Millennial Mage

Tala felt the ripple in existence even as she heard Rane scream in rage.

Something was directly clashing with the boon and will of a Sovereign.

Anatalis’s head snapped up, looking toward her husband with predatory, lupine glee.

The authority of the Forest Spirit rose up as a tangible thing, momentarily holding the spirits of the Leshkin together, but…

But the backing of the Forest Spirit’s boon had never been power, it had always been the elk himself.

He’d either released Leshkin as attackers to indirectly undo minor slights to his boon or directly appeared. And, at the moment? He could not.

Anatalis gave a deep, strained laugh, even as he crouched and made ready to spring if the elk did manage to show himself, but the Forest Spirit never manifested.

All around Rane, the Forest Spirit’s authority frayed. While it was not broken, it was no longer as secure.

Still, a boon he oversaw had been violated, and he’d done nothing. On one side, worse than even a volitional violation, the elk had been unable to enforce his own boon, and existence itself took notice.

Existence was not happy with the Forest Spirit, but it also seemed to recognize that the elk hadn’t chosen to break its given boon. Tala somehow understood that he would not be punished directly for the breach, but his authority had been weakened significantly. His Sovereignty was less secure than ever before.

Walden tore his antlers free of his dying, lesser sibling before tossing the body toward Anatalis in clear offering. The elk then moved over to where Rane stood, her husband panting, eyes unfocused in clear rage.

All around them, human and arcane fought against automata, the latter fighting with the ferocity of those ready to continue the conflict unto to the death.

The Leshkin prince that Terry had been fighting was gone, having retreated when the Forest Spirit had.

Terry.

The thought of him tore at Tala’s soul, but she could still feel him there, his spirit frayed and battered but whole.

She almost sent forth her magic to rebuild him immediately, but something stayed her hand. She felt like he needed a bit more time for his spirit to recover, at least if he was going to heal quickly.

Tala sent love, affection, and gratitude toward the terror bird attached to her soul, and felt weariness and triumph in reply.

He would endure. He even sent admonishment her way that her own battle was still ongoing.

As if in direct answer to his admonition, a sword bit into her shoulder, attempting to assert that she was but a mundane human, but she was beyond that trick, her will and aura punching the closer senior commander bodily away.

When the next came in, she caught it, bending her will toward its destruction.

The reality splinters she’d begun to collect once more throughout her being tried to oppose her, to give her enemy a way out, but she denied that too.

This was her absolute right. She was mandated to end the Black Legion, and this was a senior commander of that enemy.

The other came back in, but Eskau Pallaun was suddenly there, knocking it away, and giving her the space to do her work.

The black hue-man was over matched in strength and speed, but only by the barest margin. He would be more than sufficient to keep that opponent back while Tala did as she planned.

Tala held her automaton by a wrist and shoulder, her fingers digging into the metal as easily as they would into bread dough.

The positioning was awkward, given the thing was taller than her, so she bent her strength and pulled it down, twisting it to the side until it was below her, its legs scrabbling under it to gain purchase it would never achieve.

At the same time, its free hand pulled a knife and tried to drive it into her, but Tala’s control was growing the longer she held it.

The motions started out sluggish and slowed as it continued to attempt to gain freedom. All the while, Tala was disassembling its scripts and magics, peeling back its defenses layer by layer.

She vaguely felt Rane join Eskau Pallaun in keeping the other senior commander occupied.

Her perception picked up on Anatalis standing warily near the center of the consolidating allied army. His perception and authority blanketed the area, but he didn’t slay the Black Legionnaires. Even as Tala bent her will toward the permanent destruction of the senior commander, she found that momentarily confusing.

Then, what she was doing clicked into place with what he was waiting for, and she realized it. If he wiped them out, they’d be dead, but they wouldn’t be gone.

At the same time, the allied forces were making good progress in killing off the automata, and Alat was at work behind the scenes ensuring that as many of those deaths as possible were permanent. Tala even felt Enar lending Alat aid to increase the percentage just a little bit.

In her brief moment of attention, she saw Anatalis flick together a complex working that saved half a dozen gated, showing that he was anything but uninvolved despite not wiping the board clear.

Tala grinned, focusing once more on the ‘natural’ magics that had been forged around the abomination of a creature.

As she stripped back a particularly gnarled bit of magic, it triggered something hidden within, and a lance of white-hot fire shot from the automaton’s chest.

