Arcane Advent: The Mage The Girl and The Ruined City, Page 2

  Unfortunately for him, he didn’t have the luxury.

  Seeing a shadow growing beneath him, he raised the shield and braced for impact as a large boulder crashed into it. The shield broke while taking the hit, and his strengthened arm took it instead. He swung his arm and barely knocked it to the side.

  “Agh—! Ha—!” Leidolf screamed. His arm had been broken and marred, while his shoulder was dislocated. Looking in the direction that the boulder came from, he saw what threw it at him. Standing several stories high was a colossal creature—a humanoid body made by of stone, with red eyes that seemed like finely cut rubies, and scarlet crystalline figures protruding out its back.

  Leidolf knew what he had to do as soon as he saw it…He ran at top speed to get away from the creature. He wasn’t a fool. He knew that he stood no chance against that thing in his weakened condition.

  The creature was slow, so it relied on throwing rubble that it picked up. Leidolf was far too agile to be hit while on the ground. Within only minutes of continuous running, he was clear out of the creature’s sight and range.

  Damn. I have to heal my arm, but I’m worried the taufr will break, Leidolf thought to himself while taking cover in a wrecked store. The amount of blood he lost was significant, and he was running on fumes at this point. Gathering the last vestiges of his willpower, he invoked the taufr.

  “The strength of aurochs runs through me. Let your proud strength mend bone and flesh alike! Awaken!” The bracelet illuminated the building with a proud, orange glow.

  His injuries began to slowly heal—flesh and muscles sewed themselves back together. The runic mage estimated roughly fifteen minutes before the arm was healed, but his awareness was fading. Sleep took him without remorse.

  Chapter 3: The Third Hour

  Leidolf found himself in a charred landscape. Fragile trees were burned charcoal black, and the lands was parched and eager to drink anything—including fresh blood. Occasionally, lava would erupt from the ground, adding to the heat that distorted his sight.

  He imagined that this was what Hell looked like.

  Leidolf wiped the blood from his eyes with his remaining arm, which cradled a broken sword. With his skin scorched black all over, his failing body begged him to stop. But he refused to listen to it, in lieu of another presence speaking to him.

  “Why,” spoke a monstrous voice. “Why do you hesitate, human?”

  It demanded an answer from him. Hidden in the shadows was a large, bipedal figure wielding two weapons. “You’ve attempted to slay me many times. So why do you hesitate now?”

  It felt as if the world was spinning to Leidolf. Barely able to stand, his legs trembled under his own weight—begging for mercy. Ignoring his body, he charged.

  “Come! Triumph over me if you seek this blade!” It proclaimed and swung the right weapon down. It smashed the ground, and fire erupted from underneath Leidolf—it consumed him, eating away his last vestiges of life. The world melted away in a sea of molten red and orange.

  Leidolf screamed. Waking in his living room after fighting against that creature, he was covered in burns despite the entire sequence taking place in his mindscape…At least his left arm was still there.

  A man was lying on Leidolf’s couch, smoking a cigarette. He glanced over to Leidolf, who was struggling to get up, with a bored look on his face. “It looks like you failed again.”

  Leidolf promptly called him out on it. “It’s your fault! If you hadn’t set the defense program on it so high, this wouldn’t keep happening!”

  “To obtain what you want, you must be willing to go through the trials that await you. I want to give you the other two blades, but only if you can surpass this test.”

  “Yet you watch as I get injured, and crash on my couch every time you come by, master!” He countered, adding a bit of snark in the last part.

  The man only put on a smug smile. “For someone like me—who’s always on the run—taking on an apprentice is a risk in itself. Just consider this a trial that you’ll have to overcome.”

  ******

  Leidolf woke up from the dream of his past in a daze. Shaking himself back into battle mode, he looked at the bracelet taufr. It had been cracked severely—a few more uses and then it would break.

