Ends of Magic

“I need to drop a utility skill.” Nathan said, taking another bite of stew.

He had given his antimage trainees a night of rest, and was having dinner with the Heirs. He only had nine students left, and they all seemed to be committed to learning antimagic. The final test would come in a few days when they attempted to gain the [Regeneration] Talent.

But for now, he was taking a break to hang out with his friends. There was a tiny bit of distance between them now, since Nathan wasn’t coming with them on missions out of the city. The Heirs had been adventuring in the wilderness around Halsmet, keeping the farms safe and giving elites a demonstration of how you hunted wood stalkers.

“That’s a heavy statement. What do you mean?” Khachi responded from across the table, where he was cleaning vegetables out of his teeth.

Nathan sighed. He’d been thinking about this for a couple days and had decided to get some input. “I need an aura manipulation skill for my antimagic. I can spread it over such a large area and use it to direct magic, but the limiting factor is always my control. I can’t do anything but a cloud if I make it big, and I can’t reach as far as I think I should be able to. I can't really disable one enchantment from a couple of them unless I'm touching an object.”

Stella gave him a questioning look. “Sorry to raise the past, but how large can you spread your antimagic?”

“About the size of this building.” Nathan replied, but then quickly corrected himself as all of the Heirs looked up in surprise. They were in Exea's old mansion, which was several stories tall. “But at that range it’s not very dense. It would make it harder to cast magic, and drain spells of power instead of completely denying them. A fireball would still explode, but only at half-power. I would also slowly degrade all of the magic items in range. I need to condense it down a lot to really deny magic effectively, and I can only do that when it’s a lot closer.”

“Sounds like a good target.” Sarah said, gnawing on a bone she’d found in her bowl. She pointed it at him. “The heavy question is, what utility skill do you drop?”

Nathan pursed his lips. “A few options. I’ve always thought of [Lecturing] as a skill I was eventually going to drop, but it’s Developed twice and been pretty useful.”

“Don’t drop that one!” Stella interrupted loudly. “Your Insights are difficult enough already, and you’re teaching other people now. You’d do better taking up hydra farming.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, that’s my thought. I see why it’s common for ‘temporary’ skills to become permanent. Once you’ve used it a lot and Developed it a few times it’s hard to give up. Anyway, another option is a skill I picked up for stealth, [Quiet Movement]. It was useful when sneaking around Halsmet at night.”

Aarl tilted his head. “Overlapping skills are powerful. You want to be sneaky, and multiple stealth skills are how you hit that target.”

Nathan nodded, but he wasn’t so sure. “Right. But it hasn’t been relevant since we freed Halsmet. I don’t make a lot of sound when [Airwalking]. I’m not sure, it might Develop to something good when it goes unique.”

Khachi crossed his arms, pushing away his empty bowl and the utensil he’d been using to clean his teeth. “Are those the sole options?”

“No, there’s also [Battle Cry]. It’s been useful for intimidating people and warning about danger, but I’m not sure it fits with the rest of my build.” Nathan shrugged. “I do need some kind of aura manipulation skill, but I’m not sure what skill to drop or who to learn it from.”

Khachi’s voice was confident. “My mother will have this knowledge. She will teach you such a skill without regret.”

Nathan blinked, but decided not to ask why Kia knew the Insights for an aura skill when she didn’t have an aura. “Ok, then what skill should I drop?”

Aarl pursed his lips, considering. “[Battle Cry] and [Lecturing] have both proven their worth to my sight. [Battle Cry] let you draw the attention of the army, so they attacked you instead of us. [Lecturing] has helped us all gain Insights. Hear me, that skill caused the destruction of the Old Gemore construct army.”

Stella narrowed her eyes at that comment, but didn’t disagree.

“[Quiet Movement] could be just as important.” Sarah said, cocking an eyebrow at her brother. She glanced back to Nathan. “How much have you ranked up each skill? That will weight the regret you’ll carry.”

Nathan counted back. “[Lecturing] started as low-tier, and now it’s high-tier 9.”

