Vignette - Theurge of Gaia

“What path have you imagined, Candidate?”

“Gaia is our mother, the Earth Personified. We nearly destroyed her in the before times, it must not be allowed in the new. With magic and belief I will create a spirit, I will bring together the faithful and we will feed her our belief. From that belief she will take form. The sum of our hopes and dreams, empowered by our numbers, she in turn will empower us.”

Chapter 7

Six months later…

Three years since the fall, or three years since the renewal. All depending on your point of view.

How was his family doing? Were they enjoying their memories… or were they being eaten alive ‘for their own good’?

He quickly shoved those thoughts back into the corner reserved for important things he could do nothing about.

It was time to try again. His stronghold was ready. He could indeed rebuild it, he had the magic, he can make it better than it was, Better, stronger… but it's a stronghold in the end. Faster didn't really apply.

Standing on the firing step he looked out over his lands. Three feet of essence stone with a narrow firing slit, a roof supported by pillars and Roman arches. If he was outside he would see the 3 feet stone spikes protruding from the flat ceiling and walls. Jagged and cruel they gave his bunker on a hill a very evil look. It didn’t help that concentrating stone darkened its color. Soft grey became decidedly grey-black.

The motte now included a staircase up the north face. The rest of the surface dirt was concentrated and polished to a mirror sheen. A very slippery sheen.

Of course he didn’t spend a few days sledding down it before installing the spikes in the trench at the base… not at all. Life was too short not to enjoy the little things.

Protection spells were liberally scattered about the bunker, but since they required being activated they were not his primary plan. They were just one of many backups. Like the thin lines of stone cutting across the side of the motte at a constant elevation. Or like the large round stones held to the side of the hill by an easily cut rope.

He would not be eaten alive again.

With a shudder he promised himself. Not ever.

The primary for this test was the lasers. “Connect-release direction” was carved into a wooden two foot long wand with a cleft tip. Connect release included the concept of contact in it, so the open end of that rune would have to touch the card. A symbol for a faucet with a variable output controlled how much of the connected card's maximum storage it would release in one go.

The round dowel-like shape was flattened on one side to make carving the runes easier and split into two pieces at the end. A leather thong ensured that the “Absorb-store Essence-Light” glass storage card, filled to the brim with the concentrated essence of light, would stay in the cleft receptacle.

A stack of eight backup storage cards sat on a small stone table behind him. A wooden ‘shovel’ completed his armaments.

“Start the trial please Akil. Start with one random normal monster and slowly work our way up until the fortress is likely to fall, then for all that is good and holy please stop!” His voice broke a bit at the end of his request. He had to work on that. Every time he thought he was over the trauma some little bit slapped him in the face with how wrong he was.

“Very well Timothy, good luck.”

A familiar ghostly Boar began to form to the south, not a threat by itself, but it's madness made it terrifying if you weren’t sitting in a massive fortification.

With a snarling “Squeeel” the fully formed giant boar lowered its massive tusks and charged. With great leaping strides it ran right over the edge of the trench without a care, its momentum carrying it a good fifteen feet forward before it hit the bottom, but the trench was thirty feet wide, the poor track was no longer visible and the edges of the trench reached from the Mirror to Akil’s bulk. From the front of the cottage to the library. Any room that was available had been used. Even so, Akil had to create extra dirt in order to loft the motte appropriately.

The trench was ten feet deep and the bottom was studded with five foot spikes. Landing again with that curiously muffled sound the hog seemed to be balancing on the spikes, its legs windmilling furiously… and pointlessly. It had no leverage. With a truly vile shriek it slowly sank. The magic that absorbed the energy of the fall couldn't prevent the slow impalement.

… pained shrieks, grunts and moans echoed in his ears “SQUEE.. SQUee... squeel…” He cringed, heart shattering piece by piece. With shaking hands he aimed his laser wand and fired, not in anger but in mercy… and missed by several feet. Plowing a furrow a foot deep into the compacted dirt. Essence Dirt that was stronger than stone. Bits of charcoal and glass edged the smoking crater, ridiculing him for his misplaced compassion.

Again and again he triggered the wand, nausea straining his nerves and fowling his aim. Four shots, half the storage card's capacity. The final hit silenced the boar in an explosion of gore. He lost the battle against his revolting stomach. The sounds of the boars torture and the image of its death competing for pride of place. He wiped his lips, the acidic tang of vomit lingered, mocking him. A waft of burnt bacon and excrement on the wind nearly triggered another bout. With a surge of will he suppressed it.

Think about the facts, without those pesky emotions ruining things.

He would have to tune down the amount of light essence he was releasing. He had fired it for practice, but fear, he admitted to himself, had pushed his judgement on how big to make each shot.

One dead pig, and maybe 5% of his total laser power used.

Stupid! Yet he didn't regret putting the animal out of its misery, the noise had been traumatizing. He did regret missing that many times. Still, if it's a question of exploring magic or becoming a better marksman, sorry, but the marksman takes the back seat…. Of a bus. The very back seat.

The second trial was starting. More ghostly boars were forming, forty or fifty of them in a herd. No, with boars it was a passell, maybe ten were the familiar Clydesdale sized boars, the rest were slightly smaller, more slender sows. Thankfully no piglets. Still he would not be able to waste the Storage cards on mercy this time.

Akil is brutal…

The familiar “SQUEEEEL” magnified fifty fold was a physical blow, echoing into the bunker and forcing his eyes to cross. It took several moments before he could pull himself together. The boars had crossed the trench. Hellish screams echoed up as sows ran over the impaled still living bodies of their kin, eyes red with madness they continued the charge, leaping up the slippery slope several feet before sliding back down, oftentimes onto another sow.

It worked, he was physically safe, even if his ears and heart were not. Forty feet up was too far for accurate shots on an individual, but a herd of giant pigs, some literally on top of each other, was a hard target to miss.

HSSSS..Crmpt!

Each shot did not burn its victim so much as it detonated them. Heat and impact boiling the blood and rupturing the body. A crimson flower bloomed with each shot. Pieces of bone became shrapnel scything through the surrounding.

Switching out cards as the old ran dry, trying to make the squeals stop, to make it all stop.

Until at last all was still, the previous shining citadel now decorated by a mad painter in blood red, bone white and bile green. A full passel of pigs killed.

..Killed was too mild a word, Butchered, Massacred, Slaughtered.

A moment of silence…

Then vomit exploded out of him, Falling to his knees, he hugged the floor. Holding on for dear sanity in a world gone mad. Violently and repeatedly he expelled the contents of his stomach until it ran dry, then heaved some more.

Was this his new world? It was too much.

“The scenario will be terminated Timothy. Your physical defenses were strong, but your heart is weak. You can eat them cooked or they can eat you alive. It will not be neat and clean in either case.” Never had Akil’s cheerful voice been more discordant. Where tone and content were so out of phase.