  The slumber had refreshed him by a bit. He could go back to searching for survivors now, although he doubted anyone could have survived all the devastation. Until he took out that giant rock golem—which he referred to as the Guardian of Earth—keeping the source of the barrier from being discovered, he had nothing better to do.

  Leidolf decided to take the empty subway into the nearest residential area, hoping a few people hid themselves in their basements or attics. Navigating the dark, defunct train tunnels, he used the projection gloves to light his hand on fire with a passive flame. It served as a torch that pushed back the darkness.

  As he reached the halfway point between the entrance and the exit to the residential area, he felt a slight twinge of magical energy that vanished. He was tempted to brush it off as paranoia, but considering everything that was happening it was better being safe than sorry.

  “Bal!” Six more passive flames floated around him like Will-o-Wisps. They were remote-controlled, harmless flames that he used in practice—taught to him by his master. He sent the flames flying down the tunnel, which caught a fleeting shadow passing by.

  Aw hell, he cursed himself. He was trapped in a constricted area that was too dark to see through properly, and too restricted to move effectively. Cursing himself under his breath again, he reached into his pouch and pulled a red runestone.

  Throwing it ahead, he let it roll on the ground as he tucked himself into the fetal position. The enchanted cloak wrapped his body completely and the runestone—engraved with one of the runes of fire, Kauno—ruptured. Because it soaked in his blood for nine months, the flames quickly washed through the length of the tunnel, sending a burning wave of fire throughout the enclosed space.

  Once the flames died down, he relit his hand and looked over to a burning object ahead of him that managed to retain its shape. It was a bat with the same color scheme as the birds, with a red circuit pattern running from its back to the tip of its wings. Leidolf assumed that this was to deal with anyone trying to hide in the tunnels.

  Bats underground, wolves on the surface, and birds in the sky. There was little chance anyone was left by now.

  Chapter 4: The Fourth Hour

  The residential area looked similar to the business-orientated part of the city, except there were townhouses rather than lumbering department stores. The houses that lined the streets were no longer fit for human occupancy. The neatly sculpted bushes and well maintained lawns were charred black and smoldering, with some still aflame.

  Leidolf began methodically searching each home by using the Bal spell to attract the attention of anything in the house, such as other familiars. He only found a few wolves still lurking around, but his blade took care of them with ease. Just when he was about to give up, he heard a scream—followed by a loud roar, a flash of red, and the scent of burning flesh.

  Damn, damn, damn, he swore up and down. Activating the bracelet, he kicked off the ground, and into the air. From there, he witnessed a little girl being stared down by a flaming creature, next to the burned corpses of two people.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, it began gorging itself on one of the corpses, ripping a huge chunk of charred flesh and swinging it around before swallowing it, as the child watched with tears in her eyes and muttering the word, ‘Daddy’.

  A streak of blue flew towards the creature. The blue runestone that represented Laguz ruptured, gathering the condensation in the air and unleashing a torrent of water directly on the creature—putting out its flames and crippling it. Falling down to earth, Leidolf let the black steel sink into the hide of the smoldering creature.

  It let out a menacing roar as it tried to shake him off.

  “Don’t just sit there and gawk! RUN!�
€ Leidolf yelled to the girl who was staring in awe. Snapping back to reality, the unknown girl stumbled and tripped over herself, before running around them and through the hole in the wall.

  Once she was out of sight, Leidolf withdrew his blade from the creature and escaped to the street level. The creature—Guardian of Fire, since it gave off the same sense as the golem from before—reignited its flames and followed him out.

  Shaped like a Komodo dragon, it towered at around seven feet tall, and twenty feet long if you counted its tail. Howling with rage, its yellow eyes stared at Leidolf in fury. Black scales began to burn with a hotter intensity than before—even Leidolf’s flame proof cloak wouldn’t survive more than a few seconds of direct contact with flames of that caliber.

