The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 398

Varay remained utterly still as my hand rested over her sternum. With Realmheart active, I could see the purified mana-like translucent snowflakes compacted within her core, perfectly controlled and radiating with purpose. The particles were steadily being distilled and released back into her body through her channels to strengthen her physical form and keep the conjured arm in place.

Along with the ability to see mana, Realmheart replicated the sixth sense a mana core provided for feeling mana in others, allowing me to feel the crushing weight and glacial steadiness of Varay’s core radiating out from her.

I closed my eyes, focusing on this second sense.

“Release a small burst of mana,” I said quietly, then followed along as purified water mana—now sparkling motes of its deviant ice form within Varay’s core—raced out through her mana veins and into the atmosphere. “Now, draw on the ambient mana and focus on purifying it inside your core. Specifically, think about clarifying your core itself.”

Varay took a steady breath in. I opened my eyes to watch the particles of atmospheric mana—almost all water and earth—be pulled into her body and then her core, just like how her lungs drew in the air. Within the snow-white core, the mana was quickly purified and made ready for her use.

I asked her to repeat this process a couple of times, then moved on to Bairon. He studied me carefully as I pressed my hand to his sternum. I was surprised by the smoky tinge to his otherwise bright white core.

“Does your core or your mana feel any different now than before Cadell attacked you with soulfire?” I asked, watching closely as he released mana, took a stiff breath, and then drew it back in.

He repeated the exercise again before answering. “I’m not sure how to answer that question. I had to work tirelessly to rebuild my strength after that battle, and I nearly gave up and accepted my fate.”

“Physically though…when you channel mana now, do you feel anything different in your core?”

He closed his eyes as he repeated the cycle two more times. “I’m not confident that I’ve regained all my strength,” he said eventually. “But I also don’t remember if the magic felt any different before.”

Nodding silently, I moved on to Mica. As my hand pressed against her sternum, her lips curved up into a cool smirk. “I told you once before, I’m too old for you.”

Regis was watching from the rocks where Gideon and Emily had laid out all of their equipment. He chuckled appreciatively. “And much too pretty, too.”

She cast a surprised look over her shoulder, then turned a raised brow in my direction. “Is that tiny creature trying to flirt with me?”

“Actually, he’s an asuran weapon of mass destruction, and he flirts with everyone,” I said matter-of-factly. “Now focus. Release your mana, hold it, then draw ambient mana back in.”

I couldn’t sense whatever mechanism Kezess had used to put a ceiling on the Lances’ potential, but I hadn’t expected it to be this easy. Moreso, I needed to establish some baseline in the feel of each Lance’ particular core and mana manipulation.

All three were incredibly efficient at both releasing and reabsorbing mana. Whatever hampered them, it seemed specifically designed so it wouldn’t interrupt the process of actually using magic.

“All right, we’re all set up over here,” Emily said, interrupting these thoughts.

I nodded, and Emily and Gideon began outfitting the three Lances with various apparatus that would allow them to read mana output and reaction times much more accurately than I could on my own.

While they were doing that, I withdrew three items from my dimension rune. I handed the first to Mica, who turned it over curiously in her hand, and then its twin to Varay. Bairon received the horn I’d taken from the ruined remains of the Wraith, Valeska, holding it carefully in front of him like it was a wasp nest.

“These horns contain a huge amount of mana,” I explained. “You’ll be drawing from them like I did with the retainer Uto’s horns a long time ago. They are incredibly potent, but,” I said quickly, as both Bairon and Mica opened their mouths to speak, “I need to warn you, there are additional effects as well. You’ll capture some of the previous owner's memories. It can be…uncomfortable.”

The Lances’ intrigue quickly soured into uncertainty. “But what benefit do you hope that we’ll gain from such a source of mana?” Varay questioned, setting the horn in her lap and looking up at me. “If your hope is to simply overpower the barrier with a sudden influx of mana, I’m afraid it’s been tried before. Elixirs have no effect on us.”

