******

The issue of telling the kid that I was going to give him an oversized teddy bear was that our policy of silence got blown out of the water, to which I had to literally bury him in the earth using sorcery to shut him up. I will say though, his excitement was contagious. Thirty minutes of making plans later, we decided to do this in the morning so we could get some decent sleep. I slept next to Spot to make sure that he didn’t go ballistic in the presence of another over-sized alpha creature, but morning still came way too fast.

“Spot, you’re backup, so keep your furry butt over there! STAY! Reeanth, you’re on skull-cracker duty with that maul. I filled it up last night with mana, so if I give the word, we’re having bear-brain soup. Johnny, use the scroll however you think best because I don’t have a fucking clue. I’m on coordinator duties, so what I say goes. Got it?”

My drill sergeant tirade would have been awesome if I didn’t have to whisper-yell it. All of my implements were stuffed to the brim with mana because I tapped a nearby ley line before everyone awoke. Gungnir was currently shaped to look like a legitimate wizard’s staff with a crystal ball capping it instead of a three-sided speartip. Currently holding most of the power in the shapeshifting weapon was an overcharged mental construct of a runic diagram, something a bit more dangerous than what I’ve tried in the past. This piece of work was a careful confluence of peace and calm tied together with compliance, but the nasty part was the sensitive over-stimulation trigger. The more the bear fought the enchantment, the more its own nerves would fire off, causing the outer nerve sheaths to breakdown causing an epileptic breakdown. I figured why not use the bear’s own strength against it since I had a whole day ahead of me.

Spot’s whine let me know that he didn’t like my plan. Apparently I was too far away, and the twenty feet of distance was simply unbearable for the confused pup. “Dog, relax,” I said, trying to console him, “I’m fine, you’re fine, and soon, you’ll have a new friend. Besides, if all goes well, you’ll have another new friend by tomorrow too.”

The drumbeat of his tail against the dirt got louder as he understood the gist of what I said through our mental link. “It’s time.”

Johnny stood up from where he had been meditating since dawn, five feet in front of the damn bear. This had caused Reeanth no end of irritation, but I reassured her that if it woke before we were ready, then she would get to kill it. Johnny took the scroll in his hand and walked up to me, oddly solemn for one usually so full of energy.

“I uh, just wanted to say . .” he started, his eyes downcast as both of his hands tenderly held the scroll. “No one’s ever been this nice to me before. I just wanted to say thank you. This is beyond cool what you’re doing for me.”

Clapping one hand on his shoulder, I looked him in the eye as his face turned up. “Yeah man, you’re welcome. Now, if this doesn’t work, I’m gonna let Reeanth kick your ass again, but if this does, I think you might be the one winning those fights,” I said with a smirk. “Now come on, let’s get this bear.”

His face lit up as he spun in place, his left hand holding his staff out while his right held the scroll up above his head.

“TODAY!” he shouted, power filling his body and channeling from his staff and his body into the scroll, “WE FIGHT!”

Unfurling the scroll, he slammed it onto the bear’s skull as if he were a big ol’ booty that he was slappin’. Condensed light blazed out from the impact point, strange diagrams and runes I had never conceived of raced across the bear like tattoos given life. Big Bear’s eyes snapped open as the power held it down, Johnny’s face screwed up in a rictus of pain with veins bulging in his neck and arms.

I gripped Gungnir tightly as I monitored with my senses the bear’s muscles and Johnny’s mental state, but he almost seemed to be gone. As I looked into the bear’s eyes, I could see what seemed to be miniature versions of the bear and Johnny fighting, flickers of their clash darting across the mud-brown iris. Explosions of virtual power criss-crossed the pupil as the whites of the eyes slowly changed into silver.

“Now my lord?”

“Not yet woman, I’ll tell you if or when it’s needed.”

I hoped it didn’t come to that, the risks and rewards of this venture were both incalculable. Spot took a step forward as he watched his humans struggling with something he couldn’t help with. The alpha instincts of the bear started to buck just a bit as the proximity of Spot began to set them off. Quickly adjusting my already fixed enchantment on the bear’s instincts in its hindbrain, I let some of the power flow towards the part that allows for general unconsciousness, trying to divert what could be a disaster.

“Spot!” I growled, reinforcing it through our bond, “Get back and sit!”

As my dog obeyed, I felt the hindbrain of the bear start to calm as its energy went back towards its mental battle with Johnny. More than once, I saw the runes on Johnny’s body flicker as small wounds opened up and quickly closed. His staff also shivered everytime it happened, as if it were feeling the pain as well. I didn’t get worried until about twenty minutes in when Johnny’s closed eyes started bleeding.

I stepped forward to reach him and Reeanth caught my hand. “This is his battle my lord. I have fought him many times, and he has more to give than this. This is not over.”

