The Fool 13

Gathering up what he could get his hands on, Cray came over to Orison with an armful of stuff and said, "Can you do that fixing up thing on this?"

Nodding, the young mage got busy. The eerie quiet afterwards felt ominous and the load of rotten leather, bows and weapons could make a big difference if there was another wave. While he cannibalized one to better fix another of this or that, hunter watched on curiously.

"You're not really mending them. It's more like you're fabricating one at the expense of another. If that's the case, why do you need to even use one as a base? Wouldn't it be more efficient to just take two similar items and make one out of it? It would save you half the work," the boy commented.

It was a welcomed shot of realization. Within quick order, there were two good as new bows and two sets of leathers that perfectly fit Cole and Cray.

Giving the kid his well earned kudos, the young mage said, "I can't pull up a material pattern for the magic to follow from my head because I'm not much of a craftsman but you're brilliant. As long as I have two relatively identical items, I hardly need to hold the pattern at all. I can even focus on who I'm making it for, if it's clothes and armor, pushing their visualized measurements right into the mix!"

Focused on what he was doing, Orison had failed to recognize the buildup of inert essence that clung to him like glue. The world might supply magic and make volume casting a breeze but it had it's own balance out for spell happy casters. The greater the amount used, the greater the buildup, making them frailer, more in danger from mundane illness and disease. There were other unpleasant consequences for trailing a smog of inert essence but there was nothing for it except letting natural processes and his understanding of the dull substance to take care of the issue over time.

Turning to Cray, Orison said, "Now that you have a bow again, save the caster gun as an emergency weapon. That thing is causing spent magic to stick to you. A little bit's relatively harmless and possibly even beneficial over time but larger amounts are bad, very bad."

The archer looked at Orison to say something when a skeleton with black bones, wrapped in a tattered shroud, floated down into view. Seeing that it was about to cast a spell, the young mage sicked the summoned spectral dog at it. Both dog and skeleton sank out of view while the ghostly canine chewed on the skeleton's skull.

All eyes glued on the cave opening, he said, "You were saying, Cray?"

Readying the bow, the archer said, "I was just going to say how nice it feels to have a familiar friend in hand."

Orison changed what he was going to reply. "Hey, it's roughly about eighty feet to the water below us. I thought it was a lot farther."

While Cray nodded, Orison finally lost contact with the spectral dog as both it and the skeleton, oddly rendered powerless in the seawater, crashed into a rock. He was going to tell the rest about that when he felt a rush of essence come up from where his summoned pet and skeleton had perished together. A powerful feeling of deep vertigo and nausea assaulted Orison's senses.

"Not again," the young mage gasped out before he was swallowed in darkness.

For what felt like only an instant, three overlapping pictures presented themselves at the same time. A swirling violent chaos he was glad he hadn't seen longer, contained a calm eye. Towards the top of which, laid a rapidly spinning ringed soul spitting small particles of chaos. Layered on that was a calm dark place that didn't feel particularly big but seemed to have things in it that he couldn't make out. Both of those pictures became unnoticeable specks in an endless, uninterrupted nothingness.

As if reverse sucked back into his own conscious body, the young mage gasped and immediately assessed. The cave was scorched. So were outer parts of Hunter's arms and feet. The boy was moaning and calling out to Cole who was laying face down, his entire back side a charred ruin.

With Cray's fate a mystery, Orison handed a chunk of the healing mud core to Hunter and took a smaller piece over to Cole. After checking to make sure the feline teen was still breathing, he cast a Presto to clean what pieces of ash and burnt leather might be stuck to the gruesome burn wounds. Crumbling up a bit of crystal, he sprinkled it over Cole's burn wounds while he told Hunter to do the same.

"Where's Cray?" he asked.

A little more harshly than he meant to, the young mage cut off Hunter's speed retelling of events. The gist was that Cray had went the way of the spectral dog to take down a floating skeleton who had a combination of Levitation, Fireball and some kind of magic item that made kinetic armor. It didn't sound like an enemy that would have went down easy.

Carefully looking over the edge, the dusting of predawn light revealed bedlam down below. With all the crumbling off pieces of cliff that had happened over the past two nights, there was a small pile of rubble down below. Focusing to the best of his ability, Orison did notice enough lumps of material and non-rock debris to warrant giving it a closer look anyway.

Fastening the rappel rope from Roy's badge in the sturdiest part of the cave he could, the young mage made his way down. At the bottom, he found many broken things, including Cray, who sightlessly stared at the sky. An immense sense of hopelessness washed over Orison for a moment before he realized that, according to the feeble spirit sight he had, Cray wasn't dead.

After a quick inspection and emergency heal casting, it was still pretty grim. For a moment, he was ready to end Cray himself. Poised to end the archer, he remembered a scene from lifetimes ago when a child version of himself, put the man back together. It was far worse this time but he just couldn't mercy kill the man without trying.

