Chapter Eleven.

It’s not every day you find yourself enthroned on a literal mountain of corpses. The battle against the Bane had been as quick as it was anticlimactic; the swarm had depopulated themselves in minutes rushing heedlessly into my domain. My biggest struggle had been to keep above the rapidly rising body pile as the isopod-looking monsters hurled themselves to their deaths. It had been incredibly easy for me, and that’s why I was now questioning myself.

I’m… really a monster now, aren’t I?

Maybe it was all the ominous ‘tool tips’ setting the stage but this ability felt different to me, it was the first time I’d felt something like a moral twinge since coming to this place. As the Bane entered my aura I’d felt their hungry little minds churning away and just told them to stop.

Die, I’d ordered. Die, they did.

This was op as hell, and if I’d been in a game I’d have complained to the devs as soon as I got bored slaughtering my way through all resistance. However, this was my life now- not a game. I was having trouble reconciling with the fact that while I thought of myself as honorable, I’d essentially transformed into a living WMD. Anyone nearby was a literal angry thought away from death at my hands.

*crunch*

What the heck?

*crunch*

Turning in place I found Skritter, who’d grown bored of my brooding and begun munching happily on the dead bugs at the top of the pile. He froze with his mouth full as he sensed my glare on him.

“Sorry, I was hungry.” Glancing at his hands guiltily, he offered me the half-eaten bane-bug. “Want some?”

I shook my head resignedly and sent a negative through the link. Can’t a guy have a moment of introspection in peace!?

Eh, I guess I’d never been one to brood all that much. If I didn’t want to be known as a monster then it was just going to have to be on me to not behave like one. People were going to form their own opinions no matter what and I couldn’t beat myself up over something out of my control.

Emotional crisis averted, I looked around for my supposed ‘teacher’. To my shock I found him at the edge of my corpse mountain also munching his way through bane bugs. He had a much more sophisticated setup; a steampunk-esq portable oven rotating several bugs inside like a rotisserie and a small table with several already cooked- each arranged artfully on porcelain tableware by the butler-bot.

Seeing my incredulous stare he waved and quickly finished eating.

“Ah, welcome! You seemed a bit maudlin so I left you be while I had some supper prepared. Come join me, the Bane are quite the delicacy and- thanks to the fact that they are almost universally reviled- a rare treat!” Pointing at a chair that suddenly appeared he gestured for me to sit.

Sighing internally I acquiesced and sat while he kept talking. “The Bane were actually the result of a failed attempt by an amateur mage to create a more prolific subspecies of a certain rare breed of isopod renowned for its delicious taste. In nature it is slow breeding and fragile, thus quite an expensive treat. Had he succeeded I’ve no doubt he’d be quite wealthy now, alas he instead created the Bane- and was their first victim. Along with much of the kingdom he lived in at the time.”

Well, that got dark fast. Regardless of their unpleasant origins, the Bane were actually delicious. The taste was like lobster but instead of the typical ‘seafood’ taste it leaned towards earthy, and whatever spices Veris used complimented it very nicely.

We finished eating what he’d prepared (I’d say with full bellies but to be honest I could probably eat the whole mountain in one sitting) and Veris leaned back in his chair contentedly before he began questioning me on my first controlled use of magic. When I expressed my concerns about how dangerous I’d become he snorted.

“Kosimar, the Bane are effectively mindless. Of course you can simply command their deaths! You think this world would still exist if the creatures had any resistance to magical effects? No, they only still survive in isolated caverns like this one because nothing equipped to exterminate them has found it yet. Dangerous enough to the unprepared or uninformed, but ultimately a problem that has long been solved on the surface.”

Relieved (and a little disappointed) I couldn’t help but perk up in curiosity at his mention of the surface.

“You mentioned the surface, what’s it like? How far… down are we? And what do you call… the world?”

He laughed for a moment and waved off the deluge of questions. “Slow down my boy, we’re in no rush. Give me a moment and I’ll do my best to satisfy your questions.” Pausing in contemplation for a moment he began speaking slowly.

“I’ll answer in order of difficulty. To start with, our current depth! We’re only in the upper regions of the Deep Hollows, so I would estimate us to be between thirty four and thirty five hundred kilometers beneath the surface.”

WHAT!? I had to stop myself from falling out of my chair at this revelation. How are we not burning in magma right now?? Thirty five hundred… that would be inside of Earth’s core!

“Is something the matter?” Veris was looking at me quizzically.

“Yes, where is all the magma?? Shouldn’t this place be completely molten?”

