Mana Mirror: Chapter Sixty-Four (Patreon)

Meadow stepped into Orykson’s hall, the wards around her flashing.

Orykson stared at her from across the hall, his power dominating the entire hall, crushing everything in its path.

“This was your plan from the very beginning, wasn’t it?” he asked sourly. “You’d take my apprentice from me.”

“Your apprentice?” Meadow scoffed. “You’ve done nothing but try to turn him into a miniature version of yourself.”

“That’s what the world needs,” Orykson said.

“That is what the world needed,” Meadow corrected. “You and the Storm King are relics that should have passed on long ago.”

In response, Orykson killed that simulacrum, and another Meadow entered the room.

“How much of your well did you empty, to form that little spirit?” Orykson taunted. “So much power, so slow to recover, wasted on a spirit you’re not even bonded to.”

Well, he attempted to taunt. Meadow instead smiled and nodded.

“Indeed. A good investment, if I ever did make one.”

“Is that why you’re afraid to attack me, then?” Orykson asked.

“No,” Meadow said. “I don’t attack you because I have no reason to. I won.”

Orykson’s face twisted with rage and he killed her again, only for a third simulacrum to enter in her place. She stood there placidly, not attacking him, not even moving her mana to cast a spell, which only made him angrier.

“Fight me!” he shouted, launching another attack at her.

“I won’t give you the satisfaction,” she said, before his conjured deer gored her.

He rose, eyes flashing.

“That’s enough. If your simulacra won’t fight me, let’s try with your real body, and finally put you in the ground.”

He vanished in a flash, Aerde scanning the world for the location of his opponent’s true body. She used potions to somehow bolster her simulacra, so they had to sort through a number of false positives until – there.

Aerde locked onto her location, and Orykson cast a True Teleport, breaking through the feeble wards around the garden in the center of an old crater.

Meadow stood there, tending to her garden, watering a massive tree with a tin watering can, wearing simple brown overalls and gardener’s gloves. For all the world, she looked like a little old lady, tending to her garden.

Orykson reached his power out and attempted to stop Meadow’s heart, but she waved the attack off with her own power.

“Stop being a petulant, narcissistic, bully of an old man, Orykson,” she said. “You’re no better than Vivian really. You’ve just had more time to build your power, and are thus at the top of the pecking order, not the bottom.”

“Wrong,” Orykson said, his voice echoing out across the landscape. He opened a portal to a pocket space, releasing a meteor to crush Meadow.

Meadow flicked a single seed at the meteor, and roots spread through it, breaking apart the densely forged mana and dissolving it back into nothingness. Then the roots folded back into a seed and fell into her hand once more.

He forged his life and soul eating dragons, releasing them to attack her, but roots burst from the seed and ran through the mana, sucking it away and feeding it to her like nutrients to a tree.

He began to tap into his contingencies, releasing deadly attacks, but roots rose from the ground of the garden around her, blocking attacks, breaking others, and forming layers of root armor over her form.

Aerde guided his attacks, but in the middle of her garden, there was a limit on how much assistance he could be in guiding them.

He thrust his hand out and tried to trap her in a pocket space, but pollen from flowers floated around her, cancelling out his magic.

“Why aren’t you attacking back?” he demanded. “Do you really think you have the mana to stand there and let me attack you until I run dry? I have eight centuries more mana than you do.”

“Oh, you’re right, of course,” Meadow said agreeably. “But attacking you isn’t my goal.”

She clicked her fingers, and Orykson’s eyes shot open as he and Aerde finally figured it out.

Half a second too late.

The flows of roots, motion of pollen in the air, and spinning petals all fell into place.

Of the universal applications of magic, like wardcrafting or enchanting, Orykson had never paid too much attention to alchemy. It had always seemed foolish to him – why expend effort to create a temporary elixir?

At best, you could create potions that permanently enhanced yourself, but those were difficult and expensive, and usually had alternatives in spellcraft or enchanting. No, alchemy was useful, but not his path. Wardcrafting had always been his discipline of choice.

But he still knew enough about alchemy to understand the most basic principles.

And all around him, in the air, the mana and power of every one of these plants was draining into Meadow, while certain specific parts linked and were bolstered with Meadow’s mana. Those linkages empowered one another, building and uniting faster than he could rot them away.

He couldn’t help but laugh. Meadow had been clever, that much was certainly true. Her little domain inside a crater was no simple garden.

The entire crater was the belly of a single, massive cauldron.

As the alchemical process completed, a single drop of shimmering opalescent liquid struck him on the bare skin of his nose like a drop of rain before a thunderstorm.

His powers vanished, and his control over the air currents died. His access to his mana-garden vanished. Even the spells woven through his body dimmed, though they could never be fully disabled.

The effects of this single great potion, crafted specifically to counter his magic, felt like trying to break through one of Tom’s anti-magic fields.

