Revelation (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy) (3 page)

He was obviously displeased with my response but he gestured toward the siege juggernaut with his staff, whose red and blue marble lines had dimmed slightly since the beginning of the battle, indicating that he also possessed limited energy reserves. “The only way they can breach the wall is to bring down the Middle Gate,” he explained, “and brute force appears their method of choice. I believe I can bring down the colossus directly, but the price will be high,” he said with a meaningful look which I wasn’t entirely certain I wanted to understand.

“Master,” was all I could muster. I had suspected for a few months that my House’s Magos was an accomplished practitioner of ‘Grey Arts,’ as they had been dubbed by Imperial Doctrine. These ‘Grey Arts’ were not entirely outlawed, but they were also not formally recognized as their own legitimate branches of study due to political backlash, if I understood correctly. My familiarity with the Imperial bureaucratic mess was limited, and I readily admit that I was all too happy to keep it that way.

“Compose yourself, Journeyman!” he snapped. “I will not be making any grand sacrifices, and neither will any living person here,” he said sternly, and I felt a chill run down my spine at a caveat like ‘living person.’ “But should I fail,” he continued, “you will be all that stands between the colossus and the inner sanctum of the castle. Be certain to reserve enough of your energy to at least slow it until dawn.”

In the background, I saw another flyer tear into a battlement two hundred feet away, laying waste to the dozen men stationed there in a brief, savage maelstrom authored by its talons and tail. Reinforcements immediately arrived and they drove the flyer off, but the damage had been done.

“Yes, Master,” I agreed after witnessing the gory display. “What do you need from us?” I asked, trying to be of some assistance even though I doubted I would succeed.

Antolin shook his head. “Stay here and conserve your strength,” he said sharply. “We shall know soon enough if I am to succeed.” With that, he struck the butt of his staff onto the stones beneath his feet and the protective field surrounding him flared. Its deep, green color illuminating the battlements for a hundred feet and within seconds he had levitated three feet off the floor. He thrust his staff toward the malevolent, green, light marking the head of the juggernaut.

Accelerating at an impressive rate, he hurtled off toward the lumbering giant leaving a scant trail of glowing blue dust in his wake which disappeared almost immediately.

I kept eye contact with his fleeting form and gripped my hands on the edge of the wall. My Master wouldn’t have sped off at this particular moment if he could have waited a few more, which meant that whatever he had planned would require a truly tremendous amount of energy—and I wanted to
see
it happen. I had never seen Magos Antolin in action before, and while we weren’t exactly on the best of terms, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to gauge his abilities for a plethora of reasons.

Without closing my eyes, I summoned the glyphs and symbols to my mind which would form a spell allowing me to temporarily see the form his magic would take. Different forms of magic (Augury, Somnomancy, Summoning, etc..) have different colors when viewed through certain magical lenses and this simple spell would let me see that aura, as well as the rough shape and size of the equations and structures he would employ to create his desired effect. This particular spell, often referred to as Mage Sight, was taught to anyone who showed magical talent so it was very easy to conjure.

The Magos and Master of House Wiegraf soared toward the juggernaut, the shimmering field surrounding him growing in brightness the closer he got to his target. Once my own spell of Augury was completed, which required a miniscule amount of energy, I could see what he was going to employ and it shook me to the core.

Not only was the size of the spell he was about to cast huge, fully ten times the size of my own previous focus key-assisted manifestation, but it burned with a sickly, orange color. I knew then what I had suspected for months: my Master, Magos Antolin Wiegraf, was a Necromancer. Necromancy, or magic binding the bodies and souls of living (or previously living) creatures, was the only type of magic bearing that particular aura.

It appeared as though there were several spells at work simultaneously, and after I studied it for the fleeting seconds it existed he discharged its awful power directly into the form of the lumbering siege juggernaut. My simple Mage Sight spell operating at such a great distance was unable to ascertain exactly what those spells were individually. I did note, however, that his staff and his robes pulsated in unison with a rich, blue color which stood out from the other hues made visible by Mage Sight.

The final effect was less visually spectacular than I expected it would be, with barely a flash of visible, orange light accompanying a low, droning sound which swept across the terrain like a shockwave almost below the range a human ear could detect.

However, the entire assembled host surrounding the juggernaut ceased their forward motion as one and the flyers fell from the sky almost instantly, their forms having gone rigid. One of them fell onto the ramparts near to my position, and its body impacted with that horrible cracking sound I had learned to mean bones snapping beneath skin.

To my surprise, the body of the monster did not transform into the wine-colored ooze like the previous ones. It simply lay motionless there, prompting the soldiers atop the walls to surround it with their spears. A gust of wind came in the instant before first spear was thrust into its lifeless form, which blasted the body apart into a shower of dust or ash which disappeared almost immediately after taking to the wind.

I looked back out over the battlefield and could not find the shimmering field of Antolin’s wards. I scanned for the light of the juggernaut’s ‘head,’ and at first I saw nothing. I felt a measure of elation that somehow Master Antolin had dealt the final blow of the battle and, indeed, had brought down the colossus.

Then my hopes were dashed as I saw something slowly rising from the ground. The brightness of its green, pulsating light had faded significantly, but it was still there. After reaching its feet it paused before resuming its march toward our wall, this time without its fellows as the rest of the invaders were motionless. Antolin hadn’t done the entire job single-handedly, but now there was just the lumbering monstrosity to deal with.

I took a deep breath and calmed myself; it looked like I was going to have to try it after all.

Deep within my mind I searched for the first of many glyphs and sigils I would need in order to enter the consciousness of the invader. We had reason to believe that the invaders were not truly sovereign entities as such, but instead were some form of remotely controlled constructs. Antolin and I had surmised that control of such an army was possible for a single person if their level of concentration was high enough, and that person had just become my primary target.