Sarah snorted, cutting him off. “That skill is worth its weight in Adamant. You were trained in teaching, you’ll be able to Develop that to Unique. Keep it, especially for your antimages.” The rest of the Heirs voiced their agreement.

Nathan crossed [Lecturing] off of his mental list, and nodded in reply to Sarah. “Yeah, good point. [Quiet Movement] is low-tier 4, and [Battle Cry] is mid-tier 7. It started out in mid-tier.”

“That’s a clear target.” Aarl said, reaching over to grab Sarah’s bowl of stew. She swatted his hand and he looked hurt, shaking his head in mock disapproval before turning back to Nathan. “You don’t need [Quiet Movement], and it’s not very powerful. Drop it and get an aura manipulation skill.”

By that metric, I should at least consider dropping [Disguise]. It’s the only other low-tier skill I have. But I want to go to Giantsrest, and [Disguise] lets me hide in plain sight. After seeing how Faline moves around Giantsrest, I think I should prioritizing skills that make it seem like I belong over skills that let me move unseen. Besides, she gave me the Insight for [Disguise], while I just kind of picked up [Quiet Movement].

After a moment of thought Nathan nodded back at Aarl. “Yeah, [Quiet Movement] is a good candidate.” He turned to Stella. “Can you ask your parents to tell Kia what I want? And also that I’m hoping we can meet soon?” Nathan asked.

Stella nodded, pulling her bowl closer as Aarl glanced around the table for more food. “They’ll come back before you leave. My parents want to hunt a castlebear with us, and they killed all the ones around Gemore decades ago.”

“Go get yourself another bowl, with dessert as an extra target.” Sarah said, pointing her brother towards the door. “He eats more now than he did as a child. More than I ever did, even before I changed.” The wiry woman said, frowning after her twin.

“He’s spending his energy on many things.” Stella said mysteriously, wiggling her eyebrows.

Khachi looked confused. “Are you speaking of his amorous…”

“Yes, yes I am.” Stella choked out, flushing slightly. “That’s the only thing I could mean!”

Nathan chuckled. “Who’s he been sleeping with recently? I hope he hasn’t broken many hearts.”

Sarah replied in a surly tone. “He was flirting with Liluce, Myrla’s second? She smothered his fire quick as that,” snapping her fingers to demonstrate how quickly Aarl had been shot down.

Khachi licked out his own bowl, eyeing the [Sniper]. “Watching her gaze, that would be your nemesis to slay.”

Now it was Sarah’s turn to look uncomfortable, and she changed the subject. “Nathan, how fare your students? Are they learning the Insights of an antimage?”

He chuckled and answered in detail, giving the Heirs an overview of what he’d done so far. Once Aarl had returned bearing a platter loaded with small sweetened cakes, Nathan launched into his plan for the future.

“In two days I’m going to see if they can get the [Regeneration] Talent. Anybody who succeeds gets antimagic. Then we train that for one day before I leave.”

“Only one day for antimagic?” Stella asked curiously. “For antimage candidates, that’s a strange target.”

“Antimagic is the easy Insight” Nathan summarized. “ I think I can essentially grant it to people without much preamble, and after that it’s innate, not the sort of thing you need classroom instruction on. But [Regeneration] has to be learned the hard way, and it’s the much more important Talent. Once they have [Regeneration] they’ll be much more able to survive learning how to use their antimagic.”

He held up one finger. “But, the final part of the [Regeneration] Insight is using Stamina to regrow a missing body part. Preferably an arm.” He looked around seriously, to ensure they understood what he was proposing.

“Khachi, can you heal a missing arm? In case someone can't get the Talent. That’s the critical part. I’m not about to cut off limbs until I know we can grow them back.”

The wolfman frowned in disapproval. “This is not the appropriate use of my power. I can heal such wounds, but they would not be earned in righteous battle. The power of the divine expects to be used judiciously.”

