The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal (42 page)

“
You have built a portal
here!” Myrka exclaimed.

“
Why the big surprise,
Myrka?” I asked.

Hydan chose to answer, “Portals take a
lot of invested power, Nick. It can take a host of mages a hundred
years to make one.”

“
Or an Albus Second a few
hundred years, if she spends the time,” Finnabair noted, and added,
“which I have done. Losing the portal would be annoying, but not
irreplaceable. The Portal is in the tallest central tower, in fact,
it IS the tower.”

I then asked, “Can a portal be
blocked?”

“
No, though it can be
destroyed, but that could take a lot of work and time, just like it
takes to make one,” my mother replied.

After breakfast was over, my mother
invited us to come to a practice chamber, deeper in the castle. We
all went, and it turned out to be a large chamber with a rounded
ceiling, all made of white marble.

Finnabair walked out onto the floor,
which was made of intricately patterned marble pieces which formed
a massive image depicting a great battle in what looked like some
grand palace of the gods.

“
Asgard?” Hydan asked,
looking at the floor with interest.

“
Yes, it is an artist’s
depiction of the great betrayal,” The White Enchantress
replied.

“
What is that?” I
asked.

Toji answered, “Where The Dragon tried
to end the Archimage Baal, and eventually murder all the Archimages
in the Ring of Ten. But he was unmasked as a traitor who broke the
Archimage Accords. This shows the battle which ensued as The Dragon
escaped the wrath of the other Archimages and fled
Asgard.”

Finnabair spoke to Myrka, “Tarvos, may
I ask your assistance in a demonstration for Nicholas?”

Myrka didn’t answer, but she walked
out onto the glossy floor to face Finnabair.

Suddenly a glimmering oblong cocoon
encompassed the Albus sorceress, it was slightly blue tinged, and
nearly transparent.

“
Attempt to strike me with
a Derkaz blast,” Finnabair instructed.

Almost before she finished her
request, Myrka pulled her arm up and a blast of blue energy lanced
out at Finnabair. The power hit the shield around her and was
deflected into the ceiling above, which caused some of the marble
to come falling down. Pieces which would have hit Finnabair or
Myrka seemed to turn to dust before they struck either
sorceress.

“
Thank you,” Finnabair said
calmly.

A moment later the dust disappeared
and the ceiling changed back to the way it was before the
blast.

Then my mother turned to me and said,
“That is an example of a shield, which can protect you against such
uses of the Derkaz, or other harm. To make one, all you need to do
is know it is there, and that it will stop Derkaz.”

“
That, and be more powerful
than the blast which was sent,” Myrka noted.

“
And that. However, it is
important to understand that not many mages could send enough
Derkaz power to get through a Second’s shield, especially if they
are rested.”

Myrka shrugged.

“
OK, when using Derkaz, why
does it matter what Tier the mage is? Isn’t Derkaz an outside
force?” I asked.

My mother nodded, but replied, “And
yet, it must be controlled by the person using it, and is therefore
bound by their level of power.”

I then said, “But you were ready, what
if you weren’t?”

Finnabair smiled, and turned her back
on Myrka, and then her shield dropped. She spoke calmly, “I only
showed you the shield ahead of time so you could look at it. Myrka,
whenever you want.”

Myrka waited a few seconds and then
fired another bolt. The results were the same, though this time I
only saw a flash of the shield, just as the bolt
arrived.

Myrka snarled, I guess she wanted to
kill someone this morning, or she just hated anything which she
didn’t win.

Finnabair fixed the wall where the
blast had hit. I decided if any more of these demonstrations were
in order, I was going to stand behind Hydan.

“
My subconscious reality
maintains order around me, even when I am not conscious of what is
happening,” Finnabair explained.

I nodded, Hydan had taught me about
that already.

Then she asked me to come out onto the
floor.

“
All right,” I said, but
then I spoke to Myrka, “Don’t test me with any of those bolts! You
nearly killed me with one of your blasts, and once is
enough.”

Myrka nodded and walked back to stand
with Hydan and Toji.

When I joined my mother, she explained
what she wanted. “The first thing you need to do is learn defense.
Offense is all well and good, but when facing a mage, most of what
you need is defense. Your offense is unlikely to get through to
them anyway, so you will have to get up close and personal to do
them harm. That’s why we are starting with shields; Morgain uses
the Derkaz so you need to be prepared. We will move on to other
forms of defense after you have mastered this shield.”

We worked for several hours, and at
times, Finnabair had the others assist us. Eventually, she even had
Myrka use a very weak bolt, and then stronger. We worked up until I
really did believe she couldn’t nail me, even if I wasn’t looking.
That was the important part, me believing it was true. That took a
lot of work and practice, but once you got beyond a certain point,
and you believed, it suddenly got easier.

I spent a week learning things from my
mother and working with her warmed my heart. There was pleasure in
learning something from her which was more than just the lesson,
and because of my trust in her, things went well.

She didn’t crush me until the last
day.

I was feeling pretty cocky by then,
and wasn’t worried about arrows, thrown knives, bullets or Derkaz
blasts; my subconscious reality was growing strong.

That’s when she started hand to hand
work, and I found myself, not overmatched, but devastated in my
ineptitude. They were ALL better than me, and not by a little. Only
Hydan refused to spar, but the others, including my mother, had me
for lunch every time we had a mock battle.