The concentration required for such control requires an almost trance-like state of mind, much like casting a spell. That state of mind actually allows an expert of Dream Magic to treat the target though it were in a deep sleep. I was no ‘expert,’ so it was a long shot. But it was all we had.

Summoning the symbols and patterns into my mind’s eye which were needed for Dream Magic was more difficult for me than any other magic, which was odd since I had quite the reputation as the most promising Somnomancer the Imperial City of Veldyrian had ever seen. Finding the right pieces of the spell to assemble took even longer, and was more difficult than with any other spells I used, but eventually I managed to drag them from the recesses of my mind. I had become used to the strange resistance I felt when delving into this region of my mind, but it didn’t make it any easier.

The first spell was simple, at least in principle: I would insert my own consciousness into my target’s dream state and look for the person’s dream-representation. The energy required to initiate such contact was significant but the even larger drain was maintaining that connection for any period of time, especially if the target was to break his or her dream-like state for some reason—like realizing I had infiltrated their subconscious.

The harder part of my spell’s preparation was bringing a weapon with me. Often times there are plenty of things available inside of a person’s dream to use against them, and since belief is the basis of power in dreams, a person is far more likely to believe that something their own mind created is very real (and therefore very dangerous) than something with which their mind is unfamiliar.

Still, if I created a powerful enough weapon to take with me, I could at the very least sever the person’s control over the juggernaut which would probably cause the lumbering siege engine to lose cohesion and collapse. At best, the backlash and shock of being killed in the dream world might actually be strong enough to kill the person on the other end.

After assembling a suitably devastating weapon in my mind’s eye, I fueled the spells simultaneously and was relieved that the rate at which I powered the spell was much more controlled than the blast I had hit the flyer with using the Spell Key. When both spells were fully charged, I executed them simultaneously and my mind was swallowed by a seemingly infinite void.

I found myself in a strange, yet oddly familiar, place where darkness was everywhere surrounded by endless light. There were no shadows, but there were also no sources of the illumination. The light and the dark simply coexisted, seemingly mindful of each other’s boundaries to the degree that differentiation was somehow still possible.

I knew that I could get lost trying to understand another person’s dream state, so I kept my focus. Finding whoever it was would have to happen quickly because maintaining the connection was draining my power far more quickly than I had thought. That meant that whoever was controlling this army was very, very far away.

I relaxed my mind and tried not to focus on sounds, or sights, or any other primary senses. Instead, I let my mind become as blank as I possibly could. A dream world is not a place of dimensions, so wandering aimlessly is completely fruitless. There are no distances, there are only obstructions, and I wanted to create as few obstacles as possible between myself and my target.

I felt it almost immediately. I let myself float, and fall, toward the point I had felt without offering any resistance since doing so would only guarantee less clarity of vision in the strange dreamscape. I quickly found myself in a room with fairly remarkable details, which I had learned from my Master was unusual when traveling to another’s dream world.

The room was made of polished, hewn stone and it was dome-shaped. There were no windows per se, but the top half of the ceiling itself was made of glass and filled with the stars of the night sky. This was clearly a place with which the dreamer was intimately familiar.

Curiosity got the better of me and I looked up at the ceiling, realizing that it wasn’t made of glass, but instead the images were being projected upon the glossy stone from somewhere. I couldn’t see where the images were coming from, and then I caught myself as things momentarily lost clarity. I had to maintain focus!

In the center of the room was an altar, or bench of some kind, which was carved in the rough shape of a human and lying atop it’s carved stone surface was a figure. I knew I had found my target since its features were blank, which was common in dreams seeing as we very rarely imagine our own appearance. The mind normally chooses to focus on surroundings and project those during a dream state, so the person’s own face would generally not be included in the objects requiring study by the dreamer.

I gripped my weapon tightly and approached, at the same time expending a significant portion of my energy reserves to anchor myself to this part of the dream. I had found my quarry, and I didn’t want to miss what would likely be my lone opportunity to protect the castle from its assailants.

Then I heard a voice from behind me and I whirled around, me weapon raised in both hands. The source of the sound was muffled and seemed very distant, but the figure was no more than five feet away and looking right through me.

Unlike the figure on the slab, I could make out some of the features of this man: he had dark, brown skin, brown eyes, and a completely smooth skull. For some reason he seemed familiar to me, but I dismissed the familiarity since it was probably just a reflection of the dreamer’s own familiarity with the person. The spell I was using was far from completely tested and proven, so subtle side-effects like that were something I had come to expect.

I couldn’t make out the man’s words at first, but then everything seemed to flicker and his voice became clearer. “What’s happening?” I heard the man’s still heavily distorted voice ask. “What can I do, Mistress?”

I turned back to the figure on the man-shaped slab. This was an odd experience for me, listening to two people conversing inside of a dream world, but the dreamer was clearly a very powerful practitioner of magic so it was possible for such a person to maintain lines of communication even within dreams.

A woman’s voice came from the slab. “I do not know,” she said softly, “a great blow has been struck against us…and I barely have the strength to keep the Colossus moving forward.”

I resisted the urge to end the scene once and for all by unleashing my weapon, instead opting to gather information on my enemies first. It was risky, but I needed as much intelligence as I could gather before making my presence felt.

“Who could do this, Tyreva?” asked the man, who had moved next to the woman on the slab. “The castle has no remaining mages and their walls were certain to fall, if not tonight then the next.”

“They are not alone,” she replied. “The enemy has found the castle…they must aim to deny us that which we require,” she whispered before being rocked by a spasm, which made everything in the dream world flicker and shake before stabilizing. “We are too late,” she finished weakly.