Nathan frowned. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. There weren’t a lot of healers that could restore severed limbs, and they tended to both be expensive and not willing to leave Gemore. It would take a lot of favors and money to get one out to Halsmet. Khachi’s divine magic was tailored for defense, healing and inspiration, so Nathan had been hoping it was an easy solution to his problem.

His magic is getting pickier as he gets more powerful. Maybe I just need to phrase this a little differently.

“These are not wounds sustained lightly.” Nathan said carefully. “Those who need healing will have taken a desperate risk to gain the ability to protect their home. They bring personal danger upon themselves, so that they may better defend their community and their city. Will you be able to heal their wounds?”

The tinge of divine mana pulsed in Khachi’s eyes. He returned Nathan’s gaze and nodded deeply. “With that context, they are worthy. Extinguish your doubt, for I will heal your students when they are in need.”

Good to know I can pull a little sophistry to get around the restrictions of divinity.

Then Nathan turned to Aarl. “Can you do the cutting? I need clean and fast.”

His friend nodded seriously and patted the pouch that contained the weaponry. “I can bear this burden. Stella can cauterize the wounds to prevent blood loss.”

The mage nodded hesitantly, then after a moment nodded again more decisively. “I can do that.”

“Great.” Nathan said, sighing and leaning back. “Come to the courtyard where we killed Taeol, in two days. In the middle of the afternoon.”

Nathan turned to Sarah. “Can you come by tomorrow morning? I’ve got an exercise I think you can help with.”

The [Sniper] shrugged and looked around at her team. “We can leave in the afternoon to hunt that pseudowyrm, yeah?”

They all agreed, and then Stella broke in with excitement. “I forgot I haven’t told you about my new class! I took [Avatar of Mana], and I can charge up a lightning capacitor in about twenty seconds now! I’m also working on learning water mana from an old scroll. I almost have it!”

Nathan chuckled. He looked around at the other Heirs. “How much was left of the last monster you fought?”

Aarl held two fingers about a half-inch apart. “That was the biggest piece left. From a Terrorghast.”

—

“No!” Nathan yelled, pelting Raf in the stomach with a rock. The young man was airborne, having jumped up to dodge a blunted hatchet Sarah had thrown at his knees. It meant he was locked into a trajectory, and could do nothing about Nathan’s rock. He folded around the stone and fell to the ground, the wind knocked out of him.

“Unless you have skills to move in midair, jumping just makes you an easy target!” Nathan said, walking up to Raf to offer him a hand up.

The intense man refused the offer, jumping to his feet and glaring back at Nathan. He didn’t argue, just reset himself to go again.

At this point, Nathan knew that Raf wasn’t angry at him. At least not mostly. Raf was angry at Davrar, angry at Giantsrest, angry at everything that had held him down. He never quit, and never turned down additional training, even when the nineteen-year old was falling asleep on his feet and could barely move.

He’ll definitely make it to the end, and if he gets [Regeneration] he’ll level fast. I’m worried he’s gonna die fighting something he really should run away from.

“Raf, sit down. Shai, it's your turn.”

The dark-haired young woman got up from where she’d been sitting, massaging a bruised leg. Her face was full of spite, and Nathan was pretty sure she was angry at him. She’d clearly worked out that he’d expected her to quit after refusing to give her any special treatment for being gorgeous. He'd been a little harder on her every time she tried to flirt with him.

It appeared to have caused her to persevere out of spite. She wanted to prove him wrong, and he was fine with that. One more student hadn’t shown up to training this morning, and Nathan was starting to worry about losing more. Though he was pretty sure that the eight remaining students would stick it out. If nothing else, Shom was going to stay around because he just had so many questions for Nathan. It seemed like he had a learning or memory skill, and Nathan would be shocked if the short pudgy teenager didn’t manage to learn [Regenerate].

If he doesn’t, that means nobody will and it's not feasible for me to teach the Talent this way.

