Millennial Mage

Tala took a moment to breathe in deeply, calming her nervousness at being in the spotlight. Then, with a smile, she glanced at Terry, who was still perched on her shoulder. “Hey, we’ve been teasing about you fighting Master Cazor, but you can challenge anyone you want to.” After a moment’s hesitation, she added. “Well, except the healer or the magelings-to-be.”

Terry let out a series of descending squawks, then flickered off her shoulder, appearing in the middle of the arena with the mass of a horse and standing roughly nine feet tall.

That was much bigger than any form he usually took, but Tala had seen him taller. While eating dead woodsmen whole… She hesitated there, then closed her eyes and let out an irritated breath.

-We never sold the random junk we took from those men.-

No. No, we did not. She’d have to ask Lyn to do that.

Before she could fall further into contemplations, Terry continued with his challenge.

He stretched his vestigial wings outward, tilted his head up, and let loose a deep, undulating trill of challenge, then cocked his head to the side, regarding Cazor.

The reactions of those present were quite mixed.

The Archons who’d seen Terry before, even if not at any other size, simply gaped. The new Archons, from Tala’s perspective, all were immediately wrapped in various forms of defensive magics. Good reactions.

One seemed to have been encased in a slightly translucent coating of shadow; another was enshrouded in a heat haze; and the last of the new Archons left a working hanging in the air between herself and Terry. Tala and Alat weren’t quite able to interpret the working after it was settled in the air, but the woman herself was an Immaterial Guide. Though, Tala couldn’t tell exactly what she focused on with her brief glance at this distance.

The magelings paled, almost as one, and huddled closer together.

Jean dropped her hand to her weapon but didn’t draw it.

Cazor, the focus of Terry’s posturing, straightened before the challenge and slowly nodded his agreement.

Aproa and Rane just grinned, watching everyone else react to what they’d known was coming. Well, they’d at least known that something like it was likely, even if they probably wouldn’t have guessed at this exact event.

The same, brave mageling spoke up again. “I assume he’s non-standard too?”

That broke the tension as slightly nervous chuckles echoed through the arena.

Tala shrugged. “Just a bit, yeah. He’s a friend.” With that thought, she sought out the healer and called out to him. “Hey, for safety’s sake, would you be able to heal an arcanous creature, if he were injured?”

The healer scratched his chin in thought, then nodded slowly. “I believe so. For combat healing, I mainly stimulate the patient’s own body to regenerate, providing the energy for the healing myself. That should be universal, though I have never attempted to heal a non-human.”

“Is that good enough, Terry?”

Terry gave her an arch look, and she laughed. “Fine, fine. I just wanted to be safe.”

Terry preened, then looked back to Cazor, questioningly.

Cazor stepped forward. “Clear the center. Let’s see what this… honorable creature is capable of.”

Rane snorted another laugh. “You were going to call him a monster, weren’t you.”

Cazor didn’t reply.

The watchers moved to the sides of the arena. A few words were exchanged about the types of powers the two combatants would bring to bear, and it was decided that they didn’t need to take any special precautions. Both were very precise in what they did.

Terry walked a slow arc back and forth while Cazor moved to stand opposite him, opening the pouches at his waist and calling out clouds of iron dust to begin swirling around him.

It was fascinating. Cazor’s control of the interweaving magnetic fields was so tight and minute that he created ever-moving webs of iron powder, as fine as capillaries in human skin.

If Tala had to guess, she’d have said that some of the paths were only a single grain wide as the iron swirled and spun in intricate, meticulously manipulated patterns to the point that the Mage himself was but a hazy form in the midst of the maelstrom.

Beautiful.

The magic around the iron was a kaleidoscope of power. Cazor was utilizing the dimensions of magic to enact such powerful workings on each fraction of the physical space around him, and through it all, he barely seemed to be putting forth an effort.

-True, but from what we’ve seen, his inscriptions do much of the heavy lifting.-

That’s fair.

Tala was surprised that no further iron lifted out of the sand as the Archon’s magnetic fields brushed the surface. He was delicate and directional enough with his power that nothing he didn’t wish to affect was affected.

Jean cleared her throat. “To surrender, either verbal or due to incapacitation. Fight!”

Terry instantly flickered away, but he didn’t instantly appear near Cazor as Tala had expected.

Instead, she was able to see a series of blips of dimensional energy chained so quickly in succession they resembled a pack of firecrackers to her mage-sight, popping in sequence.

Each one took a different path, zig-zagging through the currents of iron.

The iron is actually blocking him? Or is he pretending it is?

Regardless of the case, he never fully manifested before moving on, so no one without active mage-sight would have noticed anything at all.

Now that she was listening for it, her greatly enhanced hearing could pick out the little bits of sound, distinct from the swirling rushing of the moving clouds of iron.

In less than two seconds, Terry had covered the distance and appeared behind Cazor and to the left.

While Cazor didn’t turn, he obviously sensed Terry there, because the iron on that side pulled together to create what seemed to be an almost solid armored plate.

Terry smashed his talons through it.

As he struck, the magically formed iron mass twisted, deflecting and thus ruining the attack even though it couldn’t stop it.

