“Devious! Very cunning use of magic my lord!” Reeanth’s smile was almost predatory. I saw her strange hunger out of the corner of my eye as we walked back into the main room of the bolt-hole.

“No no, stop. I’m not going to actually track them down. This was kind of a test on several fronts. One, to see if they would attack me with those weapons, two, to test out a proximity based tracking rune I designed, and three, to see if the weapons work long-term.” Pouring myself another cup of coffee, I continued on, “But that last one will take time to see the results.”

“I don’t understand,” Reeanth said, plopping down in the chair across from me, “We’re not tracking them down?”

“No. The rune is loosely designed off that old Egyptian glyph, the Eye of Anubis. I don’t know enough to make a tracking rune work, but the ones I put in their weapons will simply let me know if they’re near, kind of like that kid’s game where you yell ‘hot’ or ‘warm’ if you’re getting closer, and cold if you move further away.” Tossing a small stone disk in front of Reeanth, she rubbed at the four rubies on it arranged in the cardinal directions.

Bringing it real close to her face, she examined the insignias I had inscribed into the rubies with my magic. “And these represent the four being tracked?” she asked?

“Yup, the tankard for Billy, the chameleon/lizard for Sally, the flexed arm for Jimmy, and the car for Tommy. By the way, I’m rather proud of myself for making it look so real. Couldn’t draw for shit before the Ripple, and now my magic does it for me. And the disc, the corresponding ruby will vibrate a little and light up if that person comes near.”

Sliding it back over to me, she pulled out her own weapons and put them down in front of her. “I’d like the same runes on my weapons,” she said.

“For what?”

“You may not care where they are or where they live, but I’m going to go see.” Taking a deep breath, she let it out and continued, “And, if I don’t come back for some unforeseen circumstance, I’d like you to be able to find me, hence, tracking sigil.”

“You’re missing the point. It’s not to go find them, it’s to let us know if they come back. That’s it.” After taking a minute to finish my coffee, I did pull her weapons closer to me. The first, a long silvery dirk with a few tiny runes carved into its side, and the second, a mana-maul. I was particularly impressed with the latter, as it was beefed up with a gravity fluctuation enchantment to greatly enhance its cutting or smashing power. The enchantment allowed the user to swing it around as if it weighed nothing, but hit a target as if the gravity of the surrounding area concentrated right on the face of the maul, or edge, whichever side my murderously minded Centauri decided to use. Ten minutes of concentrating later, I had her weapons connected to a stone sphere with a sapphire in the middle. All I’d have to do is drop it the sphere on the ground and it would roll right on to Reeanth.

“There, happy?”

She took the weapons without saying anything and left. I couldn’t stop myself from watching her great ass sway out the door. I looked up to where the root of the World Tree entered the ceiling. “Sorry babe, guess I’m still human after all.”

Shaking the distraction that my biology demanded I pay attention to was harder than I thought it would be, but nothing clears the mind like hard work, or flesh sorcery. With that thought held firmly in my head, I grasped the basic urges of my genetics with my flesh sorcery and soothed them away. The ever-present male needs of FEED, FIGHT, FUCK slowly submitted under the inexorable power of my will bolstered with sorcery. I ate a can of soup to ease one of those urges, then moved on to my next plan, the workaround to my failed generators.

One of the branches of my sorcery was related to ley lines, and as far as I understood them, the layman’s explanation is that ley lines are rivers of magic, of pure life that flow like blood under the skin of the earth. And ley lines seem to have some kind of significance beyond just power, but I’m not real clear on that yet. But, my sorcery confirmed for me that working magic while on a ley line is a lot easier because the amount of mana/power in the environment is significantly higher. And ley lines also have an elemental affinity, a flavor, if you will. Ley lines near rivers will be blue, or water in nature, which means that water-based magic will be much easier to use, and the same goes for fire ley lines near volcanoes, and I think there might be ley lines way up in the atmosphere, the new equivalent of jet streams. Time will tell on that one though.

Now, I always have a sense of in what direction ley lines are and how powerful they are due to my earth and mana sorcery, but they present another problem. I used to be able to carry around a little generator that filled up my internal reserves of mana indefinitely, but the ambient level of mana made them unstable. And I can’t have a mini nuclear reactor around my neck if there’s a solid chance it might turn me into a mock-up of Nagasaki. But the ley lines, those I might be able to work with.

My idea came from our lore, our stories of old, where the fat old wizard carried around a staff. Why did that old man carry around a staff? Probably to tap into ley lines, that would be my guess. Now, I like that idea, but modernizing it, that could be fucking cool. The concept I’m running with, is the parallel that I can draw between modern maglev train. The ley lines will be my tracks, and I’ll put runes of siphoning in a staff and on the bottom of my boots, and then they’ll drain mana directly into me, my weapons, and mana storage batteries. And if I’m on the ley line or near it, I’ll just tap it for infinite mana, and if I have to get off of it, then I should have more than enough to deal with anything in my weight class.

Getting this done fast was a definite priority as Reeanth was off doing her own thing and the last Ripple was coming sooner rather than later. As minutes passed, I could feel my own anxiety level skyrocketing, which is weird for me. I’ve always been a calm dude. Going through Army basic training tends to take the softer edges off of you for life, but man did I feel the pressure of what was to come. Taking off all my armor, I put it on the stone table piece by piece, examining each inch for wear and tear. Some of the runes looked a little worn down, but conjuring the prerequisite precious metal didn’t take much time. The entire set as a whole has held up wonderfully, beyond the quality of what I would have expected my untrained expertise to create.