The pulse broke over Tala’s helmet like a stream of water over a spoon, splashing out before wrapping around and back, obliterating a large section of the canopy high overhead, and catching more on fire.

Anatalis shifted, glancing toward Walden, and the immortal elk acted, saving the forest from further damage and deepening his claim and hold on the area as a consequence.

Tala was very grateful that she’d repositioned the senior commander, else that splash might have raked through her allies instead of the tree-tops.

Still, it highlighted the fact that the magics within the senior commander were trapped and rigged against tampering, something that hadn’t been the case before, and still wasn’t for the lower ranked legionnaires.

Is it too dangerous to do here?

-No, just establish full dominion.-

Huh… solid idea. Tala manifested a forest of iron spikes, and rather than sending them far and wide, she drove them into the ground at a six-inch interval, staggered to be as dense as possible with that spacing, rather than being laid out in a square-grid pattern.

She didn’t limit this to the superficial, anchoring her aura, will, and authority star- and stoneward as well.

Something within the senior commander broke free, and it threw a full powered punch—the knife in its fist somehow forgotten—slamming its fist into her side with enough force to splinter her armor and pulp her body within.

Stolen novel; please report.

Her starward form reached out, another arm seeming to appear on the superficial coming vaguely from her shoulder to grab the wrist of the offending arm and lock it down as well.

Another two hands came, both from the stoneward form, to lock down the senior commander’s feet.

There would be no more such hits.

The automata was a multi-layered being as well, however, and it began to writhe, changing shape and attempting wriggle free.

Tala didn’t relent, bearing down with her full focus and will.

All around her, her power and will was echoed from the anchors of reality iron, giving her a level of leverage that should have been out of her reach.

Then, the tip of her will manifested a long-familiar magic, dissolution flicking into being along a razor’s edge, breaching the containment and freeing the soul-core.

Her final starward hand snapped out, catching the conglomeration before it could flit away, back to a factory for reconstruction.

“Got you.” Her armor melted away even as she let go of the automaton’s body, allowing it fall to the ground as the detritus that it was.

* * *

Rane really liked fighting beside Eskau Pallaun.

The man’s darkness and movement abilities allowed him to flit around the edges of the clash with the senior commander as Rane slugged it out with the automaton.

As before, Rane was in a holding action. He could probably have slain it by this point, but Alat had politely asked him to hold off. That way, they might be able to eliminate two senior commanders for good. Doing that was beyond him still.

His wife was standing in a nearly-metal-plated patch of reality, a subjugated automaton held by more hands than seemed reasonable.

So, she’s finally realizing that they don’t have to perfectly mirror her. He smiled at that even as he ducked under one slash and parried a second.

Force was assaulted with a wave of reality. It was just wood; it should yield and shatter before the clearly superior weapon.

Rane’s soul flexed, sending back the truth of Force’s existence, using his soulbond to it as a medium.

He’d wielded the weapon in the neighborhood of two decades, maybe longer—he didn’t have his wife’s perfect memory—and the idea that it was ‘just wood’ was laughable. He had the weight of reality on his side for this one.

Just as each time they’d crossed blades before, the senior commander hitched, seemingly unable to believe that Rane had successfully opposed the conceptual assault.

He wasn’t about to tell it that he likely wouldn’t have been able to without his own Reforged nature and the bits of reality under his sway that gave his memory and assertions far more import and stability than other Archons could work with.

That’s right; fear that all you thought you knew is a lie. Then, you die.

Eskau Pallaun used the momentary distraction to flash past, leaving shallow cuts all across the thing’s back.

Rane glanced toward his wife just in time to see the senior commander’s body fall to the side.

An odd looking arm—that he still knew to be his wife’s even though it seemed to be made entirely of iron—extended from her shoulder even as her arms hung at her side. The hand of that arm seemed to be cupping and locking down something that was roughly spherical.

He could just barely see a shrouded gate before he was forced to return his attention to his own opponent.

The previously entirely silent senior commander let loose a wail of horror at what it was witnessing, its attacks and actions taking on a frenetic pace as it first sought to go to its comrade’s aid. Then, finally accepting that such wasn’t possible, it fought to escape.

Rane and Eskau Pallaun denied both goals and didn’t press for more.

They were both content to hold this thing ready for Tala’s attentions.

Rane’s smile grew along with the automaton’s panic.