“Mag-ma? I’m not sure what you mean Kosimar, why would it be molten here? Can you elaborate?” His look shifted confusion to studious curiosity and I knew I’d have to be careful. I’d trusted Veris so far, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the whole ‘from another world’ talk. Although to be fair to Veris, I doubt his reaction would be anything but more questions.

“It’s nothing, sorry to interrupt.”

Veris stared suspiciously at me before deciding to continue with a shrug. “As you wish then. Where was I?” Scratching his beard for a moment he got his thoughts back on track.

“Ah yes! The name. An interesting question and slightly more complex to answer. Various peoples have their own traditions of course, but the predominant convention is a loose translation based on old Achoran ‘low’ speech. ‘High’ Achoran would be more accurate, but the ancient Achorai who used it were possessed of at least one sensory organ which none other has been found to possess. The word has been translated as ‘Warded’ or ‘Sheltered’, becoming known colloquially as Haven in recent years.”

Haven huh? I liked that name better than ‘Earth’ if I was honest. Yeah people are attached to it and there’s a few vaguely philosophical reasons floating around my memory, but I’d always found the name of my home planet to be a little… boring. Like if I ever met aliens I’d have to say, ‘Hi, I’m Ray from planet Dirt’. Veris hadn’t stopped speaking and for a second I scrambled to catch up mentally with our conversation.

“And as to your final question, the surface is as it always has been. An overblown festering swamp of busybodies who won’t stop nattering long enough for me to get a single moments’ peace!” His mood soured and he groused for a while afterwards. “Honestly, Kosimar I’m not the most ideal candidate to expound on the surface. If I’d wanted to think about the place I’d not have effectively exiled myself down here.”

Straightening up, he cleared the melancholy from his face. “Right, enough chatter. We’ll need to go over a few more fundamentals before I’ll concede you’re ready to be considered an apprentice of the mystic arts. We’ll continue a bit off from this area as it might get… messy.” Gesturing to the massive bug pile, I had to concede his point.

When he deemed that we’d moved far enough away, he resumed my instruction. “You’ve learned the basics of establishing your aura and weaponizing it. For the time being, we shall shift our focus towards two additional areas; Enhancement, and Warding.” Gesturing to himself, he floated back into the air.

“Enhancement is used to imbue magical effects into the otherwise mundane. You used it briefly- and most inefficiently- when you levitated yourself during your earlier escapade.”

“So I’ll be able to fly?” I couldn’t help but get excited at the prospect.

“Well yes… but actually no.” He shook his head. “You’ll not be flying per se with your aura; more akin to deciding gravity is not quite as important as it should be and imparting yourself with momentum.”

Sounds like flying to me, Mr ‘Pedantics police’.

“Make careful note to only include yourself in the effect this time, Kosimar. A good part of how you drained yourself the last time was attempting to decide that gravity wouldn’t work at all in your aura.” Veris reproached, though he was smiling a bit to take the sting out of his words.

Wincing at the reminder of my brief power trip, I focused on releasing my aura once more. It spread out from me, stopping right at twenty meters this time, and I focused on lifting myself into the air.

It turns out you need to be specific when manipulating the laws of the universe, because when my [Law] commanded ‘up’, I went up. The ground fractured around my feet and I rocketed into the air with a *boom* before plowing into the ceiling with enough force to dislodge several stalactites and send them hurtling to the ground below.

I’d splattered painfully across several meters of the ceiling, immediately losing control of both my aura and shapeshifting with both winking out as I suddenly scrambled to grip the broken rock with my tendrils. As I clung for dear life, gales of laughter drifted up faintly from Veris who’d completely lost his composure at my brief stint as a living rocket.

Grumbling mentally over his apparent lack of concern for my well being, I started summoning my aura again.

A shout from below caught my attention. “Careful Kosimar! It takes a great deal of energy to move at such impressive speed, your reserves have been depleted more than you would expect.”

As usual, he was right. Though it was pretty tough for me to tell for sure, feeling out my aura gave me the sense that singular use of power had used almost half my total mana. Appalled at the ridiculous expenditure, I realized how easy it would have been for me to accidentally deplete myself on the way back down.

Sending Veris an impression of a thumbs up through the link (to his visible confusion), I shifted fully into bat-form and focused my aura to just make me lighter rather than apply any momentum. The change was immediate, gripping the ceiling was trivial and while I could definitely feel the drain on my mana it would take several minutes at least to empty on me.