“Nothing as easy as that,” I admitted, glancing at Emily, who gave me a thumbs up as she finished activating the last of the monitoring equipment. Behind her, Gideon was staring at the readout, his half-grown eyebrows furrowed in concentration. “I can’t promise our time and effort will bear fruit. But none of us can afford to just accept our current limitations.”

Mica stared at the ground, her gaze distant and her expression stony. Next to her, there was a charge in Bairon’s eyes, an intensity that filled the air with a buzzing static that raised the hairs on my arms.

But it was Varay who surprised me.

She stood up in one swift, graceful motion, her furrowed gaze locked on the mossy stone at my feet. “Arthur, I know I speak for all the Lances when I say we are grateful for your time and effort.” A pause, just a heartbeat, then: “But are you certain your efforts here are worth your time? You are the key to victory against Alacrya and Epheotus. If your time would be better spent training yourself—”

“No,” I said firmly as her intense eyes bore into me. “Dicathen doesn’t need a savior or a…” I struggled for the word, then blurted out, “another deity to replace the asura. It needs soldiers and generals. People. Heroes. Dicathen needs the Lances.”

The ever-immovable Lance Varay faltered, just for a moment, her gaze searching to determine whether to believe my words. “Of course. You’re right.” Giving me a stiff bow, she sank back onto the soft bed of moss, holding the horn in both hands across her lap. “What do you want us to do?”

Kneeling next to the lake, I ran my fingers through the icy cold water. “The first step is to figure out what exactly is preventing you from purifying your cores further. I want each of you to meditate while drawing on the mana contained in these horns. Normally, taking in such a large amount of mana so quickly would force a core to rapidly clarify. As we monitor your cores during this sped-up process, we’ll be able to watch for any signs of the binding affecting you.”

“You hope,” Gideon grumbled, drawing an irritated look from Emily.

“I do,” I said simply, holding my hands out to my sides. “Now, are you ready to begin?”

“Of course,” Varay said.

“Let’s do this,” Mica added with a firm nod.

Bairon said nothing, but closed his eyes and focused on the horn in his hands.

“All set over here,” Emily said eagerly.

Regis hopped off the boulder and trotted up to Mica, who looked down at him in surprise, then up to me questioningly. The puppy gave a resigned sigh and said, “Don’t get too excited about this, but…” and then vanished into her body.

Mica gasped and nearly jumped to her feet, but I stopped her with an outstretched hand. “The mana in these horns could drive you mad. Regis and I are going to help keep you stable until you’ve gotten control of it, okay?”

“Maybe a little warning next time?” she snapped. “I feel violated.”

I focused on Realmheart, channeling as much of my sensory perception through the godrune as possible. “Go ahead, Mica. Begin.”

The effect was immediate.

Umbral mana, tinged by the black shadow that clung to all things Vritra related, began seeping from the horn and into Mica’s body.

She cringed at the sensation, and very nearly tossed her horn away. Her wide and frightened eyes stared ahead unseeing.

“It’s just a vision,” I assured her, keeping my voice low and soothing. Her fingers were white around the jet-black horn. “Stay in yourself. Remember our purpose. Focus through it. Don’t pull too hard. Just let the mana flow.”

I kept up a steady stream of consoling, guiding words as I began pushing out with aether, intermingling it within the mana. It was drawn into her body alongside the mana, pulled by Regis’s presence. Not all of the Vritra-born mana wanted to be drawn to her core and instead seeped out of her mana veins and into her body, but through careful manipulation of the aether, I was able to round up these stray particles and herd them in the correct direction.

Meanwhile, Mica’s eyelids were pressed shut so hard the skin around them turned bright white, while her cheeks flushed plumb purple and she began to sweat heavily. By the way she gnashed her teeth and fidgeted restlessly, I knew whatever visions she was seeing must be pretty bad.

“I…I’ve got it,” Mica said a few minutes later, letting out the breath she’d been holding. “That was…totally, incredibly, extremely awful.”

I bent down and closed her hands tight around the horn. “Keep drawing on it, but not too fast.”

