Millennial Mage

Chapter 510: The Realm of Gods and Monsters

Tala, Rane, and Terry were standing on the edge of the forest, just processing their advancement along with the realities around their just-finished trip to the Lunar Hunt.

Tala, for her part, was considering a couple of things a bit further out as well. As such, she frowned in realization. “Hey, we should send another message to Master Grediv. He promised to let us know what was required to Reforge once we got to this step.”

Well, he actually promised to tell them anytime they asked, but it had been recommended that they not do so until they were Paragon.

He’d probably not imagined it would be quite this soon.

Rane opened his mouth to respond, but then he paused and cleared his throat. “Aura.”

Tala cursed. She’d gotten distracted, and her willful alteration of her aura had slipped. “Thank you.”

With a miniscule effort of will, she returned her aura to appearing just below Paragon. Lerra had explained that making her aura appear to be something she was familiar with would be easier than mimicking something she hadn’t experienced in a long time, or for long, or at all. The current display of yellowish-green was something her power and authority were used to, and so it came easier, making it better practice for holding the veil long term.

She would actually have had a really difficult time displaying a ‘true green’ of exact Paragon advancement, because her body was already ‘Reforged’ enough that her aura had the smallest hints of blue in it.

She wasn’t sure if that was because of how much ‘MINE’ her body was to her—given how important authority over self was to Reforging—or if it was because she’d been consuming food from her sanctum for years now, and that was yet another way to gain dominion over herself.

She’d dig into it later, but whatever the reason, she’d never had a true-green aura.

Regardless, with her veil back in place, Tala returned to the subject a hand. “So, we get to learn how to Reforge, we just need to ask.”

“I imagine that we’ll most likely learn the concepts behind Reforging as opposed to getting a step-by-step guide.”

She waved that off. “Right, right.”

-There are a few other things we really should deal with. We’ve put them off while in the Lunar Hunt, but they are important to get moving.-

Right. Can you reach out about the training sheath for Flow. We were told this one was good through the low levels of Paragon if we didn’t put too much power into our strikes... She gave a decisive internal nod. We need to ask the most advanced one that can be made, in order to future proof the situation. It hasn’t even been a decade since the last one, and I really do feel like I should be able to work the void into the weapon at a more fundamental level.

-That will undoubtedly be expensive, assuming it’s possible at all... Mistress Ingrit?-

Yeah. Let’s ensure she has all the requisite memories surrounding Flow well ordered. We want the resulting product to be what we need, after all. Also if you can coordinate with her to cash in some of the favors, promises, and other payments we’ve received for our memories from various folks, that would probably be a good use of some of that.

-Agreed. I’ll get that handled... you have no idea who any of those people are, do you?-

And I have no interest in learning.

-Fine... But—-

Terry interrupted both her and Rane’s thoughts with an impatient trill.

Tala jerked slightly as she was pulled from her internal contemplations.

Rane gave a conciliatory smile. “Sorry, Terry. Yeah, we don’t need to be waiting around here. Shall we head straight north, or do you want to angle east from here?” Ȑ

Tala looked around, orienting herself even as Rane seemed to actually look around himself with a critical eye.

“Wait...” He frowned. “This is the northern edge of the forest.”

Tala and Rane moved almost as one, looking straight north.

-Oh... wow... I... We really were focused internally, weren’t we?-

Tala swallowed involuntarily. Yeah.

Ahead of them, across a large stretch of plains, mountains rose in irregular patches, growing ever higher and more numerous the further Tala looked.

On the surface, it looked very similar to the view out of the south of the forest would have been—back near where they’d entered—except the plains were more expansive in this direction, and the mountains farther away, while looking about the same size.

They were much bigger.

But that isn’t what had both Tala and Rane speechless.

Instead, to their magesight, they could see why no one—even in the greatest legends of humanity—went to the far north and returned.

Roiling aura, so pervasive it was visible all these miles away, in various shades of blue and purple—running the gamut from deep, navy blue to ephemeral violet—all mixing and tumbling over each other in ways that Tala couldn’t remember having seen before.

Rane spoke softly, clearly quoting something. “There be the realm of gods and monsters beyond the ken of man. Beware all who would dare the slopes and dells, valleys and forests of the Great White North.”

Tala almost laughed at the odd wording, but... “Seeing that?” She flicked her head toward the distant mountains. “I believe it, yeah.”