  “Alright, you overgrown lizard. Let’s finish this!” Leidolf declared. The enemy was stronger, taller, and had far more firepower than him. However, compared to the hellfire that he encountered within his mindscape, it was nothing.

  He didn’t flinch as the beast took a deep breath, preparing to unleash its supreme flame. From his pouch, an ice blue runestone with the Isa rune engraved on it was drawn, and he planted his sword into the ground to free up his hand.

  “Power that lies rooted in the underworld, become my shield! Algis!” Leidolf fully chanted the spell and summoned the shield in front of his outstretched hand, before closing one of his eyes as the Guardian of Fire breathed out a scorching breath. The flames met the shield and washed all around it. The heat from the flames should have incinerated him from the convection, but his cloak kept the heat from killing him.

  Leidolf had received a lot of advice from his master during his short training. One of them was to close an eye so that if he were ever on the end of a bright attack, he could open the closed eye to see his opponent after the attacked ended. Another was to come prepared for anything, and be ready to put your life on the line. But one that really stuck was—

  To wait for the chance to counterattack! His shield cracked from the pressure, forcing him to reapply energy into the spell in order to stop it from breaking. The spell wouldn’t last forever, but the same was true for the creature—the counter would come as soon as the flames stopped.

  The flaming beast was driven by the commands of the one who crafted it. ‘Consume anything living’ was the order it was bound to. As a False Familiar, a mere mockery of a true familiar, it shouldn’t have had anything like emotions.

  So, why did it experience something akin to anger towards the person who wouldn’t yield to its flames? Unable to tolerate the existence of the man who stopped it from devouring the child, and wouldn’t allow himself to be devoured, the creature instinctively began to hate his existence. As its flame breath died down, it decided to unleash all of the fire it could muster in its next attack—even if it would drain it of the very energy that kept it running.

  And so, the counterattack had begun. Sensing the opportunity to strike, Leidolf did something a normal mage would call stupid and exerted three times the energy he put into the spell to overload it. The shield exploded outwards, dissipating the flames as the attack stopped.

  Exhausted from the magical backlash, he wanted to stop and rest. However, the adrenaline coursing through him kept the urge at bay long enough for the next move. He threw the runestone into the creature’s mouth as it drew another deep breath.

  An explosion of white and blue frost occurred as sharp icicles pierced it from within, immobilizing it. The flames that surrounded it were violently extinguished, turning to steam, while the creature howled in pain. Leidolf drew his sword from the ground and began the final strike.

  The bracelet glowed as it was activated once again; his strength and speed were pushed beyond their normal limits by the rune. Leidolf ignored the spreading cracks in the bracelet and charged past the half-dead creature, the blade was swung as he passed. A black line was drawn in the air by the blade as it split the Guardian of Fire in two.

  The two halves of the creature began to slowly vanish, as did the interference from its presence. This alone would have been a good thing, but something else wonderful occurred. When Leidolf saw it, a small smile graced his face—happy that his efforts wouldn’t be in vain.

  The barrier surrounding the city had cracked. With the death of one of the most powerful creatures under the crimson moon, the barrier separating the city from the outside had weakened. To him, it was something that signaled hope that this nightmare would end.

  Now if he could find that child alive, he would be satisfied for the moment.

  ******

  Outside the barrier, there was a man walking within inches of the dome that was invisible from his sight. Yet, for a brief moment, he thought he sensed a powerful presence. The abnormal energy belonged to something dangerous. Even though it was faint, even though it was only for a moment, he definitely felt it.

  Pulling out his cell phone, he made a single call to an unknown person.

  “Hey, boss. I think that I’m near one of those things. You might want to call her to come investigate.”

  Chapter 5: The Fifth Hour

  The child ran at the mage’s urging. She had nowhere to go; she didn’t know who the man was or what was going on. But the moment he appeared, she saw something she hadn’t seen since the sky turned red.

  She saw hope.