For half an hour, he fished out broken pieces and sprinkled some crystal dust. It finally felt safe enough to move the man. After grabbing anything of interest, storing it into the badge, Orison trudged his way back up. By the time he reached the cave, he would forever be grateful for the catch clip that let him dangle rest.

After hefting the paralyzed and catatonic archer over the lip, he pulled himself in. Heaving for oxygen and shaking from overused muscles, he hobbled over to Hunter to see how Cole was coming along. After seeing what the boy was doing, he snatched up the small remaining crystal.

"More is not better with this thing. In fact, more can become a slower, more painful kind of death if you pack on more than his body can handle. You're doing fine. Just... spread around what you've already put on him to a more liberal degree," the young mage said.

Another hour later and Cray was a road map of field surgery scars. He was still catatonic but how the man had survived was no longer a mystery. The enemy that Cray had taken down had been a lich. Even as the accursed creature was dying, it had used some kind of foul magic to trap Cray's soul in his body. It was planning to slowly feed on the essence and cloak it's own dirty, phylactery protected soul til it could claim the body.

Over time, the lich's remaining flesh and bone was as black as lightless night. So much inert essence had clogged it up that the sustaining necromantic energies were sluggish and slow to repair what time was finally winning the battle to erode away. As much as it vexed the undead mage, Cray presented a golden opportunity to be a magical powerhouse again.

That golden opportunity wasn't only snatched away by Orison but had become one for the young mage instead. After insuring that Hunter and Cole knew what to do if he passed out for any significant length of time again, he drew on instinct and knowledge to activate his 2D cutout form for a mere split second with the phylactery in hand.

He breathed a sigh of relief after a couple of minutes. Nothing strange had happened other than being extremely tired. Then, vertigo and nausea hit so hard, he nearly choked on his own stomach contents before passing out. Like the time before, he had once again been drawn in to view the three overlaid scenes.

It wasn't safe for his fragile spirit sense to watch the first at all. It was strange that a creature as peaceful and loving as Green had been possessed such a violent and chaotic spiritual world. Such a thing was a good reminder that even a placid lake can hide untold horrors. It was a lesson a certain lich soul experienced first hand before oblivion claimed it and its magical container.

In a fascinated terror of his own, Orison watched as tender shoots of tree branch-like latticework unfurled and instantly withered to diseased corruption. Unsatisfied with unholy functional immortality, the lich had placed one doozy of a death grudge curse on itself. Just like that, the young mage's safe soul eating possibilities came and went in the blink of an eye. Or so he thought.

Once the lich was undeniably unrecoverable, a few thin ribbons of unknown golden essence descended down to the placid middle space. Everywhere it touched, corrupt damage fled. He hadn't realized just how mangled the three layered spiritual world was until that moment.

Under the light of what Orison decided to label karmic virtue, the withered tendrils of grudge and curse laden latticework reestablished a tenuous and fragile existence. Unfortunately, the virtue had ran out of steam before the spiritual healing was even close to complete. For the first time, the young mage wasn't quite as happy to not have gained much memory knowledge from Green.

He had no idea what had occurred at the end of her existence to cause such a disastrous mess but her sub soul, all it had held of the pre-reincarnation Orison and her own growth, had all almost been lost. Some of it probably had been. What that was or wasn't would remain a mystery, perhaps forever.

It wasn't the only thing the karmic light had illuminated enough for Orison to see. The calm and relatively stable middle scene, lightly decorated with delicate ivy curls of latticework moving through its most extreme edges to connect everything, briefly became visible. A dilapidated and in poor repair cabin took up almost all the space as shadowy, unknown items floated around the base of the condemned looking rustic home.

In that moment of spiritual 'illumination', the young mage attempted to reestablish a connection with the cabin. The moment his fragile sense touched the edges of it's strange 'slide of time' border, a quiescent power sprang to life. He could no longer 'see' but he could vaguely feel that it had activated its most powerful effect. It would be the last time it could.

Feeling much like how spreading spiderweb cracks in glass sound, the cabin's self contained 'time space' collapsed after what must have been a 'rewind' of greater than intended effect. Shards of a taboo law rejected by the mid dimensions were momentarily lodged into the boundaries of the space before becoming billowy wisps drawn into the 'great nothing' of the third scene.

The shockwave of shattered law almost registered as little more than a breeze to his consciousness but the mysterious force shot it out of his inner world like a cannon ball. Before he stabilized within his physical form, he had an 'out of body' experience. For a few breaths of stress inducing panic, the young mage 'viewed' the 'real' astral plane, unable to comprehend what he saw. With as much might as his weak spiritual consciousness possessed, he reeled himself as quickly back into his body as possible.