At that moment, the iron sheet broke apart, back into dust and seemed to flow and encase Terry’s outstretched leg.

Terry ignored it, flickering down and shrinking, very similar to how he’d dealt with Aummar that first time.

So, encasing part of his body in iron doesn’t work to stop him. She wouldn’t have thought that it would, but proof was interesting to witness.

When Terry appeared, Cazor didn’t try to block him. Instead, the Mage Hunter shot spikes of spinning, compressed iron at the terror bird, forcing Terry to flicker away once again.

The spikes shattered into the ground, briefly leaving dark grey patches in the sand, tracing the pattern of damage Cazor had attempted to inflict on Terry.

That looks pretty cool. I don’t know if those would penetrate my skin, but if they did… She could imagine the havoc iron dust could wreak inside a Mage or magical creature.

Terry seemed to be having a grand old time as he switched tactics.

He flickered around Cazor’s head, appearing for only an instant in each place to let out shrill squawks, always directed inward.

Tala flinched at the volume and pitch, even at a distance, and Cazor was clearly staggered by the quick sequence of sonic bursts.

Tala was surprised that she didn’t see any magic behind the sound. It was simply that: mundane noise, piercing enough to cause pain.

Even so, when Terry appeared directly in front of the Mage to capitalize on that distraction, Cazor sent a ring of spikes shooting outward in all directions.

He didn’t want to take the time to lock down exactly where Terry was, but he knew another attack was incoming.

One of the viciously sharp, spinning spikes struck solidly enough to cause the terror bird to grunt.

Terry hadn’t flickered away as Tala had expected. Instead, he took the hit and used the momentary opening to grab Cazor across the chest, one talon going over each shoulder, one under his right arm, and the opposing talon hooking around the left side of the Archon’s waist.

With seemingly casual ease and speed, Terry forced Cazor back and down, pinning the Archon to the sand, pressing him down with what must have been near bone-crushing force. Tala didn’t hear the snap or pop of bone, however, showing just how calibrated Terry was being with his own strength and weight.

Terry screeched into Cazor’s face, and the Archon tried to get his hands up between his head and Terry in a completely involuntary defensive reaction.

“Yield!” Cazor called out. “I yield!”

Terry immediately flickered away, settling down on the far side of the open space as iron dust rained down around Cazor.

Cazor lay on the sand groaning as the healer ran over to him and quickly dealt with the injuries.

It was then that Tala saw the blood.

It wasn’t a lot, but there were speks of blood on the sand, and Terry never broke Cazor’s skin.

“Terry. You’re bleeding.” Tala moved quickly across to her friend, running her hands over him. Sure enough, there was a small hole in one of his wings where the iron spike had hit.

Cazor staggered a bit as he and the healer came their way. Behind him, the iron was sucked off the surface of the arena floor and streamed back into his waiting pouches. “Well fought, master Terry. May I?” He held up one hand.

Terry gave him a wary glance but then nodded once.

Cazor placed a hand over the small wound, and Tala saw him create a powerful, targeted magnetic field, drawing his iron dust out of the flesh around the injury. “That would have made it difficult to heal.”

Terry narrowed his eyes and nipped at Cazor’s hand, though he didn’t break the skin.

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry about that. I didn’t really think that I’d have to use my spikes.” He scratched the back of his head. “How short is your teleportation cool-down, anyways?”

Terry gave him a look that Tala knew well. So, after a short chuckle, she interjected on Terry’s behalf. “You’re asking him questions he has no way of answering. He can’t speak, remember?”

“Right, right.” Cazor turned to look her way. “Do you know?”

She shrugged. “I’ve never seen a noticeable delay between his teleports.” She’d seen him tired, but that wasn’t a feature of his teleportation.

Cazor paled and swallowed, his attention shifting back to Terry. “That’s… terrifying. And your size-changing?” He shook his head. “You have complete dimensional mastery, don’t you?”

Terry cocked his head, conveying uncertainty.

The Archon leaned in and lowered his voice, probably unnecessarily, but he wanted to ensure that the magelings couldn’t hear. Their masters might share this with them, but that wasn’t for him to do. “Most arcanous creatures have a single aspected ability, and usually some physical or physiological ones thrown in. Most creatures can survive a single trip to a fount for such, to become arcanous creatures in the first place. But if they return to pass through the fount a second time? Most die outright, but if they don’t they are able to gain much, much greater strength and flexibility in that aspect. If all you could do was teleport quickly, I’d believe you went through a dimensional fount twice, but you can do so much more. Now, if a creature has visited a fount twice, and then goes back a third time: They die.”

He paused on that, letting it hang before he gave a mischievous smile.

“But if they don’t, they gain what we call mastery over that aspect, and their capabilities often exceed Bound, or even Fused, true-magical creatures.”

Terry’s head drooped, and he crooned softly.

Cazor noticed and patted the side of the terror bird’s beak. “You must have been desperate to end up as you are, my friend.”

Terry didn’t reply.

The healer had been examining the wound while Cazor talked, but now that there was a natural gap in the flow of information, he cleared his throat to gain their attention. “This might hurt, and it will definitely itch.”

