Broken Mage (22 page)

He had run through numerous ideas
following each on until he hit a dead end. Most of them were
possible but the required time, energy and size made them
impractical. It was frustrating it didn’t seem like it should be
that hard. It was essentially just a thin shield with an
illusionary layer over it. Why was it giving him so much
trouble?

Picking up a nearby stick Thad started
stabbing the ground lazily as he thought. The cool grass under his
bare feet helped drain the tension away as he continued to come up
with a solution to his problem. There was no way the camouflaged
shield was more complicated than some of his other works. There had
to be a way to make it work. His frustration building Thad threw
the thin stick on the ground.

“Very nice, is this what the surface is
like?”

Turning Thad found Sae-Thae hovering
slightly over the grass. In the full sunlight the Vathari skin
looked almost translucent. He was sure that if they went out in the
full sunlight for long they would burn faster than oil soaked wood
in a furnace.

“Good to see you Sae-Thae. I must admit
I have missed your company as of late.” Thad said getting to his
feet.

“I apologize for not meeting you sooner
but I had business of my own to attend to. While I’m here may I ask
what you were so intently thinking about?”

Thad let out a heavy sigh. “I have been
trying to figure out how to get a spell of mine to work as an
enchantment, but so far nothing I have come up with will work for
what I need.”

Sae-Thae sat back and immediately one
of the chairs from his study immediately appeared under him. “I
myself do not have the skill to enchant, but I have studied it
intently so that I can better understand the art. It does so
intrigue me. The ability to takes one’s own spells and permanently
graft them onto an inanimate object. I have only got to examine two
of the items you have made thus far but I find them to be a bit
crude and I doubt they will last more than a few years. The idea
behind them is brilliant but you could have done so much more if
you had better thought them out.”

Sae-Thae waved his hand and the magical
eye Thad had made appeared in his hand. “Take this for example; you
have three different cores, each one performing a unique function.
This is much like I have seen on others items but you have severely
limited it in its use. If you would have made it able to make the
focus move, or if it could transfer sound, it would be much more
useful. There are hundreds of little changes you could do to make
it a truly magnificent piece. The same can be said of your
lightning trap my men brought in. It does its job but that’s all it
has, nothing to make it unique or truly valuable.”

Waving his hand again the magical eye
disappeared and was replaced with Thad’s staff. “Now this is truly
a magnificent item. I would send every one of my wizards to their
death to obtain such a powerful artifact. The only downside is I
would most likely have to fight the mage who acquired it to the
death.”

Sae-Thae stood up from his chair and
waved his hand and a small necklace popped into Thad’s hand. It was
a simple item with one large gem in the middle and a string of
smaller ones around it. Knowing that the Vathari wouldn’t bother
showing him something of a mundane nature, Thad looked at it
through his magical sight. The item glowed brightly with magical
energy. It was a marvelous item that shielded anyone wearing
it.

Unlike his other shields, the main core
focused and brought all the other enchantments together. It was
simply brilliant and something he hadn’t thought of before. Well
that wasn’t completely true it worked much the way he had done some
of his other enchantments but he had never carried the idea over to
his other work.

Thad took his time and looked at each
core one at a time. The shield only turned on when anything moved
at the wearer at a speed that would cause damage. It also trigged
if anything of metal touched the skin. The necklace was set up much
the way his staff was so that all the needed spells used all the
cores magic so that unless it needed to be triggered it always
stored more energy that it needed for the base enchantments. While
he had linked cores before each one only supported the center core
they never had their own enchantment as well.

“I never thought of doing it like that.
Thank you very much for the idea. I think it will solve my problem
though it will take much longer to produce than I wished.” Thad
said letting the necklace disappear into nothingness.

“I am glad I could be of assistance.”
Sae-Thae said bowing his head slightly. “Truthfully I am amazed you
are as skilled as you are without a traditional teacher. We have
had some with magical power that were not allowed in the mage’s
school, due to the limits who have taught themselves, but most of
them end up burning themselves out and those that don’t aren’t even
competent enough to light a fire.”

Thad couldn’t help but to smile at the
praise. “I can’t say I didn’t have any help but it hasn’t been easy
for the first year I went about it all wrong and tried to force the
magic to do what I wanted instead of letting it flow
naturally.”

“Now, that is simply amazing. A year
you say? If you were performing anything other than the simplest of
spells you’re either very strong or very lucky.” Sae-Thae said his
face take on a very serious look.

“I would guess very lucky.” Thad said
half laughing.

Sae-Thae joined in the laugher though
it sounded much darker coming from the Vathari mage. “Don’t sell
yourself short, the staff alone shows that you have great promise.
I wouldn’t doubt that even in the prime of your people’s time that
you would have been one of the most skilled mages the humans had to
offer. If not then I don’t see how the Brotherhood had been able to
drive them to extinction”

The mention of the Brotherhood grabbed
Thad’s attention. He had read a small amount about them. They were
the order that’s sole task had been to seek out and destroy
anything of magical nature including mages. “What can you tell me
of the Brotherhood?”

Sae-Thae’s face took on a
serious tone. “The Brotherhood of the Fox was once one of the
largest armies ever formed. With the Empires full might backing
them they hunted down and killed the mages and non-human races.
Normally mages had little to fear from armies but somehow the
Brotherhood was able to learn to craft weapons that absorbed any
magical energy they came into contact with. Sadly during the time
you call the Fae Wars, the
Vathari by our
own laws couldn’t band together to fight off the Brotherhood and we
suffered heavily. Thankfully most of our race lived underground and
out of the Brotherhoods reach. The other races were not as lucky
and many were drove to the brink of extinction. The Brotherhood
didn’t end with the end of the Fae Wars, from our information they
are still a plague on the surface, I wish I knew more to tell you
but our information on the group is limited at best.”

“It’s more than I knew before.” Thad
said slightly disappointed.

“Now back to the real reason I stopped
by. I heard there was a commotion in the southern tunnels. Was that
by chance you and your friends?”

“I’m not sure where the southern
tunnels are but if you mean the little skirmish where the herd of
creatures are, then yes that was us.”

Sae-Thae let out another short laugh.
“I figured it was. I must say you continue to baffle the warriors.
They don’t know how you were able to kill over twelve of their
soldiers and disappear without a trace when every tunnel in the
area was guarded. It seems that my mages and the priests are to
make a more active role in the battles. My warrior counterpart is
not happy about it at all, but the failure of his soldiers to bring
you to heel has the rest of us quite happy, for too long he has
held too much esteem for himself.”

“I am glad I could spice up your day.”
Thad said half smiling to himself.

“That you did, but it seems that our
time here grows short and I must attend to other matters. Good
hunting my friend.” Sae-Thae said before disappearing leaving Thad
alone.

Sae-Thae had given him plenty to think
about but right now he wished that he would wake so that he could
start working on the disguise shield. After spending nights trying
to get into his own dream world when he finally accomplished it was
now trying to get out after what felt like only a short stay. Sadly
wanting to wake didn’t, maybe with more skill he would be able to
wake himself. For now he simply sat down and began to work on how
the enchantment would work when it was finished.

The great thing about the dream world
was that he didn’t have to do the work to see the finished work.
That didn’t mean it would work in the waking world but it gave him
a base idea to begin with. He started out with five cores connected
together the center one working as the driving force. The first
core created a thin shield to work as a base. The second core
searched the surrounding area and copied the heat patterns. The
third core used the information from the second core to make an
illusion over the shield that mimicked the heat signatures. The
last core absorbed all sound made within the shield so that should
even a battle break out within no one outside of the shield would
be the wiser.

Within his dream it worked perfectly
and only took the time to think it up to create. Once he woke he
would begin his work but it would take days just to get the gems to
link correctly so they worked in harmony and not independently. It
was the major point of the whole design. He normally ran into
troubles when he tried something new, but this time he had seen an
example of the work, and he was sure he understood the basic
principle.

With his main problem solved Thad laid
back and relaxed simply enjoying the feel of the warmth of the sun
on his skin. How long had he been gone from Farlan? He knew that
the princess’s twelfth birthday was shortly after he had lost
contact with her. Since he had stopped receiving messages he had no
real way to measure time. He had cut his hair numerous times
keeping it at shoulder length but having no clue of how fast it
grew he couldn’t use that as a constant measure of time. From the
feel of it he was sure he had been underground for at least a year
if not more but it could have only been a season or two.

His body had grown thin over his time
in the subterranean. It was mainly due to the thin diet he had.
Though they had meat they had to ration it and Crusher ate about
three times as much as him and according to the dwarf that was him
eating light. Thad had grown fairly fond of the moss that grew
naturally on the cave walls. It was a little spongy but it had a
good flavor when it was cooked.

Thad let out a short laugh. For the
past two years his life had been anything but what he had expected
it to be. Even when he had first learned magic he never expected
that he would save a queen, be thrown in prison, fight in a war,
get captured, escape and then get trapped in an unending network of
underground tunnels. It was almost as if someone was purposely
playing with him out of some morbid sense of humor.

CHAPTER XIX

Thad sat hunched over the pair of thick
bracelets that he had been working on for the past four days.
Unlike most of his other work these had been designed not only to
be practical but also were pleasing to the eye. The main base metal
was made of a mix of the ultra-light metal and the white steel as
Crusher had suggested. Over the base metal he had added a thin
layer of gold made from some of the coins they had taken off the
dead Vathari warriors. Thad had to admit that they looked like
something a rich Rane merchant or maybe a king would wear to a
party.

Each bracelet had two parts that linked
together. The gems had been chosen and placed not only for effect
but to look pleasing as well. Each side of the bracelets held its
own enchantments that would aid him in not only the subterranean
but also when he returned to the surface world. Together his four
new bracelets would replace most of his rings and would do it much
more efficiently.

The right bracelet first part covered
the cloaking, silencing, and shield spells. Each spell had three
levels so that they could be used in different situations. The
cloaking spell could layer the enchantment in either nightsight or
the normal light spectrum. The one for the light spectrum was a
little more complicated but it simply took what one side of the
shield saw and placed it on the other in three hundred and sixty
degree radius. It had been the hardest single enchantment so far
had had taken nearly a day alone on its own.

The other side of the right bracelet
covered his light spell. He had thought about adding more to it but
the spell itself could be used in many ways, and each one was in
essence its own enchantment. So he had taken the time to make what
was normally a simple spell into something much more complex. It
even included a spell that would surround him in a ball of absolute
darkness.

The left bracelet was more for combat
and carried his paralyzing spell, as well as many others that he
had used with great success. He still hadn’t found a way around the
use of more volatile spells but he wasn’t sure if those should be
placed on a solitary item that could be used by anyone who was able
to get ahold of them. The only true combat spell was the magical
force spell that while it would push him back could still devastate
anything living.