There were runes of silver and lines of gold for the energy absorption runes to disperse enemy magical attacks, and adding a few directional sigils didn’t take me very long. Now, the runes would absorb energy from a ground-based direction as well and direct it up the linked armor to the energy storage function in Svalinn and the mental defense diamond in my helmet which also functions as a mana battery. The efficiency of the entire concept is what made it deadly and durable. The elements making up the armor fell under the categories of my different sorceries, so fixing it and upgrading it posed no problem, but I felt like I was running out of ideas. If I can’t epically upgrade my physical body due to ignorance yet, then hulking out my armor seems to be the best route. Man, what I wouldn’t give for one of those Renaissance reenactors right now, especially the blacksmith.

[Just use the dragon] a tinny voice sounded in my head.

[Damn it Gungnir, what dragon? The hell are you talking about?]

[The dead one!]

[What about him?]

[Bruh, dragon armor! I know you spent most of your free time playing Skyrim! Everybody loves that dragon armor, and you got a bigass dragon to work with here.]

[Exactly what is the bright idea? I’ve already thought about using dragon scales as armor and Rath was just too damn big. One of his medium scales would cover my entire back plus some, and his small scales are brittle now.]

[True, but use the skin underneath. That stuff has to be the godly version of cow leather and most likely gonna be easy to enchant. Besides, if you don’t want it, you can experiment with it and give it to Reeanth. Bet she’d look lovely in a skintight leather suit.]

[No, and no. I’ve given her enough stuff already, and she’s got some nice weaponry. Besides, she’s got that magical nanotech armor. Some hick sorcerer can’t do better than that, not yet anyways.]

[Good point. By the way, I’ll have this dragon fully decoded and organized in about four days.]

“HELL YES!” I shouted audibly, sending my excitement down my mental link as well.

[Bad news though . . . ]

[What?]

[No idea on Reeanth part. I’m a piece of you, not a full on AI or computer. I’m lost, there’s passwords and encryptions in a language I don’t know. We may be out of our league in this particular piece of grey matter.]

[Fuck it,] I sent back while putting my slightly upgraded armor back on, [Work on Rath’s brain, that’s the priority, and we’ll hit the next one later. Besides, we should be able to get it out of her eventually and then I’ll see if I can formally and officially get her out of the magic vow she’s in.]

********

I was trying to relax. Sipping coffee, living the high life, and relaxing way up on one of the branches of the World Tree just kinda looking over the amazing view. It was glorious, honestly, being this high up in a tree not even two months old. Nasty old thick orange Virginia clay is apparently good for a young growing cosmic sapling. The bark was almost soft in the crook where the branch met the trunk and formed the perfect curve for me to recline. If it were any bigger, I could build an old school colonial house on this branch alone. I still had my armor for three reasons. One, I had gotten used to it and it was comfortable now, two, this world is spontaneously dangerous, and three, that little ache in the back of my head telling me to watch out. The main problem was that little ache, that pinprick pressure that screamed like a faraway mouse, was yelling “DANGER!” over and over.

What made this worse, was that I was safe. Roughly speaking, I was actually safe, no danger in sight or anything that should activate the tiny bit of my intellect dominated by my lizard brain. But here I sat, freaking out. Gungnir was inside doing its thing, Reeanth was out doing who knows what, and I had nothing to do. Oh, I had things I wanted to do, but something, wasn’t, right.

Draining my cup, I set it in front of me, the stone mug settling nicely on the coarse bark. Reaching out with my magical senses, I pulsed them out as far as they could go, trying to catch a glimpse, a niggling, a blip of something, anything that might be the cause of my instincts going haywire. Peace. Utter peace. No wind was blowing. No leaves were falling. No animals cries or natural sounds were uttered. Stillness. And it was driving me CRAZY.

I jumped to my feet and banished the stone mug. Using my nature sorcery, I made the bark of the tree grow convenient hand and footholds while I clambered down. Racing inside the under-tree hideout, I went down the stairs and sprinted to the cavern with Gungnir. “Get off that. Get over here,” I said to my weapon, holding my hand out.

[God you’re tense.] Gungnir sent over our mental link while changing into spear form and slapping into my hand.

[Fuck me man, I know. This is the calm before the storm, but I can’t tell where the storm’s coming from. I feel like there’s a giant invisible bear in the room but I’m the only one that knows. Is this what crazy people feel like? Ya know, like those apocalypse preachers on street corners?]

[I mean, other than the upcoming Ripple, the last one, ain’t no storm around here.]

[That’s in a couple days, right? We got time. Besides, it’s the last wave, and they’ve gotten weaker over time, so this last one should be cake, easy street.]

[Nope. It’s tomorrow.]

My grip on Gungnir tightened, my body’s ingrained fear of the Ripple asserting itself. [The HELL do you mean tomorrow?] my mind screamed. The mental scars of almost dying under the reality-bending wave hadn’t left me like my physical injuries had. A pulse of pure mana, originating from Gungnir, traveled up my arm and stimulated my flesh sorcery, temporarily calming me and restoring a semblance of a clear mind. I have to remember to do that more often, the ability to make myself think clearly is a benefit I definitely needed to use more often.

[Thanks.]

[No problem. I don’t have a body to regulate, for which I greatly thank you for. And the Ripples aren’t an exact science. If our Olympus based visitors are to be believed, then it’s the shockwave of a dead god who’s so old we can’t even know its name. It doesn’t function on our timetable. Besides, you’re right. Something isn’t right. The mana levels are dense, absurdly so.]

[I mean, we’re in the cavern. I have a humongous generator ten feet away, duh.]

[No no, the mana from outside, it’s clinging to you. Like you just walked in from the rain. You don’t even notice because you’re always full of power, a battery that’s never full, but any other wizard right now is probably high off their rocker. It’s probably due to the Ripple coming early, or it’s related to it somehow]

Aw shit. Already? Fucking Reeanth. I just made the damn tracking ball and I already have to fucking use it.