That didn’t sit well with me. I just put Reeanth on patrol duty as I worked in tandem with the earth elemental sergeants. Using the steady flow of power from the multivariate power tap, I directed the group as we moved together, conjuring/shaping/transmuting the surrounding area into something resembling defensible. The beach itself I left alone, but the place where the freshwater met the salty ocean I fortified the sides of the river with slick stone and then placed thirty foot falls between the sandy beach and the forest. I wasn’t really worried about fortifying that part of the beach as honestly, I could defend against an army all by myself in that environment if I had to. Two sources of water, a forest, and incalculable amounts of sand to play with? Puhleese, bring it on.

But as we worked our way upstream using the bright moon to light our way, conjuring walls up the one side of the river and setting down more hydroelectric columns connected to the beach pylon via copper lines, I kept looking for the perfect spot to plant my Yggdrasil seed. That little bugger was the lynchpin of my whole plan, if that went, we all went. About two miles further north and way into the buttcrack of night, Reeanth pointed out a part in the river that I missed due to paying serious attention to detail where the river widened greatly and a decent sized island occupied the center of that lake. It screamed, ‘plant medieval castle right here’, to me, which I translated in my head to, ‘grow epic magic castle with even more epic Yggdrasil portal’. It would also be a huge load off my mind if I could get my freaking golem army here, but there were basic steps to tend to before that happened. Steps, unfortunately, that I didn’t have time for.

The moonlight was cut off by ominous clouds, oddly heralded by the crashing entrance of my scouts. “Undead!” Acantha’s mental shriek wasn’t just fear, but a series of pictures of an angry horde heading right this way. They were a couple miles out but the terror of the group didn’t hit me until Spot blew past me like a runaway train. Ordering the golem sergeants to double time back to the beach, I took a few seconds to more closely examine the mental screenshots from Acantha. They had gone out to about forty miles and walked up a large hill, not seeing signs of anything until they hit the top. Down in the valley in front of them was a gruesome sight, milling hordes of undead as roiling fog coursed in and out of the bodies, dissipating and appearing at random. Several black bonfires dotted the valley leading the way to the other end where the horde grew even thicker and more bizarre.

Some of the bodies were clearly once human but those were the minority. I don’t even have words to describe the horrors of the bodies. Some were several human corpses put together but none of them looked like each other, a few with three heads and five arms, others put together to look like bastardized horses. Getting out of the realm of human physiology were the freaky ones, winged monsters with six foot tongues that oozed oily slime that blazed with grey fire, undead giants fifteen yards tall wielding bone clubs decked with teeth way too large to be anything from Earth. The creepiest of all were what could only have been spellcasters, those had six arms, four of which were clutching books that dripped blood or glowing red wands tipped with black diamond teeth or staves covered in tassels with organs tied in them. Each one of those had at least two heads, one constantly muttering while the other simply shrieked like it was a full time job.

Somehow, either Versonae or Acantha accidentally kicked over a rock in their haste to back up which caught the attention of the outer horde. At least three hundred of the fuckers started shambling after the disturbance and another two hundred were running at least as fast as a human jogger. Pulling myself away from the jumbled images, I cursed as I ran to catch up. Boosting myself with flesh sorcery, I caught up to Spot faster than I thought I would. Communicating with him directly via our link, I asked him very politely to lead the horde away, up to the East and then directly North. I just needed him to give us at least three but hopefully four-ish days of preparation before heading back.

With a chuff and a quick headbutt, Spot agreed and took off barking and howling as he kicked up a lot of dirt, both covering up the majority of our tracks and clearly making his own. Using earth sorcery, I easily covered up the rest of our tracks as we sped back to the beach. Our superhuman bodies covered the just over two miles worth of landscape in record time, Reeanth and Acantha sprinting down the shore of the river next to the conjured stone wall as I skated across the top of the river using water sorcery, making sure to cover up the tracks as we fled as quietly as possible.

“What? There’s nothing here?” Acantha scream-whispered as we hit the beach. “And a giant fucking diamond doesn’t count!”

I glared at her as I turned around, part of my mind relaying orders to the elementals through Kraken as they split off and got busy. “Not my fault someone tipped them off! What part of scout or be fucking quiet did you three not understand?! Spot can buy us a couple days but fucking FUCK I need at least a goddamn week!”

The sandy beach took on a creepy form of new life as the silica of the sand molded before our eyes into a kickass giant’s version of a sand castle. The five pillars slowly grew upwards as the wall in front of them grew just fast enough to keep the pillars from being seen from the vantage point of the land in front of us.