The small wounds opened and closed even faster until Johnny looked like someone had dipped him in blood. The bear’s ears started twitching forty minutes in and even some random muscles started lightly twitching. Johnny’s heartbeat began to steadily increase as his runes were emitting constant light now. His eyes popped open as his outstretched staff began to undulate.

It was so unexpected that I took two steps back, well out of his reach. The staff moved like a living whip, the top end of it morphing until it was a silver snake that turned to look at me and hiss. Without pausing to see if I was sufficiently intimidated, the staff-turned-snake whipped around and bit Johnny in the arm that was touching the bear. Thick silver light pumped freely from the snake’s fangs into Johnny, his arm bulking up like Popeyes’ on spinach as that light then shot down his arm and into the bear.

As if he were gut-punched by the earth itself, the bear let out a huge chuff and collapsed into the dirt, its eyes closing as bits of silver formed strange signs in its irises. Johnny collapsed into Reeanth as she caught him with one arm, her other hand still holding the maul at the ready.

“No Reeanth,” I said, already answering her unspoken question. “I think it worked.”

“But at what price my lord?” she asked, looking down at his arm. The staff was back from its snake form, but Johnny’s arm was all kinds of messed up. The two holes from the fangs were now black and horrible bruising stretched up his veins. His fingers were gnarled as if he had Cerebral Palsy.

“A reasonable one I think,” I said, touching his elbow with one finger and probing the wound with magic. “Some kind of steroidal venom that gives power at the cost of destroying the cells. This is the kind of thing that my magic is perfectly suited for.”

Two minutes of flushing out the toxins from his bloodstream later, I had repaired the extensive bruising, strengthened the weakened connective tissues and put his muscles in a state of recovery. I healed the two holes last as they were the convenient outlet for all the crap from the snake-staff. I even took the time to heal his brain that had the tiniest bit of swelling, probably from an intense mental battle, probably the only one he’s ever had! Hahaha, I probably accidentally made him a bit smarter too. My healing magic is a little too potent sometimes, it feels like a dog that wants to fetch not just the stick you threw but also every stick in the woods.

Reeanth put him over near the bear when I gave my approval. A wet smack knocked me on my face, Spot’s giant tongue plowing me into the dirt. With a push of earth sorcery, I let the dirt swallow me up and carry me behind the dog where it pushed me back up. Bad decision, as the happiness of a dog is directly related to how fast and hard its tail wags, which knocked me to the side about twenty yards. Landing in the trees wasn’t fun as Spot thought it was a game, and chased projectile me and again tongue-attacked me into a tree. Thank all the heavens for automated magical shields.

Also, thank the heavens that slobber falls under the category of both flesh and water sorcery, allowing me to clean off quickly from dog spit. “Stupid mutt,” I said affectionately, scratching behind one big floppy ear. “Your friend will be awake soon enough, just go get some lunch. You deserve it.”

Two bounds later, Spot was barking happily and out of sight. “Where’s our insurance going?” Reeanth joked, the entire situation making her act just a bit out of character. I think the danger got to her.

“Food. I bet that bear would be a lot less likely to eat us if we got a big ole’ pile of meat for it. Besides, I didn’t do shit today, but I’m kinda exhausted. Too much anticipation is draining.

Sitting down next to me, she leaned up against the tree. “I feel the same way my lord.”

We sat there in silence as we watched the morning eased into midday, birdsong lightly harmonizing with the breeze.

“It almost feels surreal ya know, or maybe you don’t,” I jabbered, “I mean, magic is awesome! But for us normal humans, it was just a fairy tale. It wasn’t real, and now here I am, sitting with a futuristic kind of genetically altered space wizard, and we just watched some kind from bum-fuck nowhere Virginia tame a goddamn bear the size of a hill. AND, this bear has armor. Armored bears! I feel like if I don’t stop moving, I might actually explode from all the implications of this.”

“We grow up surrounded by it, but it’s almost like an invisible machine. Oh how we all envy the sorcerers of old, able to will power into existence and make matter move to your whim. We are taught just enough to keep us safe, but not enough to thrive.”

“Magic is magic. That doesn’t even make sense Reeanth.”

“My lord, wizardry is not sorcery. In order for wizards to use magic, we have to know and understand every little piece of how it works,” she replied, the slightest tinge of condescension in her voice.

“How so? And you have sorcery now anyways, so what does it matter?”