Mentally, he and Aerde both unanimously agreed that they needed to upgrade the level of danger that she posed. They’d thought he’d had her measure, but the sheer amount of effort and skill it took to arrange something like this?

It wasn’t a measure of power. No, power he could deal with.

This was skill and forethought, which was infinitely worse.

“If I wanted, with you powerless and trapped within my cauldron as you are now, I could seek out your phylactery and destroy it,” Meadow pointed out. “Luckily for you, I don’t relish hurting people. I want to talk to you.”

“Fine, let’s do this your way, then,” Orykson said, tucking his hands into his pockets and facing her down. He ran through the contingencies he had that might let him escape. There weren’t many, but he had a few.

All of them ended with him taking losses that he’d prefer not to take, but if that was the cost of his survival, so be it. There was no way she’d actually be content to simply talk. He had no doubt that she had simulacra scouring his castle even now.

But the spells he’d connected his body and mind to his castle told him otherwise. Her simulacrum was still simply in the entrance hall, waiting placidly. Had she tricked the wards?

Or did she really just… want to talk?

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want to still be involved. While you try to guide him down your… new way… I’ll show him just how good the true path of magic can be.”

“The boy still needs a teacher for spatial and death magic,” Meadow said. “I’ll guide him as best I can, and when he mends his relationship with the libraries, that will help. But a teacher will help. You can take on that role, but you’ll be under restrictions. Hmm… What sort of restrictions was I under? Let’s go with some of those…”

The old woman was taunting him. Orykson knew that. Lashing out would just prove her point, and he knew that, but his fingers still twitched, begging to release a spell to kill her, but unable to.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ve already set a handful of obstacles in his path. You can’t stop those.”

He expected Meadow to object. After all, some of his plans would push Malachi to confront the worst parts of the world. Those weren’t in motion yet, but he did have the first steps in motion.

Instead, Meadow simply smiled and nodded.

“Fine. You can’t set any more plans against him, but the ones you have already started as of now can remain. I have confidence that he’ll be able to confront them and overcome them without sacrificing himself.”

“You’re a fool then,” he said.

“Perhaps,” Meadow said.

Orykson let out a long, slow, deliberate breath.

They spent the better part of an hour discussing the exact details, while having both of their simulacra deal with the boy in question.

In the end, neither was satisfied with how their agreement worked out, which was perhaps a good sign that the agreement was fair.

Orykson returned to his castle to brood. He’d never admit that he was brooding, of course, but that was what he did.

Ultimately, it might have been for the best. The boy was too soft hearted, too kind, and too enamored by the modern world. He could never have become an heir anyways.

Besides, with his temporal magic, he’d never be able to delve as deep into life, death, and space as Orykson had. He’d never be able to learn the perfection that existed within those three, that no others held.

He reviewed his plans for the future and smiled. The heir project could wait. He would not die until he’d crafted his perfect heir, and he’d waited hundreds of years. Malachi had not been a perfect match anyways, so perhaps he was to blame for assuming that he could make it work.

Meadow returned to tending her garden, sighing. That had taken more out of her than she’d like to admit. Until the Amethyst Mask or the Dreamer finished working out the flaws in his ascensions, she’d have to hold out, though. The world needed a magi who wouldn’t abuse their power.

Or maybe Kijani’s success could start forming new nations. That would be nice. A world where power was more evenly distributed, rather than consolidated around a few powerful people.

Her mind turned to Malachi and Edward.

Neither were amazing mages, naturally. Malachi had some natural talent with working mana, and he put time and effort into his mana-garden, certainly, but he was no prodigy.

Edward was… Insteresting. He burned with the desire to help people, and he didn’t like to hurt people.

If only Edward had been blessed with natural talent like Tom or Vivian had been. The world would be a better place.

But life rarely worked out the way one hoped it would.

She hoped that Malachi and Edward could find a path that would lead them somewhere happy in life, but she’d be lying if she said she didn’t also hope that same path would lead them to the top.

If it didn’t… Then she would simply soldier on as she had for two centuries now. There were worse things, that was certain.

Though… If Ikki moved… That may upset the balance just as much as it would if they got someone new to ascend to Magi on their own.

She shook her head. Ikki was too scared of his father to do anything.

She began to sing to the plants as she watered them. The plants enjoyed singing.

Inside of their office in Lledrith, the Knowledge King smiled. Their plans were slowly but surely turning into motion. Even if Malachi turned out to be pointless in the grand scheme of things, preventing the rise of another Vivian or powerful person who followed the creed of the old guard had been worth them spending their attention for so long.

Deep in unclaimed territory, territory that had not seen hide nor tail of a so-called civilized magi for centuries, the leader of the Cult of the Primes laughed as she spoke to two others through a secured communication spell. Laughed at the fools all around her, who thought they had caught the world on a leash. Laughed at them playing their little games.

She laughed, because they all thought they knew what was coming. They thought their plans mattered. That they were safe in their tower cities, in their universities, in their gardens, and in their nations of law and order.

She could not wait to prove them all wrong.