“If we’re lucky, they’ll think it was just a random beast that knocked the rock over and merrily chase Spot all across Greenland. If we’re not, then say hello to Black Summer.” Rubbing my forehead as I communed with Kraken who was busily managing the sergeants, Versonae and Reeanth grimly looked at each other.

“My lord, is there anything that can be done?” Reeanth’s pained expression showed me that she knew how far up shit creek we were.

“Well, we’re down our best fighter and tank, and y’all have been scouting for a day and most of the night, which means you’re useless to me right now!”

Kraken interceded, speaking mentally to the entire group. [I recommend that Mr. Panic put the rest of you in a condensed sleep state.]

“Who speaks directly to my mind?” Versonae spat, drawing her blades and looking around. “My mind is my own!”

Reeanth shushed her as Acantha explained. “That glowing spear has Nate’s spirit familiar in there. It does most of the real work.” She grinned as I glared at her.

[Although you are correct,] Kraken hopped back in. [We do need to stay on the dangerous task at hand. As I was saying, you’ll each be able to have the restful benefits of a full night’s sleep in just a few hours. He can use flesh sorcery to do this, and he can also easily bring you to full alert if need be. With you three taken care of, he can refresh himself with flesh sorcery and keep working with the elementals to fortify the area.]

The three women looked at me, Acantha disbelieving as Reeanth nodded in agreement while Versonae thought it over, sheathing her blades. “Who will keep a lookout?” Versonae asked pointedly. “And where will we rest?”

Gesturing at the ground next to me, I raised up three pod-like structures out of sand. “Me, Kraken, and a small golem army will be on guard while you three get some accelerated shut-eye. I’m also going to see if I can get a couple sand elementals around here to play guard in exchange for mana.”

“Playing to the combined strength of the land and your affinity. Smart.” Reeanth praised as she climbed into the first pod. “Knock me out. When we wake, we shall start guerilla warfare to grant you a week’s worth of time, my lord.”

The other two climbed in their respective pods and shut their eyes, Acantha gripping her two glowing wands as she looked away. After putting my team in a sorcery enhanced sleep, Kraken linked up with the elementals to keep the construction on task as I guided the rest of the mini-army to be at advantageous points around the beach. Having them stand out here on the wide open sand didn’t seem to be that bright. The first three groups of ten I had were marched out to about a mile where they covered themselves up with dirt and mud, hiding behind dense thickets. The other two groups of ten were sent out to the east and west ends of the beach just to make sure that we didn’t get flanked. With Kraken’s embedded programming, they easily accepted the simple orders I gave them, mainly, ‘Attack anything that does not align with these specific energy signatures, namely, my group’.

With that complete, the hard part began. My basic plans were fucked, and my next two backup plans were in a bind, which basically left me with the bloody idea of ‘island hopping’, again. I’m stuck on the beach making a fortification when what I really want to do is be making a base about two miles ahead of me in that perfect spot which is very defensible and almost divinely created to be where the portal should be planted. Twisting the entire scenario up in my head and forcing it to bend in ways that probably edge the boundaries of good sense, I said ‘fuck it’. It also doesn’t help that one of my mental background processes from forever ago that I forgot about, the one that comes up with backup plan after backup plan, spoke up about a tendency that I had ‘buried’ (hahahaha) awhile ago. I could simply start building underground.

[The word you’re looking for is ‘asinine’. It perfectly describes your plan, going off alone, away from your army so you can build an underground base on a shitty river island so you can then turn said underground base into a fortified island with entrenched walls. Am I, how do you say it, smelling what you’re stepping in?]

Kraken being my spirit familiar with the innate ability to read the twisting lines of my thoughts is both comforting and irritating. Mainly, because he’s usually right, but sometimes, his perspective just lacks balls.

[Spot’s risking his life around this icy shithole of an island, the team is unconscious, you’ve got the elementals moving forward with this part of the plan. Exactly what am I going to encounter underground that I can’t handle?] I could tell that he was gathering his thoughts the same way an experienced sailor feels a growing storm just past the horizon, the simple drop in temperature, that crease of pressure flowing over your skin as the air gets thicker. Snickering to myself as I shielded my thoughts from Kraken, I walked over to the large battery pylon, using earth sorcery to make each step on the beach cover twice as much ground. “Sorry dude,” I said, not meaning it one bit. Poking the pylon with Gungnir, I pushed Kraken out and into his temporary home.

[What is the meaning-]

[Calm your tits, I mean your tentacles.] I soothed, sinking into the sand and moving towards the river. [You can wake the girls up without me and you know it. Just keep things running for a bit and I’ll do my own thing just a bit further up. I’m bettin’ there’s a leyline up there somewhere that can swing this a bit more in our favor. Gimme four hours before you start blowing smoke.]