Shom’s sister Hetal was also in it for the long run. She was taller than her brother, with the same dark skin and dark hair, though hers was long and straight to his short and curly. She didn’t seem to care much about pain or suffering. Or social status. Instead, Hetal cared about her brother, and wanted to stay with him and protect him. She didn’t speak unless she had to, but when he asked her a direct question she always answered completely and concisely. Everything she did seemed designed to attract as little attention as possible.

Nathan had wondered about their pasts, what kinds of slaves they’d been. But he’d decided he didn’t need to know. If his students wanted to talk about themselves he would listen, but he wouldn’t go digging into their pasts uninvited. He was afraid that what he might learn would change how he treated them.

Besides, I think therapists are becoming a respected profession here. Everybody in Halsmet has trauma, and the people who started out helping newly freed slaves have started to develop builds for that. They’re more qualified than I am to help with any issues here. If I had more time I would go find one myself, but I really don't.

“Good!” He called out as Shai dodged all of the rocks. She was good at reading people and had quick reflexes. She’d managed to dodge most of their attacks, even when Nathan had feinted and then thrown at the same time as Sarah. Neither of them were going all-out, which was definitely a good thing.

If he activated [Raging Thrill] and spent Stamina and Focus, Nathan was pretty sure that he could hit a fly with a 120-mile-per-hour fastball. Not only did the two resources synergize to an incredible extent, but all of Nathan’s bodily and skill enhancements added up. He didn’t want to know what Sarah was capable of. Her recent skills were more directed towards long-range firearms, but she still had many of the skills that had let her sink a javelin into a stalker eye on their Blooding Patrol. And now she was much higher level, so all of those skills were even more powerful than before.

Nathan gave Sarah a fistbump as they finished up the dodging portion of training and she rose to leave. She jogged out of the gate of the ruined mansion, headed to the front gates to rendezvous with the other Heirs and go kill the latest monster.

Meanwhile, Nathan turned to his students as they nursed bruises. He rubbed his hands together and started yelling. “An Antimage cannot wear armor! We’re going to go through those footwork drills again, now that you know what they’re for. After that, it’s time to talk about mental exercises. You will need mental skills. Antimagic will protect you from [Charm] and [Dominate], but a slavemaster can still Command you, and they also help you with pain management and the [Regeneration] Insight. Now, up, let's go!”

The students got to their feet with various degrees of stoicism, and Nathan started leading them through the quick pivots and driving knees that bore a lot of similarity to dance training.

Leadership 9 achieved!

High-tier Lecturing 10 achieved!

—

“Hey, Egall.”

It had taken some time to find her, which was fitting for somebody who specialized in invisibility and stealth magic. He’d eventually asked Liluce and been pointed to this unassuming two-story mansion just within the inner city. It was the same place that they’d climbed together and used to clamber across the wall and into the outer city right after he'd freed her. The building was large but isolated, located away from any major thoroughfares.

Now he stood in the door, waving at Egall past the older woman that had opened the door at his knock. “Can I come in? I want to talk about a few things.”

The pale mage seemed surprised to see him, but she waved him inside after a moment of hesitation. She looked stressed and tired.

Nathan looked around as they walked through the corridors, seeing dozens of curious faces watching as Egall ushered him through the house. They were almost entirely women, mostly in their thirties and forties with worn hands and tired eyes. There were traces of shadow mana clinging to several of them, indicating magic training. He surreptitiously checked for mental spells on everybody and found nothing.

It’s not that I don’t trust Egall, but it’s worth verifying. They’re hidden away over here and I know she has basic mind magic.

The sharply pretty mage gestured him into an office, then closed the door and cast [Muffle].

“Are these all of your trainees?” Nathan asked curiously.

She nodded tiredly, sighing and leaning back behind the enormous desk. “Yes, this is all of them. I wanted to cluster together, and Myrla gave me a free hand in candidates and resources.”

The room looked like it had been the office of the head of the household. A small cot sat in the corner and a few personal possessions we scattered across the room. A bowl of plain and unseasoned porridge sat on the desk, cold and gelatinous.