Remembering my previous failure as the bat- and the two hundred plus meter drop- made letting go of the ceiling a little difficult, and once I let go I found myself briefly scrambling to adjust my position on the way down. Thankfully the lightening effect from my aura and my panickey flopping was enough to slow my descent to land without injury (other than my pride, I really wished Veris would stop snickering).

“Not quite swooping about gracefully yet, hmm?” Veris said with a grin

“Yeah yeah, I’ll get there… eventually.”

Chuckling at my reply he had me wait for my magic to replenish before we resumed training. Enhancement magic was surprisingly difficult to get a hang of; if I made my directions too broad then it would rapidly drain me while giving me an overpowered (and uncontrollable) effect. If I got really specific with my use then I could manage, but then it took several minutes of careful thought and preparation to actually cast anything.

The effects were also very difficult to keep in a narrow scope. I frequently found that my magic had brought bits of rock and dust along with me as practiced levitating myself into the air. Veris assured me that precision and speed would come with practice (just like everything else really) and I shouldn’t be discouraged that I wasn’t automatically the best at something. Especially since said thing was kinda contrary to my power’s nature.

“Auramancy is by the very definition a power with broad application Kosimar. It will take a great deal of effort on your part to utilize it efficiently like this.” He said after several hours of frustratingly slow progress. “We’ll take a break from Enhancement for now and turn our attention to Warding. It might prove a bit easier for you, given wards are themselves an area effect.”

Summoning a clear bubble of magic (that had Skritter hissing and scampering back) he began the next lesson.

“Wards take many forms but the two most common are protective as you see here, or perceptive such as what alerted me to the incoming Bane swarm. Your [Law] at its most basic level functions as a bit of both, giving you a sense of your surroundings like a perceptive ward while shielding you from hostile magic like a protective. We will focus on very carefully amplifying these two effects individually, using your aura as a base. Now,” Releasing the bubble he gave me a slightly patronizing look. “What would you assume to be the most effective shape for a protective ward?”

Just looking at him I knew this question was a trap somehow, but he’d been using a bubble ward on me almost the whole time since I’d met him so I answered, “A circle… no a sphere!”

“Wrong!” He shouted triumphantly and I recognized an approaching intellectual tirade. “The sphere does make efficient use of space and adequately distributes incoming force- like so.”

He summoned a new bubble and started shooting rocks at it with his magic, the rocks either shattering or skipping off the rounded surface. “But should the integrity be compromised…”

A fallen stalactite lifted off the ground and condensed, growing a point that looked wickedly sharp before launching at the bubble and piercing it right through. As soon as the ward was punctured, the magic forming it scattered and winked out of existence.

“The entire structure fails. No, the best possible shape for a ward is in fact… the Hexagon!”

He summoned another basketball-sized sphere of magic, only this time it was a geodesic formed from dozens of overlapping hexagons rotating freely.

“Isn’t that just a sphere with extra steps?” I needled with an exaggerated innocent tone.

He gave me a brief glare that could curdle milk at my apparent sacrilege. “This is merely a representation! The hexagon’s versatility is such that it can be applied in whatever shape most appropriate for the task at hand. Behold!”

Repeating the previous demonstration the sharpened stalactite hurled into the sphere, only this time it barely punctured at all with only the single hexagon that was directly hit being destroyed.

“You see? With this revolutionary technique I have pioneered, a single breach does not compromise the ward. In fact-” The hexagons forming the sphere shuffled, cutting off the tip of the stalactite and plugging the gap from the destroyed panel. “My hex-ward can provide continuous protection even when damaged, maintaining a protective sphere even after suffering up to sixty percent damage. Even after it will still function at only a slightly diminished rate.”

He pointed aggressively at the ceiling. “You hear that Headrick you blowhard!? I did it! Ahem.” Embarrassed by his outburst he hurried on.

“Well a full series of hexagons might be beyond you for now anyway. Our efforts shall be focused on hardening the edges of your domain against intrusion. After a brief meal, to keep our strength up of course. Once I am satisfied with your progress, we’ll return and pick up the rest of your troop. This cavern- and my own if you wish- shall be your new home while we continue your training.”

“Isn’t it a little… empty now?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Worry not, the Bane are not so easily vanquished. They’ll be back in similar numbers at least once a week, should you not take the initiative to exterminate their nest. Truly you’ll be saving me the bother of culling them myself and you’ll receive the benefit of an almost limitless food supply for you and your carnivorous kin.”

Well when he put it like that, the new cavern actually seemed like a paradise. Plenty of space, a readily available food source, water and best of all? No fire-breathing wyrms or other monsters to eat me in my sleep. I’m sold.