Moving underground through the silty mud of the river upstream was not the miserable experience I halfway expected it to be. It’s one thing to know that you don’t really feel the cold from water hovering just above the temperature of freezing your manhood off, but it’s another move through it like you’re made for it. The mud and water welcomed me like the lost sheep finally returning to the fold, happily enveloped by love. Letting my thoughts flow through me as my sorceries carried me to my destination, the river and its banks were more than happy to oblige my curiosity with vague images of what I wanted: a small leyline on the western side of the island, the soil composition of the island itself, a little network of rabbit burrows comfortably chillin’ just below the surface.

It’s always pitch dark, and I mean blacker than a demon’s butthole, below the surface of the earth. Light simply doesn’t penetrate down here and with my gear all covered up and in stealth mode, I didn’t even give off my usual glow. Gungnir stayed in my hand in knife form, its stored power under wraps even though I knew it would all be ready to go with just a mental flicker. My earth sorcery carried me gently northward in the safety of the earth beneath the river. The few miles of travel was its own experience, similar to one of those sensory deprivation tanks. The only sense worth having down here was that of magic, and I had that in spades. Everything from the tiniest grains of sand to the myriad ocean of pebbles, dirt, and organic matter that made up our concept of ‘the ground’ parted for me as I finally reached the spot I’d been aiming for.

From where I sat or floated magically, forty feet underground, I kept about a good twenty feet away from the leyline itself. Calling it a vein of planet Earth is really only describing one facet of the incredible magical pipeline of power that thrummed in front of me. To my magical senses, it glowed a mixture of icy blue and forest green, but the dominant flow of the leyline was solid brown denoting the main concentration of power. All in all, it was perfect for what I wanted to do. Taking a second to make sure my hands were steady, I pulled the Yggdrasil root/seed creation out of Gungnir and held it in my left hand, putting Gungnir away as I held my palm up. Reaching out with my nature sorcery, I located a grove of alder trees above me, their tendency to grow together in dense thickets being exactly what I was looking for. With a twitch of power, I pulled a handful of their seeds down through the soil where I pushed them into the Yggdrasil org.

My other Yggdrasil creations had the same purpose as the one I was about to make, but in order for this sneaky portal plan to work with the secret island base, I needed a very different approach. Using Sunstone Castle as an example, one big baobab tree served as a perfect central hug, a large pillar of nature capable of holding the mystical presence of the World Tree. But here, I needed it to not stick out, at least not just yet, which if I used a web of alder trees it would diffuse the signature of Yggdrasil while also being able to handle the immense load of power. The idea of not using a central rod to focus and contain the power and instead spreading the load out through a network isn’t one that I’ve worked with before. I’ve used oak, willow, and baobab, which all three are innately large and in charge trees, but those would stick out here. The climate and soil composition up here isn’t suited to trees of that nature, although I’m sure I could fix that for any tree I wanted.

*********

Andy’s POV (Somewhere in the Cosmos at the Poly-Arcane Institute)

“And why are the rules of scrying so important?” The slap of my professor’s leg tentacle against the steel floor sounded like an octopus in an open air asian market. His or its bubbly voice still sounded like mashed bubbles even though the translation spell managed to communicate the exact meaning of his ‘words’. Three feet tall when he normally taught but tended to change his height by further extending his ten eight-foot long tentacles, often using the change in stature to ‘intimidate’ even though it didn’t work as well as he thought it would. And for me, what was far more interesting was the alien hottie two rows away and a few up in the stadium-like classroom. The Spiratni woman sported long red hair, a banging body, and three slitted eyes with a wicked smile that absolutely washed away any kind of rational male thought. My brother might focus less on the material, softer side of life, but I sure as fuck didn’t. The first thing you learned in the forced training at Centauri boot camp is to enjoy every last moment cause you don’t know when it’ll be your last.

“Bootlicker!” A leg tentacle slammed into the desk in front of me, my professor’s assortment of green eyes glaring at me. Each little slitted bead of an eye was filled with a teeny seed of hatred mixed with fear. “Answer the question for the class or back to humping like a tk’lanta.”

Supposedly, that was a diss on the Centauri warrior culture, the fact that we’re meatheads who wield magic like a battleaxe instead of like a delicate instrument. That might have been actually insulting if it knew that I wasn’t always Centauri. Formerly a hundred percent Earthen stoner, but hell, having a poor excuse for a squid insult me is still something to laugh at, quietly.

“Scrying rules are important because of exactly how the shamanic aspects of mysticism meet the logical rules of wizardry. The marriage of intent and dream creates a schism where the soul and mind are vulnerable, but in such a way that it is not immediately apparent.”