One of the times I landed on my back,
with her blade at my throat, my mother said, “The thing is, Nick,
it isn’t enough to believe in your knife anymore, that is a given,
or you are already dead. Once you and your opponent have your
weapons on equal ground, each keeping their blade real, now it
comes down to other factors. One important one is your prowess with
the blade.”

She and I were out at the center of
the practice chamber, so when she lowered her voice at this point
they could not hear, “I find you have some skill already, Nick,
your body remembers past training your conscious mind has lost; I
can see it in the brilliance of your moves, except when you let
your conscious mind foul things up.”

Then she raised her voice back up to
normal volume as she said, “But there is far more to combat than
martial skill! Though you cannot affect your opponent, you may be
able to affect things around you, and try to distract your mage
opponent, assuming this isn’t an officiated duel. And, you must
expect your opponent to be doing the same thing.”

She helped me back to my feet, and
then said, “On guard.”

I raised my knife and tried not to
think about what I was doing, I didn’t want my conscious mind
screwing me up again. Suddenly my mother lunged forward, and I
easily took a step back, only to find myself falling over a piece
of the floor which hadn’t been there a moment before. Somehow one
of the marble carvings had lifted up a foot, right behind
me.

I went down hard, and Finnabair
stepped up above me, though she didn’t do anything. The advantage
was already obvious.

“
I raised the floor behind
you,” she noted.

“
Wow, I didn’t know you
could reach that far!” I exclaimed.

Suddenly all the blue pieces of marble
in the intricate floor rose up in a circle about fifty feet around
my mother.

“
Toji, could you come
here?” she said, and the blue pieces all retracted.

He came over and she said, “Do the
same thing I just did, as far out as you can.”

Toji’s brow furrowed in concentration,
and then the floor pieces lifted about twelve feet around
him.

“
I am a Second, so I can
reach farther than a Fourth as you can see,” she noted, and then
added, “But, if you are within the range of the Fourth, it is not
much of an advantage.”

Toji fixed the floor back to flat and
smooth.

Finnabair continued, “But notice we
were lifting marble, we weren’t affecting another mage directly.
That is completely different; the floor was not trying to stay the
way it was.”

“
I see the difference,” I
answered.

“
Try to lift the same
pieces again, Toji,” Finnabair requested.

Toji concentrated again, but nothing
happened.

“
I am fighting his version
of reality now, which is not something my subconscious reality can
handle very far from my body, it has to be through conscious
control,” she explained. “The trick here is to outwit your
opponent; try things they are not consciously working to hold
consistent.”

I took a deep breath and then nodded.
We worked on it a LOT more.

After another week, I started to feel
the pressure of holding still too long. Ziny was still a captive of
those freaks, and each night I saw her in my dreams. I announced it
was time to get going.

My mother was in her favorite chair in
her library, and I was there with my companions. She closed a book
she was reading, and said, “If you think you are ready, then you
need a good plan.”

“
I thought we had a plan,”
I replied, “We sneak onto Mystical Island, release my dad, find
Ziny, kick their ass and Five Point travel out, bada bing bada
boom.”

“
That is not a plan, son;
it is a goal.”

Hydan laughed, “Here we go, any Albus
plan involves the plan they tell you about, the part of their plan
you discover during the operation, followed by the revelation of
the plan they boxed you into doing, and later the plan of which you
never even knew you were a part.”

Her eyes twinkled at Hydan, but she
didn’t deny anything. Instead, she said, “Well, let’s just start
with the plan I'm telling you about. I assure you it is
real.”

“
Told you,” Hydan said
fatally.

I sighed, “OK, what is the
plan?”

Finnabair replied, “Your first goal
was to sneak onto Mystical Island, but how did you plan to
accomplish this with Morgain watching for you? I hear you even told
her you were coming for Ziny?”

“
Yeah, so she would keep
her alive as bait,” I answered.

My mother nodded. "She will be
planning a reception for you now.”

“
OK, so she knows we are
coming, and will be looking for us.”

My mother nodded, “So the only chance
you have is if she becomes distracted long enough for you to slip
by. I will be the distraction, well, part of it.”

I didn’t know if I liked the sound of
my mother in danger, I'd just found her.

My mother continued, “I have been
playing a passive role, letting Morgain's forces come to me, and
throwing them back down if they get too close, but otherwise
letting her bottle me up in my castle. I will now finally go on the
offensive, and she is going to learn what a mother is capable of
doing to protect her son!”

“
Be careful, though,” I
said.

She laughed. “Really, Nicholas? You
are planning to try and sneak onto Mystical Island with just two
Fourths and a Third, when Morgain, the Dokkalfar necromancer, knows
you are coming, and you tell ME to be careful!”

I shrugged. What could I
say?

But she finished with a sly smile, and
said, “Don’t you worry about me, son, I have a lot of tricks for
this upstart sorceress. She has gotten my ire. But I will not be
attacking alone. Oberon, the Sivaeral Second, is going to fight
back as well, especially when I send him reinforcements. I will
convince him to go on the offensive and take down the Island
Witch’s army which has him currently bottled up on
Ouroboros.”

“
How are you going to do
that?” I asked.

She stood, “I’ll show you.”

We followed her down into the roots of
the mountain, into the dungeons below her castle, where we
eventually came to a vast natural underground cavern. What we found
were rows and rows of stone warriors. They looked like a more
recent version of the army of 8000 Terracotta warrior statues
archeologists had uncovered in China, from back at the time of the
first Emperor of China. Here, in this vast chamber under Ivory
castle, were, even more, stone warriors. These were made of the
same white marble as the rest of the castle.