“You’re sleeping here?” he said, looking around and seeing very few traces of luxury. There was a dresser in the corner that seemed messily stuffed with fine cloth, but that was it. “Surely there are some nicer beds in this place.”

Egall waved a hand around the room. “I’m the only mage of Giantsrest left in this city. The mana won’t flow clean if I indulge in luxuries. Besides, each of those beds sleep four now, and I prefer to sleep alone.” She gave him a questioning look, subtly asking why he was here.

Nathan nodded in acknowledgement to her silent question. “Sorry to burst in here with all of these questions. I wanted to check in on you, ask if you needed anything? I’m going to be leaving Halsmet soon, and I wanted to ask if you could do something for my own trainees. I think I’m going to leave between three and five antimages here in Halsmet. Olad and his elites will take over their martial training, but I want them partnered with the mages they’ll end up working with. It’s important for antimagic to have magic to practice on.”

Nathan leaned back in his comfortable chair, giving her time to think things through.

Egall took that time before responding. “I’m glad to hear we will have antimages. I know Myrla has already thanked you, but I know the weight of that Insight, and what it can do against Giantsrest.” Her hand drifted up to her neck, where the delicate slave collar had once sat.

She tilted her head from side to side, eyes far away. “My most advanced students are all weaving the same color, but they’re months away from casting on the field of battle. I can pick the ones I think will work well with your students. What are they like?”

Nathan snorted, amused. “Intense. I’m picking people who can push through whatever they need to. All but one have strong personalities. The one - Hetal - is shy, but she should be listened to. I think she’s going to make it.”

Egall nodded sharply. “With your Insight and a few tips from Gale, I have gained a second class, and reached 27. [Teacher of Magic]. One of my new class skills lets me assign partners who will work well together. In a few days I will meet your antimages, and decide who to partner them with. It would be good to begin team training before my trainees become too distant from the rest of Halsmet.”

She rubbed at her forehead. “I would consider it a Giant’s blessing to never level my mage class again.”

“Congratulations.” Nathan said, deciding not to comment on her last sentence. “I’m happy you’re doing this. Is there anything else I can help with?”

Egall gave the question some more thought before shaking her head. “No. I will consider those best suited to work with antimages, a few bold and one calm.”

He slapped his own thighs and stood. “Ok. The final test for the antimages is tomorrow, if you want to come. The afternoon, the second mansion.”

She shook her head, not saying anything.

Nathan didn’t often use his [Leadership] skill in normal conversations, but he did now. “If I don’t see you again for a while, remember that you’re doing a good job here. This is hard, and as long as you're trying, you haven't failed.” She’d never been responsible for people before, and now dozens of students were dedicated to learning from her. It was obvious the responsibility was weighing on the young woman.

“Thank you.” She said quietly, then walked him back to the front door and held it open. As he left, he heard her whisper. It was quiet enough that he wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear it.

“May you topple the Giant.”

Status of Nathan Lark:

Permanent Talent 1: Aura of Antimagic 9

Permanent Talent 2: Perfected Body 9

Permanent Talent 3: Airwalking 3

Class: Void of Magic level297

Deepened Stamina: 8031/9210

Void of Feeling

Antimagic Momentum

Raging Thrill

Implacable Inertia

Unarmored Resilience

Magic Anathema

Airborne Agility

Hand-to-hand Expertise

Voluminous Aura

Denial of Wizardry

Mana Severance

Class: Magekiller level 117

Regenerative Focus: 1270/1270

Catastrophic Blows

Battle Stealth

Mage Infiltration

Forgettable

Unsuspecting Strike

Antimagic Stealth

Spell Redirection

Lethal Index

Utility skills:

Battle Meditation 10

Leadership 9

Acceleration 2

Wizard Senses 2

Alertness 4

Wizard’s Intuition 1

Effortless Dodge 1

Mental Fortress 6

High-tier Lecturing 10

High-tier Tumbling 10

High-tier Noticeability 2

Low-tier Quiet Movement 4

Low-tier Disguise 4

Mid-tier Battle Cry 7