“What do you suppose is in there?”

She almost shrugged, but then remembered something. With a flick of her wrist, she pulled out the Paragon level book on various entities. “Let’s see. I thought I saw a reference to... Here it is!” She lifted the book slightly in triumph. “The Far North.”

An instant later, she huffed a laugh.

Terry was asleep in the sunlight of the sanctum, and Tala and Rane were ready to move their legs.

Alat and Enar continued their sweeps while Tala and Rane stretched a bit, preparing to take off in an entirely different way.

The couple were rather excited, all things considered. They were Paragons now, and they hadn’t been able to really cut loose and travel as fast as they could as Paragons.

Well, it wouldn’t actually be faster. They knew that they would actually have to be going slower given their higher density, but it should be easier and more...—

Tala’s eyes widened. “Rane?”

He looked her way. “Yeah?”

“Do you think... could we use veiling to travel faster without creating a resonance?”

He frowned, obviously considering. “Truthfully? I think the answer is yes, but.”

She gave a little smile at that. “Oh? What’s the but?” But even as she asked, it clicked together in her mind. “Oh... yeah. So, we’d remove the magical resonance, but not the damage to Reality. Moving faster would cause more damage. So, as long as we don’t mind causing more harm, we can likely move more quickly.”

“So, if we’re going to a gathering of those who are going to fix Reality?”

She gave him an odd look. “I suppose? But that seems like a weird thing—making the problem worse when going to find a way to fix it...”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“So, we can move as fast as we want in an emergency?”

“With practice, probably.”

“Just at a cost.”

“Precisely.”

Tala sighed. “Ahh, well. No breaking the sound barrier for us, then.”

“Not for the moment, no.” He grinned. “There is also that I know that Master Xeel moves faster than magical resonance should allow. So it’s possible that there’s a trick to it that we can learn now, or as part of Reforging.” He shrugged. “But shall we?”

Before she answered, he had already lifted off the ground, floating with kinetic manipulation, sculpting his motion to be as he desired. “Show off.”

But she was grinning up at her husband.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

With a burst of power, he took off, moving just faster than a runner’s pace, shaping his aura incredibly precisely to allow him to move even that fast, safely.

Tala ran forward, pushing off the air by dint of her surface-area expansion scripts, her massively powerful body hurtling her through the sky at a pace easily matching Rane’s, her own aura taking on the odd shape that Master Grediv had taught them so long ago, matching that of her husband.

This is quite like that time, isn’t it. The Paragon had taught her as they traveled. She’d just returned from the arcane lands, and Master Grediv had been taking her and Rane to Bandfast on his sapphire disk.

They’d been flying through the sky, on the way to reuniting her with friends. So much has changed since then.

-And yet, you are still you.-

Yes, we are.

There was the minor difference that, now, she was effectively leaping through—and off of—the air rather than relying on someone else’s device for transport.

She grinned at that, remembering the flying construct that their unit had worked together to create. They’re going to be so surprised when we come back as Paragons.

-Surprised? No, I think they all saw you as transitory, even if our level of transitory was more than half a decade. They’re all terminally Refined, most likely. They don’t really have the spark to go further. They are content with their station and role in aiding humanity.-

Yeah.

While her speed fluctuated somewhat as she sprang from foot to foot through the air, Rane’s pace was far more consistent, causing her to oscillate somewhat between being just ahead and just behind him.

Thus, she had the briefest fraction of a second more warning than he did as they breached a cloaking field and several seemingly city-level-defensive magics swatted them from the sky.

Even as Tala careened toward the ground, her aura and magics sparked against an authority as ancient—even if not as powerful—as Anatalis’, and her armor wrapped around her. She knew that she’d easily survive impact with the ground, and it would be a more advantageous position from which to face this threat—whatever it was—and so her focus was almost entirely on what they’d stumbled upon, on what had attacked them.

Her gaze fell on the small—one room—house tottering along on chicken legs through a valley below them. It was bathed and saturated in a swirling, non-determinable aura.

From within the oddly dilapidated structure, a voice cackled forth, full of venom, rage, and certainty, “You’ll never take me alive!”

Her threefold sight was just able to see the grizzled old woman, hunched just inside the window, glaring their way, her eyes glowing with malice and power.

Well, rust.