of the world.
***Warning! The spell being cast does not follow System-designed iterations and may be too powerful for you. Proceed at your own risk.***
***Warning! Non-System spell pattern detected! You will only receive this warning one time. Do you wish to halt this process? YES/NO.***
“No,” Victor said, his voice like thunder in the silence the System had wrought. Instantly, the world continued its usual course, and Energy siphoned out of his Cores, feeding the hungry, powerful, elder magic transformation. Victor arched his back and roared as ancient might swelled his body. His muscles and bones, his organs and flesh—all exploded with rapid growth as sulking, malevolent cold radiated off of him, steaming like dry ice.
Victor was only partly aware of his body’s transformation. His mind had become focused on the many things that nagged at the corners of his awareness—things that angered him, that deserved a thoughtful, calculated destruction. He thought of how it chafed, knowing he was beholden to Dar for simply wanting his friend’s spirit returned from the undead scum who had stolen it. He contemplated the veil walkers who controlled his every move on Ruhn. He thought of the Warlord of Zaafor and his betrayal. His fists clenched, and white fog rolled out of his nostrils.
He thought of Valla and how she’d decided life apart in the hopes of coming together again was better than grasping every moment together. Visions of opponents, people he’d fought, rushed across his mind. Images of friends he’d lost danced through his thoughts—Yrella, broken and pitiful; Sarl, torn to shreds by ghouls; Oynalla—old mother—gone, abandoning him to seek a new life; and hundreds of other faces, from slaves in the mines to soldiers on the battlefield to fellow iron rankers forced to fight him to the death.
Victor stomped toward the ocean and bellowed his fury, but he didn’t lose himself. No, though his rage was monumental, and he practically vibrated with the need to destroy, he managed to whirl and narrow his eyes—pale blue-white like windows onto a glacier’s slopes—at Tes. “I don’t like this feeling,” he growled, his voice echoing strangely off the icy ground. Had his presence frozen the moisture in the sand?
“Push the fury aside, Victor. Tell yourself you’ll brood about it later. Instead, savor the power that flows through you. Do you feel your strength? Do you comprehend the destructive potential and resilience?”
Victor nodded. He did. He knew his sulking rage was ready to explode if he needed it to, but he could keep it back. He could bide his time. He was a glacier incarnate. His progress was inevitable. He would grind away whatever opposed him. His mighty form was built for destruction; like the glacier, any scars his foes piled upon him would smooth out as the inevitability of his nature froze the very air, filling the gaping chasms of destruction on his slopes.
Tes, shielding her eyes and looking up at him, called out, “You’re enormous! Look beyond me. How far can you see?”
Victor let his frozen gaze travel up the sloping hill toward the village, and there, he could see dozens of buildings all the way to his home. People stood about, some of them gaping and pointing his way. His frigid vision turned things cold and lifeless. Colors were bland, and people looked frightened. Victor didn’t like it. Without another thought, he reached into his pathway and yanked the threads of Energy away from the spell pattern, shattering the magic and ending the transformation.
As his Cores reclaimed their Energies, Victor fell to his knees, his body rapidly decreasing in size. He cradled his face in his hands, shaking his head. “So much,” he groaned.
“So much?” Tes hurried to his side, gently cradling the back of his neck.
“So much that I’m pissed off about—things I never think about.” He looked up at Tes—she must have increased her size to match his unmodified bulk. “The blue ice is different from magma. Magma has hot, passionate fury, but the blue ice is more brooding, calculating, and cold. It had me thinking about all the little things that have upset me over the years: insults, lost friends, lost loves, enemies—everything!”
“But you were in control…” Tes trailed off, gently kneading his neck. “I know what you mean, however. It wasn’t a pleasant state of mind.”
Victor inhaled a deep breath and then blew it out shakily. “Right. It worked, though, Tes. Oh shit—” Victor turned his eyes to the System messages in the corner of his vision:
***You have discovered a new spell: Glacial Wrath – Epic.***
***Glacial Wrath – Epic: Prerequisites: Affinity – Rage, Fury or Hatred, Affinity – Blue Ice. You channel the cold, patient anger of the glacier. While affected by this transformation, you are immune to fire-based or cold-based attacks. While the spell persists, abilities that make use of your blue ice attunement double in effectiveness, and you benefit from modified Berserk effects: Double strength, massively increased resilience, and powerful regenerative capabilities. Be cautious, for while your mastery affords you control over this deep anger, it may take a toll on your psyche. Energy Cost: 5,000 – scalable. Cooldown: Long.***
***Warning! This spell is not System-designed! Use it with caution—there are no safeguards in place. This is the only time you will receive this warning!***
Victor read the description to Tes, and she nodded sagely, continuing to rub his neck. “Save this for a last resort, Victor. As you continue to strengthen your will, it will grow easier and easier to control how that cold anger affects you.”
“Agreed.” He sighed and stood, taking another cleansing breath of the sea air. “Thank you, Tes.”
“For?”
“For being here.” He gestured down the beach toward the trail that would lead them up to his home. “Let’s go get a bite to eat and say goodbye to Gorro. I’m ready to get back to work.” Smiling, trying to put the raw emotions behind him, he led the way back home. As they walked, he took a moment to look over his spells, enjoying the warm glow of satisfaction as he saw all the new entries:
