Spellscribed: Resurgence (15 page)

"Gods." She said, cradling the man in her arms as she looked over the smoldering, some still burning carcasses of thousands of sand hornets. "How can this wisp of a man be so weak, but also so strong?"

Her heart once again swelled in her chest, her fatigue temporarily forgotten. They were back together. With his help, she could fix things.

For a while, it was only dark. Then Endrance's jaw started to hurt. With that pain came awareness that the rest of his body ached, and his stomach was a gnawing pit of hunger. That much stimulation overcame whatever state was immobilizing him, and he opened his eyes.

He realized that he was lying on his back, his head tilted back at an uncomfortable angle and his mouth was levered open by a short but wide-mouthed metal funnel. A metallic taste was in his mouth, and he hoped that there was a good reason he was being treated this way.

Bridget's face came into view. She was holding a steaming pot by a handle, a wooden spoon spattered with gruel. She noticed his eyes open as she tilted the pot towards the funnel, and hesitated. Relief broke through the tension in her face, and she sighed, setting the pot down next to her.

"Finally." she said, shaking her head. "Took you long enough."

Endrance reached up and pulled the funnel out of his mouth. He closed and opened his jaw a few times as he sat up, groaning. He was already in considerably better condition than when he had effected his escape; he was now wearing something. A quick glance down informed him that he was wearing an off-white, short-sleeved robe. He looked back up to Bridget, and gave her a weak smile.

"You know me." he said. "I like going at my own pace."

Bridget thrust the wooden spoon into his hands. "Here." she said bluntly. "Hurry and eat. We need you."

"We?" Endrance asked. He looked around the room. They were somewhere in the High King's palace, by the look of the room. It was probably at one point used as a waiting room of some sort, but the furniture had been broken, turned into makeshift barricades for half-broken doors. Several dried sprays of ichorous blood and dismembered pieces of sand hornet spattered the walls around the barricades. The seat and couch cushions had been piled together in the back of the room to make the simple bed where he had lain. Nearby, it looked like Tanya was sleeping. "Where's Selene? Or Joven?" he asked finally. "I should think they'd want to be here."

Bridget only gave him a cryptic look before shaking her head and gesturing to Tanya. "It's just us, and she's hurt." Bridget said. "Bad."

Endrance felt a chill run down his spine, but turned to the unconscious Draugnoa. "What happened?" he asked.

"Don't know." Bridget said. "She's been having some bad headaches. Got worse over the last two months. Then the day came when I can only guess it was you calling the sand hornets, she got a nosebleed. Couple of days later, I wake up and find her unconscious. Haven't been able to wake her up since." The Draugnoa explained Tanya's symptoms with a tired voice. "I've been trying to get you to wake up for hours. Her breathing's getting weak."

Endrance's eyes widened as he heard the news. "She's been like this for months? By all magic… I'm surprised she's still alive!"

He rolled onto his hands and knees, crawling the short distance to his fallen comrade without bothering to stand. Tanya was pale, and her breathing was shallow and slow. He opened one of her eyes and saw it was rolled back so far he could barely see the iris. He felt along her scalp gingerly, careful to only touch, not push, on her head in any way. He found what he could only describe as a crease in the bone of her skull; a line along the top left side of her head that was almost six inches long. The depression was slight, but any kind of deformation of her skull was really bad news.

"This is bad." Endrance said. "But I think I might be able to help."

Bridget nodded, standing. She picked up her weapons and gave them a warm up swing. "Good." she said. "Do that, I'm going to make sure no more of those bugs try to get in here.

Endrance remembered the hornets, and applied the barest amount of concentration towards them. "There's only thirty seven of them within a hundred yards. They will not approach anymore."

Bridget shouldered her cleavers, the blades crossing behind her head. "How do you know that?" she asked.

Endrance adjusted Tanya's body. "Because," he explained. "I told them to leave us alone. I control them perfectly, now that I have the queen's abilities."