“Explain.”

I snorted, “Basically, scrying is so basic that people don’t think of how it actually works, and since it uses the mystic aspects of dream magic which is inherently based in the soul, it means the soul is vulnerable. But, because it’s so easy to do generally, people don’t think about the risk. The chances of your scrying getting hijacked is actually much higher than even demonic summoning rituals due to the lack of precision. Summoning rituals for instance are cast with Names, protection circles, and a team to back you up, but scrying can be done with a small mirror by a powerless child.”

Professor N’ganke bubbled unhappily. “Correct. Foreign elements are considered less of a threat based on the scryer’s state since they’re looking for something of which they’re not entirely familiar. You may not know the surroundings of what you’re scrying, the mood of the person you’re scrying, or even the correct dimension that you didn’t know you wanted. Scrying is the essence of casting your will into the Cosmos and hoping for a reflection of a particular facet.”

The Shamanic classes and lectures fit me the best here at the Institute. My inclination towards mind-altering substances gave me a serious leg up against those who went into the teaching with a ‘purity’ mindset, wanting to accomplish everything by pure will and hard work. My resident A.I. did most of the rote memorization work which made the wizardry classes almost too easy, but, sometimes, talent figures into it too. Reaching into my satchel that sat near my feet, I pulled my latest project out of a pocket. Three little red leaves that looked similar to oak glowed with a soft cherry color. Taking one, I placed it under my tongue and closed my eyes, putting the other two away and grabbing the scrying mirror with both hands.

“Gaze into the mists of mana and let your will form the shape. Connect with the vibration of life, feel the solar winds take your mind to what you envision.”

The first instinctive image my will pushed me towards was a bit more detail on little miss sexy over there, but her anti-scrying wards gave me the equivalent of a magical black eye. Shaking my head, I figured on a safer target, clueless older brother. I hadn’t seen Nate in a while. For me, it’s been about a year or so here but for him it’s probably been a couple months. Earth is getting back to a normal timescale but who knows how long it’ll take to equalize and settle down.

Opening my eyes, I looked down as my energy flowed from my soul, twisting through my channels and runes further down into the mirror. Forcing myself to focus on the most recent memories of my brother instead of the shapely distraction, I tied in the image and feelings along with the natural bond between the wands he made for me out of Gungnir, I followed the sympathetic link back to Earth. Swirling crimson flows of power mixed with the deep black of space for a moment before a tiny image of my brother popped up. He had to be somewhere dark, the only thing I could make out really was the barely glowing green bulbous orb in his hands and his face screwed up in concentration, kinda like he was taking a shit.

“Can you send messages while scrying?” Looking up from my hands, I squinted at Professor N’ganke. “Or does the other person have to be actively and knowingly participating?”

The hot chick turned around, her flirtatious look gone and replaced with a condescending one. “How do you not know this? Dream scrying has unprecedented range and depth but communication is unreliable.”

“Remeran wizardry solved this issue with entangled particles combined with silver mirrors!” A nerdy looking blue gnome, basically a hairless dwarf with penchants for magitech, squeaked bravely from the back row. “It’s cost in thaums is so low that even the ungifted can use them. Something shaman-based magics can’t even boast about.”

“What did I say about mentioning wizardry in my class?” The explosion of bubbles slammed into the gnome. Professor N’ganke slithered up the wave of slimy water until he was grasping his student by the neck. “Opening your mind is the only way to learn the mysteries of shamanry! Never again!” With a flick, the gnome was flung through the silvery portal that served as a door.

“Anyone else want to disparage the wonders of mysticism?” Every green eyeball had turned blood red as they swiveled in different directions to take in the entire class at one, except I had three eyeballs pointed at me.

“Hey now, don’t look at me, was wanting to know if I could send a message this way or not.”

“Have you tried?”

I looked back down at the mirror, unconsciously zooming out. “Uh, no . . .” Before I blinked, the dark image had zoomed out to the point that I might as well have been a satellite, surveying the entire Northern Hemisphere, probably. I mean, Alaska was still there but Greenland had gotten a huge upgrade, and the USA had a few more mountain ranges than I remember. Focusing, I zoomed back in to where my brother was, where a much bigger Greenland was? Yeah, some ugly fucks were running around the landmass but a small chunk was heading his way. “Run douche! Run!” I didn’t even think, just threw my words and my mana at the mirror, breaking the connection just as his eyes opened. Sweat ran down my hands as the surface of the mirror cracked into a million pieces, blood slowly dripping out.

“And blood means what, class?” The angry Professor was replaced once again with his normally bubbly self. Pitying looks came from all directions except the front of the class. “Yes, imminent doom.”