  Standing amidst the flames, with his black cloak concealing his face under a cowl, he radiated a strength that was dark, but warm. Watching him from behind a wall, she witnessed him confronted the flaming creature with abilities that surpassed human capabilities.

  In other words, he was a superhero.

  As the creature began to dissipate, she ran towards him with innocent admiration.

  ******

  Sleeping on a couch in the finest room of the skyscraper hotel was a man named Armel. He was a mage, one that belonged to an enormous organization. He was also the one who unleashed this nightmare upon the city. Upon the death of the Guardian of Fire, he felt the feedback and was awoken by a sharp pain in his head.

  One of them was destroyed, he thought to himself, clenching his head from the resonance. No, some of the minor ones are dead too.

  The process of creating so many false familiars and giving them commands had drained him of every ounce of strength he had, even using enchanted items that were crafted specifically to accomplish such a task. The sleep had restored roughly fifteen percent of his energy, as anymore would be tied up in maintaining the creatures.

  The barrier had been linked to the larger ones in order to conceal the destruction of the city from the outside world. His own energy couldn’t maintain it, so he wasn’t the source that was holding it in place. Instead, it was being powered by something that slept underneath the hotel, which was what Armel sought under orders.

  For them to be destroyed, it had to be a mage, Armel reasoned. There was no registered mage listed operating in the city, so the logical conclusion would be that one got caught when the barrier went up.

  The reason he wasn’t aware of Leidolf’s existence was because he was not trained by any organization, but by a man who was already on the run. He was an unknown factor that belonged to no one—a mage without lineage, or a leash to bind him. He was a Stray.

  Getting up from the couch, Armel drew a smile on his face. Looks like we have a sacrifice after all…

  ******

  Standing in front of two makeshift graves were Leidolf and Aria, the child he saved. Despite his weariness, he still dug two graves in the scorched dirt around Aria’s former home and placed her parents inside of them. It was those two who lost their lives protecting their daughter.

  Weeping over the loss of her parents, she held a bunny that they got for her birthday in her arms. Clenching it tightly, she remembered the events that occurred before the crimson moon enveloped the sky.

  She had just woken up, her light pink hair messy from tumbling in her sleep. Her father was getting ready to leave for his job and her mother had planned to
take Aria to the park to play in an hour. It was just a normal day in the life of a normal family.

  That was when the barrier went up. Being overwhelmed by the crushing pressure, they could only watch as creatures appeared from nowhere and attacked. They were lucky enough that they were able to hide when the pressure died down, but their luck ran out when the flaming creature appeared.

  While Leidolf finished making grave markers for the dead parents, he just stood there with a sad look on his face. Children should never have to bury their parents at such a young age. Who or whatever was behind this was going to pay with their blood.

  Kneeling in front of the graves, he made a silent promise. “I shall watch over the life you saved at the cost of your own.”

  After he was done, he stood tall once again.

  “Alright,” he spoke up. “We can’t waste anymore time. Considering the state of things, the search for other survivors is off. I’m taking you to my place for your own protection.”

  The child had no complaints. She had lost everything else—with the exception of the bunny—she held dear. She reached out for his hand.

  He took it and the two began their journey back to the only safe place in the city.

  ******

  “There’s a difference between mages who actively use their abilities, and those who simply wish to study them in order to advance them.” Leidolf’s master told him, while he was performing a handstand while balancing on a ball.

  It wasn’t too long ago that Leidolf became the mysterious man’s apprentice. He passed his first test by learning to sense, and manipulate, the mana around him. Now he had to learn to control it. Pumping magical energy into the ball to strengthen it, he also had to maintain his balance.

  It was an unorthodox method of teaching him to manage controlling his power while keeping his attention on outside factors. “And what would that be?”

  “Those who focus on studying their ability only see within its intended use. They don’t see the pragmatic uses in them. For example, if you can create sound using a spell, a researcher will want to study how that sound is made, while someone who actively uses the spell would instead find a more practical use for it, such as increasing the volume to deafen an enemy.”