The Amethyst Mask (Patreon)

This is set roughly 20 years before the events of Mana Mirror

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An old woman sat by the fire, gently stoking the fire, when the stranger walked into their camp.

He was tall, nearly seven feet, with long limbs. He wore a ragged travel cloak and walking stick, a spatial storage pack slung over one shoulder, and his white hair stood out starkly against him and the darkness.

For a moment, when the firelight sparked up and caught the glint from under his hood, she thought that it may not be a stranger, but rather, the Stranger. That thought was quickly banished, though, when she saw that it was not eyes made from polished obsidian, but rather a mask made of a deep purple crystal.

She hadn’t seen the like before in the wilds where she lived, but one of her many grandchildren had bought her a bracelet from Kijani, made from a similar purple crystal they called amethyst.

But stranger still than the mask was the fact she could sense no mana leaking from him at all. Everything in this world had mana, and the fact he did not disturbed her more than she would like to have let on.

The ability to mask his mana, even from her, who saw much? It did nothing to speak of power, but it did speak of a great deal of skill.

The old woman knew that, if given the choice between fighting a powerful mage or a skilled one, she would fight the powerful one any day.

It had her thinking of the Stranger once more, and she shuddered.

He gestured at the ground near her and spoke.

“May I join you?”

His voice was softer than she had expected, and she got the impression that if she said no, he would not press the issue, but simply carry on walking. Despite the power of the Mono spell, the faint Kijani accent still leaked through, confirming her suspicion.

She eyed him for a few long moments, then inclined her head in a nod.

He took a seat next to her and cracked his back, then rolled his shoulders and neck, weary from the day of travel.

“Are you travelling to challenge the Sepulcher, then?” the old woman asked. Her eyes did not leave the masked man, but her senses sprawled over their camp, tracking her grandchildren.

She almost smiled when she found the heater that one of them had snuck into their tent. This trip was supposed to force them to rely on their skills as burgeoning mages, but cheating them was a test as old as the tests themselves. She’d allow them to have their heater for tonight, before she ‘accidentally’ stumbled in at the wrong time and found it.

“No,” the strange man said with a soft laugh, seeming to find something funny in the statement. “My niece was just born. I am on my way to visit her mothers.”

The old woman didn’t see what was so funny about the Sepulchers. She had delved into a Sepulcher twice in her life.

The first time had been when she had been a brash youth, overflowing with power of a peak first gate mage, and the confidence of someone who had never failed.

It had nearly killed her less than two minutes after she entered. It had nearly taken her hand, and if it weren’t for the favor of a powerful sixth gate healer – now her mother-in-law – it would have succeeded.

She had entered it the second time when she’d failed to reach Arcanist. She was the pinnacle of what a Spellbinder could be expected to do.

Her knowledge mana had polished into a dozen spells that gave her senses unparalleled for her tier.

Her tempest mana had provided the offense, defense, and speed, and she could keep up with even dedicated battlemages.

Her spells were ingrained, and they’d had their inefficiencies broken away, and they’d been sharpened further by the power of her mana technique.

She had absorbed the power of a nascent-truth.

Yet she had still failed to break past the fourth gate, so she had delved the Sepulcher again.

This time, she had made it deeper. She had managed to even collect a reward, though she hadn’t gone deep enough in to claim the final reward of reforging one’s foundation, their legacy before she’d been forced to retreat.

She felt the blockage where the gate was. Despite all her attempts, she had never advanced past fourth gate.

Despite the many thoughts, what she said was simple.

“Congratulations on your new niece, nephew, or whatever they may be.”

“Thank you,” he said, inclining his head. “Tell me, do you have any advice for passing through the territory of the Wandering Mountain?”

“That’s an oddly phrased question,” she said. “Do you plan to stop at the metropolis on the wandering mountain itself?”

“Perhaps, if I need to, or if it’s convenient. But I plan to simply move through the area.”

“I see,” the old woman said. She sighed and looked to the sky, though she kept her senses on her grandchildren. “Well, there are the stonecrabs to watch out for. Some of the biggest can grow to nearly third gate, and they do sometimes attack in swarms. Good eating, though. Landslides are always a risk, no matter how well the roads are maintained. Telluric elementals spawn often in the mountains, and both Quetzals and Pterodactyls are flying monsters who frequent the mountains. If you see a Quetzal, though, be wary. They tend to have small family clutches that stick together tightly, so finding one means more aren’t too far behind. Quetzal eggs are good eating, and they’re good for the development of solar magic, if you’ve got any of that.”

The stranger traced his fingers over his mask.

“Just telluric mana for me, I’m afraid.”

“Aye, fair. You should be wary of the Barodons. Big cats with saberlike teeth that use pure telluric magic. Typically they don’t prey on humans, but if you’re using telluric magic and traveling alone, they may try to eat you for your telluric energy.”

She eyed the stranger warily.

“Though maybe that won’t be a problem for you, with your mana control. Or is it your legacy that’s masking your very mana from me.”

“Just good old-fashioned grit and elbow grease,” the masked man said. “My legacy gave my mana a tremendous potency, at the cost of control. I’ve spent a long time working on fixing the lack of control.”

The old woman was about to respond when she froze, then bolted upright and began running for the tents. The air around her bent, and great gusts of power caused her to cross the camp in seconds.

Lightning erupted from her fingertips as she entered the shoddy tent, splitting the air with a crack of thunder, but she was too late.

The Stranger’s hand sunk into the flesh of her eldest grandchild, and they dissolved into dust. A moment later, the Stranger’s flesh writhed and shifted, and then she was staring into the Stranger, wearing face of her own grandchild.