“It makes all the difference!” she retorted. “In order for a fire sorcerer to make fire, he has to simply want it, and it does his bidding like a slave that loves her master. But a wizard, a wizard has to patiently craft every step. Separate out each process and carefully partition mana into each mental construct and then assign each part duties. One to gather the air, the pure mana that will burn, the second to gather the oxygen required for fire to exist, and then third to manage the proper proportions and keep them in check. And that is just for a small flame! A fireball is then prepackaged with an excess of mana and the spell is bound to itself in a temporary and barely stable construct, and then the entire construct is shaped to be aerodynamic so that it can actually fly further than three feet without unraveling.”

“Sounds like that sucks, and maybe might be incredibly weak too,” I mused.

“Sounds like? It is! A fire sorcerer would be able to simply command the wizard’s fire and now the wizard is out a spell and mana! Young battle wizards use runic suits of armor or runed blades that do all of the hard work for them. This allows them to simply pump mana into a ‘translator’ and out pops the spell when it’s full. Full battle wizards have crafted grimoires that have spells carefully transcribed into them, full rituals of power and death that can wipe battlefields clean. But young wizards can’t use grimoires as they don’t have the mana capacity, the energy storage to utilize that much power.”

She let out a loud huff. “And do you know what makes it worse my lord?”

I opened my mouth to say no, but she cut me off as if she didn’t even notice.

“I have sight sorcery now. I can see how it all works, but I can’t do anything about it. I can see the inefficiencies of every spell, I can see the weak points and the points of binding. Everything is open to me, but I am two hundred years too young to do anything with it. With this, I could be as powerful as a sorcerer with the education and physicality of a combat wizard, but I’m too young.”

“What are you talking about? Just use the mana stone I gave you,” I said, pointing at her weapon. “It’s in your maul. It gathers ambient energy from the atmosphere, extra energy from you that you aren’t using, and it also automatically converts kinetic energy from you and everything around you into condensed mana so you can use it.”

Her eyes bugged open staring at the finely crafted weapon in her hand.

“Don’t tell me woman that you have sight-based sorcery and you haven’t even looked at your weapon?” I teased, rolling my eyes. “It’s got enough energy in it to crack that bear’s skull wide open, and that thing is tough enough to take a freaking missile.”

Picking it up with both hands, Reeanth turned to me and held it up as she kneeled in front of me. “This is a kingly gift my lord, I cannot take it! You do not understand its price!”

I wasn’t gonna move from my comfy spot to indulge her idiotic cultural crap. Putting one hand on her maul, I gently pushed it towards her and away from me. “It’s a gift dummy. Keep it. Besides, if you haven’t looked at that, then you should probably look at the rest of your gear. That belt is holding more energy than the maul.”

She gasped as she grabbed her belt buckle with her hands. “Most artifacts from the Aelves don’t hold this much mana!”

“What kind of shitty enchanting do your people do? This is the most basic setup I’ve made.”

“Ours doesn’t store much mana at all as it simply bleeds out of the gem. We set up circulation runes to redirect the bleed off back into the body as it stores better than any crystal.”

“Bullshit, crystals store way more energy than flesh. I know, I’ve tried. I had that bleeding energy issue too for a bit until I went in with earth sorcery and straightened out the structure to remove the internal flaws, and then I used magic to etch some tiny runes of storage and mana attraction in the center of it. And voila’! Some of them can hold more power than an exploding volcano.”

“That’s it, that’s IT?!” she screeched. “It takes SORCERY to make perfect crystals for mana storage?! That is a secret of the Ancients that has been lost for EONS!”

Her head hit her hands and I started to wonder about her sanity as she started talking to herself. “Sorcery is the key, the key to everything?! Bred out and slaughtered the only thing that kept everything running, none of this makes sense? Why would they let this happen, it can’t happen again . . . “

“Well, uh,” I stuttered, no longer considering that my spot was super comfy. “I guess, I don’t know, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about and I’m just super talented?”

Not taking my quip very well, Reeanth picked herself up and slammed her maul down in the dirt at my feet. “I pledge myself wholly to your service until the day we both die or agree to sever this contract. I make this vow with or without your consent as a contract is already in place. Do you accept my pledge?” she asked angrily, her eyes blazing.

“I’m confused at to what the fuck is going on, but if it will get you away from me and stop being so damn weird, then yes. I accept you doing what I tell, and now I’m telling you to fucking chill.”

“You do not understand my lord. You possibly the sole hope of returning all civilizations back to the heights of the Age of Magic! None of the ancient artifacts have intact energy accumulators anymore.”

My lack of understanding must have been clearly written on my face. “Energy accumulators? Do you mean batteries? You can’t store power?”

“NO!” she yelled, almost frantic. “No one has been able to store power since the sorcerers all but vanished. All of our devices are tied to people or ley lines for power, and some even use power portals that are linked to stars, but the only individuals with portable energy storage devices are those who passed down ancient heirlooms. If anyone finds out about this then you’ll be hunted down and enslaved for sure!”