His wife would be ready soon enough.

* * *

Tala’s power flowed over the outside of the soul-core, flicks of dissolution magic eroding the connection between the spirit and the enslaved soul.

Cohesion locked down the rest of the soul, preventing her actions from destabilizing or breaking it further. She wanted the process to be as painless and smooth as possible.

…For the soul.

A scream too high for human ears to hear tore through the clearing, causing Tala’s lupine allies to flinch back in pain, their whines joining the sound to enhanced ears as Tala continued to grind away at the powerful, ancient spirit.

She felt like, if she were to fully manifest her existence-forms, this task would become trivial, but she didn’t want to rely on those. She didn’t like how much they influenced her thinking.

Even using them in bursts felt like they slowly tainted her view, even if that was becoming less prominent.

Hmm… She flicked the endingblade form into place, shearing off half of the spirit in one go.

Tala was suddenly holding broken glass, by the feel of it, as the rest of the spirit fragmented, tearing at existence as it succumbed.

Her cohesion settled around her, seeping into reality to brace it up against the unnatural predations of the dissipating spirit.

A moment later, the soul had been carefully ushered on to the next world and the spirit was nothing but a fading memory.

Tala slowly turned to look at the fight going on so close at hand.

The other senior commander froze as her eyes landed on it, something deep within it glitching as the full weight of her focus fell upon the automaton, her aura, will, and authority slapping its resistance aside.

This was her purpose. This was why she’d been granted trust and authority by so many.

She flickered over, arriving beside her husband even as he embedded his sword in the thing’s lower abdomen.

Rane twisted Force and tore it out sideways.

As the senior commander fell, Tala drove her hand forward, wreathed in the endingblade, dissolution magics.

She pierced through every layer of its defenses, plucking the soulcore free even as the dissolution was flipped for coherence to keep the soul intact.

The body fell free, but Tala didn’t care. Her focus was on the soul in her hand.

“Tala.”

His soft voice, speaking her name with love and tenderness, snapped her focus away from the thing in her hand.

“You don’t need that spellform right now.”

He… was right.

With a tremendous effort of will, she pushed the endingblade existence forms away, allowing them to dissipate even while she kept the soulcore locked in place.

“Done.”

He smiled. “I know. Do you want me to try? Or do you want to handle it yourself?”

Tala gave a sad smile. “I’d have had Terry do it…”

Rane winced, giving a sad nod. “I know he’ll be back, but… I didn’t like watching him die.”

“I didn’t like feeling it.” She sighed. “It didn’t hurt as much this time. I felt it more, and it felt worse, but it didn’t hurt the same. I don’t know if I’m more callous, more used to it, or if advancing lessened the cost.”

He shrugged. “Could be a bit of all three.” He glanced toward her hand. “So…”

Eskau Pallaun landed beside them, glancing at the artificial corpse beside them, then to Tala’s seemingly empty hand. “The field is won, Eskau of War. When you have dispensed with that, the factory must be destroyed, and then we must move to the next.”

She grunted, then nodded. “As you say, Eskau Pallaun.”

She bent her will to the task, and it was done in short order.

The field had been entirely cleared of enemies, the Black Legion Leshkin army was no more, and most had been permanently banished. That was mostly referring to the bottom rung of the legion, but each was still a human soul that had been freed to pass on in peace.

Tala huffed a laugh.

Rane looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “What?”

“This war has done more to free the souls once bound in arcane columns than anything I accomplished.”

Eskau Pallaun grimaced. “I wish you weren’t correct in that assessment.”

Tala sighed. “Still, it is moving things in the right direction. Culture doesn’t shift easily or quickly, but it’s better than another war.”

The hue-man gave a slow nod. “I would hazard a guess that the Pack will be at humanity’s side going forward. I think that culture will find a way to shift far faster than you fear, if we give it the chance.” He gave Tala a searching look. “Your resort-hold solution won’t replace all the columns, however. I look forward to seeing how you address that issue. I’d hate to have to oppose your efforts because there isn’t a reasonable alternative.”

Tala gave the older Eskau a piercing look. “That would be quite the shame.”

He met her gaze for a long moment before giving a slight bow. “I will assist with the wounded. The war council will likely give us new orders within the hour.”

“Of course, Eskau. You are dismissed to that duty.”

He gave her a sad smile before bowing formally and departing.