Except for the eyes. Where eyes would be in any normal creature, the Stranger’s eyes were smoothly polished obsidian. It smiled, and instead of human teeth, it had shark-like, triangular teeth.

“Honored grandmother,” the Stranger said mockingly, giving her a bow. “To think they would send someone so weak to guard the newest generation. Such a shame.”

She screamed and unleashed her pinnacle spell. An orb of crackling lightning appeared in her hands, then rose over her head. Bolts of lightning began to pour down onto the Stranger, pelting it endlessly.

The Stranger laughed, the sound high and cruel, as the lightning ripped his form apart and did nothing. The power of the Stranger kept the false face of her grandchild whole and unmarred. That didn’t stop her from continuing to pour lightning into the creature, but it was a void that absorbed everything.

Its mana blossomed, a foreign mix of death, lunar, and abnegation, with something stranger lurking within.

And the power…

She had never faced the Stranger before, only heard the stories. The power that rolled off of the Stranger was beyond any she’d ever felt, at least early eighth gate.

She slammed onto the ground, unable to hold herself up against the pressure. The Stranger’s mouth opened, long, black, ropey pseudopods emerging from a mouth full of hungry, sharklike teeth.

She closed her eyes, not wanting to look at the warped face of her grandchild as the Stranger used it to kill her. The worst part was those Alien eyes, so beyond humanity.

After a few seconds, when she wasn’t dead, she cracked her eyes open.

The man with the amethyst mask had entered the room, and he’d conjured a ball of crystal that separated her from the monster. The analytical part of her mind marveled at the density of the forged crystals, and the clarity that let her so clearly see the masked man staring down the Stranger.

“I know your kind,” the masked man said. “I’ve killed possessor entities before.”

The Stranger laughed again, and it was haunting.

“You have not fought my kind before,” it said. “I will kill you and take your form.”

The man in the amethyst mask didn’t deign to respond with words. Instead, he unleashed his mana for the first time, and the old woman felt a spark of hope.

The masked man’s power felt deeply strange, though not in the same Alien way as the Stranger’s. It felt… Unstable. Like a top spinning wildly, able to fall over if it ever stopped.

But it was powerful, and it was deep. Peak of seventh gate, if she were to guess.

It smashed against the Stranger’s power, and the battle began.

A suit of amethyst armor grew from the masked man’s mask, wrapping around his body, and the stranger summoned a dozen tentacles of inky darkness that tried to rip them apart.

The armor seemed to be holding up under the assault, but she could feel the drain in the air.

Still, it didn’t stop him from stomping a foot. Sharp spikes of amethyst pierced through the Stranger’s body in a dozen directions, but the Stranger ripped itself off the spikes with tenacity, blood, organs, and other viscera spilling everywhere as it did.

She felt bile rise in her throat.

The Stranger faded, becoming translucent as another wave of amethyst crashed into its form. This time, the spikes went right through its body, dealing it no damage.

The Stranger raced for the form of the masked man, thick black void chains penetrating the armor.

Her soul shivered seeing that attack, and she abandoned her fragile hope that she may make it out of this night alive. Soul attacks were deadly, dangerous, and only for the realms of the most powerful. A telluric mage had no counter for one that she knew of.

The masked man didn’t seem to be worried though. The Stranger yanked on his soul chains, but nothing happened. Eighth gate mana surged through the chains, and though the masked man convulsed and fell to the ground, his soul did not emerge, and a moment later, he was raising to his feet.

“What?” the Stranger demanded; its voice full of rage. “How? I have felt the scope of your power. You cannot guard your soul.”

“Sorry,” the masked man, said, coughing. “I may not be a death mage, but telluric mana is of the earth. You cannot remove me from it so easily.”

The stranger scuttled back and squinted.

“You cannot harm me while I am ethereal, we have seen this. Surrender your body and power to me, and I will make your death quick, rather than that of a thousand papercuts.”

The masked man reached up, putting his fingers over his mask, and removed it. It came off with a soft popping sound, and power exploded out of him.

The Amethyst Mask tucked his mask away as ninth gate power radiated out of him. It was incredibly unstable, and incredibly potent. He couldn’t maintain this for long, but he could for long enough.

And a part of the old woman couldn’t help but notice that without his mask, he was very handsome. His features were a bit too sharp to be traditionally handsome, but they suited him.

The Amethyst Mask held up his hands and a spell began to burn in the air around him.

He was conjuring amethyst crystals in the shape of the spell formula, rather than sketching it.

The stranger poured the whole of its power into its ethereal spell, trying to avoid whatever the Amethyst Mask was doing. If it could just last until his control slipped, it would be able to kill him.

It did it no good. A wall of absolute amethyst crashed in from every direction, and his form was compacted into a tiny sphere, the size of a golf ball, where it flew to the Amethyst mask’s hand as he used his other to put his mask back on.

The Amethyst Mask’s mana stabilized again, dropping rapidly down to seventh gate, and he let out a slow sigh. He pulled it back in, forcing his control back over it, then dismissed the dome protecting the old woman.

She fell to the floor and bowed, pressing her face against it firmly, and she heard the Amethyst Mask sigh and gently raise her to her feet.

“Come on, there’s no need for that. Please, actually. Don’t bow. I insist.”

“But how can we repay you? The Stranger has…”

She trailed off, not even knowing what to say. The Stranger had hunted their lineage, as well as that of a few others she knew of, for at least three centuries.

“Do you have any food?” the Amethyst Mask asked. “I’ve got some trail rations, but I’d love a good soup.”

The old woman couldn’t help but laugh.