"Oh." Bridget said. "But you managed to call them before the queen-"

"I had only the impression of a single drone." Endrance interrupted, positioning himself so he was kneeling at Tanya's shoulders, with her head up on his lap. "So I could only control them in the most general of terms. Now I can control them fairly accurately."

"How accurate?" she asked.

Endrance shrugged, placing his hands on Tanya's temples. Despite his confidence, Bridget could see the tremble in his hands as he moved; as if the bracers on his arms were almost too heavy to lift. "I can control the individual actions of around 40 of them simultaneously, or exponentially larger numbers with slightly less precision." he explained.

"By the gods." Bridget muttered. "That's terrifying."

The mage shrugged, his body still bone thin. "You don't have the queen's ego in your head, which is actually much scarier. Now, I need to focus." He said brusquely.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked.

"Can you make me something more substantial to eat?" Endrance asked. "I think I can hear the wind pass between my ribs and this spell will take a lot of power to pull off."

Bridget looked at him with exasperation, but sighed and lowered her weapons. "Fine." she said. She hefted her weapons and moved to clamber over the barricade.

Endrance closed his eyes, and began working. His spell matrix was no longer needed to covertly prepare a spell form, but he kept it in place anyway. He knew it was a tool that could be quite helpful in the future. He instead cast the first of the life spells he had been taught, and before had so little success with unless Pentarch mediated for him. With the time he had spent, he finally had managed to break down the conceptual boundaries that had prevented him from properly casting spells using life energy.

He chanted the long form of the spell, and his hands formed the complicated gestures needed to push his power into the proper spell-form. He managed to use nearly the exact amount required to create the spell, only expending a smidgen of his power in the process. His practice with altering miniscule amounts of power was critical to improving upon the basics of spell casting, and the fruits of his struggles were evident.

He wasn't going to lie to himself about it though; quite a bit of his newfound expertise came from the centuries of experience and training that his master Kaelob had gained before his death at Endrance's hands. However, he had the experience now and he wasn't about to cripple himself because he felt that his skills were unfairly gained.

The first spell completed, and he touched his hands to Tanya's temples. Immediately he became aware of what was happening to her. It wasn't words, or even an analysis dumped into his mind. Instead, it was like he was just aware the moment he inquired, that there was blood pooling in her brain; building pressure and she was going to die very soon. With normal medicine and the powerful healing magic of Ironsoul's best mages, she might live, but she would be different from the way she was before. Parts of her mind were almost certainly destroyed.

He had to assemble the proper spell, or everything she was would be lost. He quickly assembled the mental components he felt he would need. He didn't know any spell that would do what he wanted, so he had to take the principles of life magic spells and assemble it from scratch. He did so, using his spell matrix to form the spell internally as he developed it. Minutes passed as it appeared he was doing nothing. Those minutes quickly stretched into an hour, and Bridget returned.

She turned to the fire she had used to prepare his gruel, and rekindled it. She noted that Endrance was still in the position he had been in when she left and shrugged, going about cooking something more substantial. The room began to fill with a delicious aroma, but Endrance was too dedicated to his spell to even notice.

Once the spell was prepared, he began casting the form. He took his time, carefully examining every portion of the form as he assembled it with words of power and his hands. He had to be sure to introduce as little variance as possible, especially since he had already needed to accept some side effects since he hadn't the days of time it would take to make the spell flawless.

He completed the spell, releasing it as he touched her forehead. Golden light limned her head and hair, flickering and shimmering like there were a thousand facets in her skin. Endrance watched as the spell went to work, the effects of his first spell still informing him of her condition. Her skull made an audible crunching sound as the crease smoothed out, and Endrance winced. He knew the blood was being siphoned away and the breach sealed. Though the last part of the spell was one that his life magic couldn't discern for him. The last half of the spell rejuvenated the parts of her brain that had been drowning in blood, and restored them to how they were before her injury. He was just not able to tell if she would be the same until she woke up.