Exiting the misty, indecipherable realm, he saw himself and the other three. For the extra second he had before slamming home, Cole looked in his direction. Hunter was fussing over the remaining faded burn scars and hopelessly trying to cover the bald spot on the back of the feline teen's head. Cray was oddly doubled, his spiritual and physical self out of sync and tenuously connected more by curse than natural connection.

Spiritual consciousness safely back within the protection of soul created aura and spirit sight dimmed back down to slightly better than nonexistent, the young mage came to with a shocked gasp. Taking in the wide vista of blasted and withered land, he almost wished he could pass back out than face was was to come. With a heavy sigh followed by choking coughs, he stood up on wobbly legs.

Hunter looked over and said, "Thank god you're back. Cole is about to collapse. He had to carry us up one by one over seventy feet of crazy stupid cliff."

Looking over at the obviously tired feline teen, Orison said in amazement, "How did you manage that?"

Too tired to glare, Cole adopted a dull, intelligence insulting look and replied, "Very carefully. Claws help."

Orison said, "Fortunately for us, that leathery sack of bones that tried to kill us last night, threw pretty much all he had our way to do it. That means his lair just a bit northeast of here is mostly cleaned out. We're going to finish cleaning it out and post up in his quarters for the night."

Hunter said, "How do you know all that?"

"The soul, like the mind, has a kind of 'life flashes before the eyes' moment before its gone. I destroyed the lich's phylactery and have the ability to spy on such moments in certain circumstances. It's not overly detailed and it happens pretty quick but I could glean that much," the young mage explained.

A half hour of ration meal break and magic experimenting later, they were riding two to an Enbarr. Not only was he able to cast his trusty horse again with the odd aid the blanket of this world's magic lent but was able to dual cast once more. The second horse was crumby and barely held together but he didn't have to have nearly the personal control he needed to exert in Osomo to make it work.

It was awkward but the young mage managed to get Cray strapped in a sitting position behind him. Following the lead, Hunter did the same much easier with Cole, so the feline teen could take a much needed rest while the boy clung to the reigns and saddle horn for dear life. Over an hour later, at an ambling pace, they came to the lich's barrow.

In the malevolent undead's hurry to neutralize the threat in its territory, it hadn't covered up the entrance and most of the traps inside were currently disabled. Despite that, Orison had his spectral hound take point and dispatched a small five ball cloud of 'sprites' as well. After all, even an undead society would have its malcontents and the lich would no doubt have some surprises to thwart the ambitious.

Without the guiding hand of the lich behind them, the scant remaining skeletons and a couple of shrouded skeleton mages were not the same threat they were. While meandering through the hidden underground tomb, Hunter commented on the lich's aesthetic, sometimes earning chuckles from Orison or frowns Cole when unintentional admiration slipped through. He knew what the kid was doing. To distract himself from the despair inducing horror of it all, Hunter was analyzing the place like a DM setting up a dungeon to raid.

"How smart is it to hole up in an enemy spawn zone?" Cole said.

The young mage was about to argue that there was no 'spawn zone' in this world but suddenly realized that undead were certainly an exception. Defeated foes could reconstruct under the influence of enough negatively shifted ambient magic and there was plenty of that. Add on top that he was only ninety percent sure this place didn't speed recycle like Osomo, that left another ten percent possibility to be wrong and Orison wasn't willing to eat his words enough to correct.

The young mage responded, "Even if those things come back, I assure you their leader isn't. If we come under siege like we did in the cave, the lich's lair has an emergency escape tunnel with plenty of fun ways to play with our pursuers if they follow us."

Hunter nodded and said, "Yeah, the boss of this dungeon had flair for what a good crawl should be like."

"It's eerily coincidental how well your game mechanics view of this world fits. Just remember that it's alright to be confident but keep a healthy dose of skepticism on hand. You might get thrown a curve ball," the young mage said.

"Please stop complimenting the thing that turned my backside into street vendor barbecue. What you're admiring were meant to kill us, not some play pretend person," Cole said grimly.

Embarrassed and ashamed, Hunter quickly apologized to Cole with watery eyes. Visions of charred flesh and sickening smells no doubt still lingering in the boy's mind. From the sideline, Orison saw that Cole felt bad about hammering Hunter's fragile chipper mood into paste but the feline teen was far better at verbal tear downs than apologies.

Suddenly remembering a question he'd meant to ask earlier, the young mage adjusted Cray's weight on his back and said, "Speaking of which, how did I avoid the charbroil experience?"

Cole said, "Your buddy there tackled our would be murderer as it was finishing its cast, making it go up and wide of where you were. I think your uniform might be fire resistant too."

Orison said, "Ah, that makes sense. Since you actually play with fire but probably have a new found respect for its dangers, I'll resize it for you, Hunter. I'd much prefer a-AHH FU-fudge packing son of a biscuit eater!"

Focused on the boy, the young mage had stepped on a floor spike trap that hadn't fully deployed. As it was, several barbed metal tips had poked holes through his boot and into his left foot, sticking him painfully in place.