Next, Regis and I moved onto Bairon. He adapted more quickly to the flow of the decay-corrupted mana and surfaced from the visions after only a minute or two. Varay had it harder, her visions so severe that I had to hold the horn in her hands for her as she whimpered and twitched. Eventually, though, she too had made it through, with Regis drawing my aether toward himself while I guided the gray particles of mana and prevented them from permeating her body.

The Lances settled into a rhythm of slowly withdrawing and purifying mana from the horns, which almost looked as if they were burning as the dark mana boiled out to wreath the Lances’ bodies in a smokey nimbus.

Finally, with no danger of the mana poisoning their bodies or minds, I was able to really watch the process. Once in their cores, the mana was being processed, the impurities removed and culled by the core itself, leaving nothing but pure mana behind. But whatever process prevented the cores from clarifying further wasn’t immediately apparent.

“What are you seeing?” I asked Gideon as I watched the mana move in constant eddies within their cores.

Gideon’s grumpy facade had melted away as his mind bent to the task. I knew it would; he couldn’t resist such a complex problem. “There is a higher-than-normal amount of resistance as they draw in and begin processing the mana—except for Lance Bairon, whose channels and core seem to be functioning at expected efficiency given the Lances’ strength. I suspect it is due to the nature of the mana in question, however, not some symptom of the limiters placed upon them by the Lance artifacts.”

“It’s too bad we don’t have those artifacts still,” Emily added thoughtfully, one finger tapping against her cheek as she stared down at their equipment. “It would make this easier if we could peel those apart and figure out how they worked.”

“That would be ideal, but”—I imbued aether into the dimension rune, withdrawing two of the empowering rods—“we do have these.”

In one hand, I held the dwarven artifact, which was crafted from a handle of pure gold and studded along the length with obsidian rings. A large ruby-red gem glowed faintly at one end. The second rod—the artifact designed only for use by humans—was topped with a blue gem, and its handle was forged of silver.

“But we can’t use those,” Emily said nervously.

“Screw those evil things,” Gideon snapped vehemently at the same time.

Of the Lances, only Bairon seemed able to focus on both the horn and our conversation, but he stayed silent, his visage that of a nervous soldier trusting his leaders’ judgment.

What Virion had said about Gideon’s reaction to the artifacts came back to me. “What did you discover in your examination of these?”

“‘Godly tools are not crafted for mortal hands,’” Gideon said as if reciting something from memory. “Anyone with half a brain only has to look at those things for two seconds to see that they’re a veritable baklava of different spells all layered one over another, none of them decipherable even to a genius like myself. Maybe there is some good wrapped up in it all, but the asura haven’t exactly proven their intentions good, so it would be utter foolishness to assume that there isn’t more.”

The truth was, I agreed entirely with Gideon’s assessment. In my own overnight examination of the rods, I had discovered much—more, apparently, than Gideon—including cataloging the first few layers of spells and how they would unfold when the rods were activated. It was a risk, but I knew for certain that Kezess had to have built in a key to undo the Lances’ imposed limit if the artifacts were to make them any stronger.

“You’re right, Gideon. Which is why we’re not going to use them,” I said. “At least, not the way Kezess Indrath intended.”

“You’ve discovered something then?” Gideon’s half-grown brows drew up into the middle of his wrinkled forehead and he leaned over his boulder toward me. “Go on.”

I explained what I had deciphered in my admittedly short time spent studying the artifacts. Gideon nodded along, and before long Emily was grinning beside him. “That’s a good thought,” they said simultaneously, drawing a barking laugh from Regis.

“You two spend too much time together,” he cackled.

“Don’t you primarily live inside Arthur?” Emily shot back, still smirking. “Like…a parasite or something?”

“Point, Watsken,” Regis said, his little snout bobbing up and down appreciatively.

“Let’s not waste any more time,” I said, returning the dwarven artifact back to my dimension rune and maneuvering around in front of Varay. “Mica, Bairon, reduce your draw on the horn to as little as possible without severing your connection. I don’t think you’re at risk of draining the horns prematurely, but better safe than sorry.”

They wordlessly did as I asked, and there was a slight reduction in the amount of smoky mana pouring into them.