Tanya woke up almost immediately, her eyes snapping open and focusing on him. "Gyaaah!" she shouted, sitting up, her forehead clipping his chin. Both of them reeled, Endrance holding his chin in pain, while Tanya held her forehead.

"Ahh…" Endrance moaned. "Of course, that's what I get."

Tanya rubbed her forehead. "Get for what?" she asked, dazedly.

Endrance sighed, setting his thoughts towards moving power to his forehead. It would eventually heal the injury. "You need to stop hitting your head" he protested. "How are you feeling, Tanya?" he asked to change the subject.

Tanya shifted her seating until she was able to see both Bridget and Endrance. "I feel better." she said. "Better than I have in ages. I take it our rescue mission was successful?"

"With no help from you, though." Bridget griped in good spirits, unable to hide the smile on her face. "You're alive, and Endrance is free, that's really better than I had hoped for yesterday."

"That's good." Tanya said.

Bridget shrugged. "Even found a butcher's shop that was still in operation, though I think he's going to report me to the army when he gets out of the room I locked him in."

"Is that all?" Endrance asked Tanya, ignoring the act of Bridget's illegal acquisition of food. "Are you feeling any pain, or discomfort? Do you feel sleepy-"

"I do." Bridget piped in, doling out both the pot of cooled gruel and a slab of cooked meat that took up half the plate to its very edges. "Once you're done eating, I need one of you to take watch while I get some sleep."

Tanya and Endrance took the plates and agreed to share the spoon for the gruel. Bridget handed Endrance a sheathed knife and some utensils. "Here." she said. "Since you were stark naked when I found you and there wasn't any sign of your possessions in that metal ball you were trapped in, I can guess you're going to need it."

"Thanks." Endrance asked.

Tanya laughed. "That explains why you're wearing my spare dress." she said before taking a bite of seared meat. Endrance sputtered and looked down at the clothing he was wearing. It looked different from the perspective of wearing it, but after a second it clicked. He was wearing one of her dresses.

"That… explains a lot." he said. "Kind of loose in strange places."

"You wear it well, though." Tanya replied. Bridget huffed and laid down in the cushions next to them, shooing them to the other side of the room so she could sleep. She was unconscious by the time they had made it across the room. Endrance and Tanya watched her doze for a few seconds before sitting down again.

"All right." Endrance said, clearing his mind of distractions. "I've been gone a long time, yes?"

"A little over a year."

"I missed things."

"Yes. Quite a bit."

"All right." Endrance replied, closing his eyes and nodding. "Fill me in."

Tanya did so, answering his questions as directly as possible. But she left out what had happened to Joven for the time being. Endrance was barely handling being awake after performing whatever magic he had woven to fix her life, and he looked like he was on the brink of starvation. His hands trembled and scraped the utensils across the plate as he tried to eat. She didn't want to burden him so soon.

She instead just left out any details alluding to his death, including leaving out exactly how they had convinced Balen to participate in the invasion. Hours passed, and she finally finished recounting what she knew. "And… then I remember fading out at camp when I was in the middle of my watch. Next thing I know, your huge face was looming in my vision."

"Well, it seems you have had no side effects." Endrance declared. "That I or my magic can tell, anyway. I think you've managed to make a recovery."

"That's good." Tanya said. "My head's clearer than it has been in months."

Endrance nodded. "Great." he said. "However, I am concerned about this invasion you whipped up. Do you have any idea how many people are going to die because you pointed the barbarians at Ironsoul when the country is at its weakest?"

Tanya shrugged. "We would have attacked sooner or later, if not in force like now, then in small skirmishes until we had a foothold on this side of the stone curtain again. We'd just take longer, since it would mean the generals would have to think of the idea. And you know how long it takes any of them to have ideas. In the meantime, Ironsoul would recover somewhat, and be in a better position to protect itself." She explained.