Varay’s icy gaze followed me intensely. The fingers of her natural hand twitched against the horn. She drew in a deep breath and steadied herself.

To Realmheart, it looked as if the uneven flow of mana through her body smoothed into a steady flow, its movement in her core becoming a consistent rotating motion as the new mana was continually integrated into that which was already purified.

With aether acting as an extension of my senses, I reached into her core, felt the walls, where mana should have continued to scour away what minute imperfections it still had. But the mana moved just inside the core’s walls, never touching or penetrating it beyond where the body’s channels and veins ran into the organ.

Varay was quickly reaching the limit of how much mana she could absorb. Soon it would become difficult for her to continue drawing in mana, and, for all the mana she could still absorb, an equal amount of purified mana would leak out of her core. This would waste the mana while also being far too slow of a process to help us see what was happening.

Despite how much mana she had already absorbed, I still couldn’t sense any mechanism behind the phenomena I was witnessing. I ground my teeth, feeling frustrated for the first time. I had thought for sure that the influx of mana would be the key to discovering what Kezess had done to them.

“What…should I do?” Varay asked after another long moment, her voice strained between clenched teeth.

The gears of my mind were spinning hastily.

Emily and Gideon hadn’t yet seen anything useful in all their readings. I had the rod, but I couldn’t trust the artifact’s internal programming to function if I was inhibiting certain effects. Before I could use them, I needed to understand exactly how the limiting spell worked. Even making an educated guess could be horribly dangerous to the Lances. If I couldn’t appropriately direct the spells once I’d released them, this would all be a total waste.

Varay needed to move more mana.

Think, Arthur. Kezess had designed the Lance artifacts to create a limiter, but more than that, this limiter was carefully hidden, undetectable even when the mage was manipulating large amounts of mana. Certainly, that meant he had concerns, even back when the artifacts were created, that the artificial barrier could be circumvented somehow. But what did he do? How could he hide a spell like that? And, more importantly, how could I find it?

One problem at a time, I told myself, trying to coral the rushing torrent of my mind.

More immediately a problem, I needed Varay to be able to keep moving mana. If only she could use mana rotation.

My mind ground to a halt. Mana rotation…

Sylvia had insisted humans were too rigid in their thinking to learn the ability, but much of what the dragons had told me had turned out to be wrong, or at the very least incomplete. Now it seemed entirely possible that the dragons themselves were too rigid and simplistic in the way they saw humans, elves, and dwarves to see our potential.

Steeling myself, I said, “I know this is going to sound impossible, but, Varay, I need you to expend a pretty significant amount of mana without breaking your connection with the horn.”

Her brows furrowed into a frustrated scowl. “You’re…right. That’s impossible.”

“It’s not,” I assured her. “I learned how when I was only four.”

She scoffed, and the flow of mana wobbled. Her expression hardened, and I could practically feel her will clamping down like a vice as she regained control. “Way to…kick me while I’m down.”

Rubbing the back of my neck, I gave her an apologetic smile. “I was going to say that the dragon who taught me said only someone with a pliable body and core could learn it. Like a kid. But…I think she must have been wrong.”

Reading my thoughts, Regis became incorporeal and jumped into Varay’s body.

“I’m going to help guide the mana with aether, like before, to stabilize the connection. I need you to keep part of your focus on the horn, but the other part, I need you to cast a spell. Something you can do without thinking.” To help the connection, I leaned toward her and took her hands in mine, keeping them clenched tightly around Cadell’s horn.

“Try flying,” Bairon said, most of his attention on us as he continued to draw only a trickle of mana from the horn in his lap.

“That’s perfect,” I said, giving him a grateful nod before turning all my attention back to Varay and the stream of mana and aether that connected us and the horn.

Varay bit her lip, a flash of uncertainty crossing her face, then again wrenched control back. Nothing happened for a minute, then two. Then five.

“I’m sorry,” Varay finally admitted, a hint of shame in her voice, “I don’t understand.”

Refusing to let myself become frustrated, I kept going back over Sylvia’s lessons in my head.