Terry regarded the man for a moment, then bobbed a nod.

The healer extended his hand and power flowed through him and into Terry.

Terry squawked and shivered in irritation but didn’t otherwise react.

True to form, the wound closed in the time it would take for a deep breath.

In the background, from near the edge of the arena, Tala heard Jean turn to the magelings-to-be. “So, any questions?”

And that unleashed a flood. It took a good fifteen minutes to get all the questions answered and return the focus to the training at hand.

The first one started off in a mildly interesting fashion. “How can magic affect iron? I thought iron was immune to magic.”

Jean nodded sagely. “Well, iron cannot be affected by magic, but it can be by anything created by magic, that is not magic itself.”

The magelings-to-be all seemed to consider that before nodding, seemingly understanding.

For the most part, the questions moved into less interesting territory from there.

Blessedly, Tala was not required to answer many of the questions, except those pertaining to Terry. Though, there were quite a few of those to answer:

They wanted to know how she’d gotten him to work with her.

“More than anything, he chose me.”

Terry trilled happily from her shoulder, head-butting her cheek to “aww’s” and smiles from the magelings.

Could they tame a terror bird of their own, when they found one?

“No, I would not recommend trying to tame or befriend terror birds, as a rule. He tried to kill me on multiple occasions, before we worked things out.”

Terry bobbed emphatically, adding weight to the statement as the young ones paled, licked dried lips, or otherwise demonstrated horror at the very idea of befriending something that had repeatedly tried to kill them.

-It’s kind of your thing, though… right? You find things that want to, or could, destroy you and get what you can from them?-

Tala ignored Alat.

Finally, they wanted to know if it was hard to keep him fed, given his larger size when he chose it.

“He actually eats less than I do.”

That puzzled the newly arrived graduates but gave Aproa and Rane no end of amusement.

Thankfully, the rest of the questions were not Terry-related, so Tala was spared.

Soon enough, they were back to the standard, daily practice and training.

Terry, not being Bound in truth or in power-density, couldn’t participate in aura manipulation or direct contests of will. Even so, the group was still able to do such exercises, including Terry, after Jean informed everyone that an Archon should be able to prevent Terry’s teleportation by extending his aura over a space and claiming it as his own.

Tala gave Terry a side-eyed glare at that revelation, to which the terror bird pretended innocence.

In practice, however, Terry’s magical weight hit like an Elder, and no single Archon could keep him from moving around as he saw fit. They couldn’t even slow him down or redirect him by a noticeable amount.

They only succeeded in keeping him from a space when Tala, Rane, and Cazor synced their intent and will power over a space in which they co-mingled their auras.

The result was that Terry was forced to appear about a foot to the left of his intended destination.

Terry, of course, squawked derisively before stepping onto the target and declaring himself victorious, yet again.

Honestly, Tala was surprised that the magelings-to-be were allowed to witness the use, and hear discussions, of aura.

It was apparently something standardly conveyed to magelings early on by Archon masters. So, no one saw an issue with it.

The idea of co-mingling multiple Archons’ auras was fascinating to Tala. She’d understood the theory before, as everything her aura had “claimed” in Makinaven had already been so ruled by Master Jevin at a much more fundamental level, but she’d not considered its applications for Archons on equal footings or at equal rank.

The more direct tests of will that followed were embarrassing for Tala, in that she was once more the spotlight as she defeated every individual Mage in direct conflicts of will-power and magical weight.

There had been a moment of panic when she realized that her aura was trapped behind her iron paint. Thankfully, she’d immediately realized that her situation was almost the exact reverse of the iron sphere training Master Jevin had given her to do. That in mind, with a bit of effort, she was able to force her power around the physical barrier, through the dimensions of magic, and use it to empower her aura as normal.

Not ideal.

-Everything’s a trade off. We’ll have to see if this one works out.-

It didn’t take long to cycle through everyone in head-to-head conflicts, given that they could pair up and oppose one another all at the same time, rather than waiting for each individual bout to finish.

She didn’t even have to use her trick to come at them from below, and she still won handily against any individual Archon.

She tried not to steal glances at her year-mates, watching from the sides, but when she did, despite her best judgment, she saw growing awe in their expressions.

Great. This is not what I was aiming for…

The group rounded out the day with scenario work, which Terry gleefully participated in.

The most common setup was to defend a singular person from Terry.

Though, from one perspective, that was an abject failure and an exercise in frustration for the Archons, in every other aspect it was fantastic practice.

They each made massive leaps in coordinating with one another and overlaying, and even combining, their defenses with each other.

The result was a move from near instant defeat to being able to protect a given target for nearly five seconds before Terry breached their coordinated efforts.

There were lots of laughs, groans, and shaking of heads. Everyone grew in appreciation of the difficulty of protecting isolated targets from determined assault, and in their dawning horror in just how vicious the terror bird could be.

Suffice it to say, the healer earned his pay, and got his share of practice, that day.

Tala was definitely coming to better understand Xeel’s feelings about the terror bird, and the reasoning behind the elimination of the fount which had given him power.

As the Archons parted ways for the evening, several of the magelings approached various Mages, likely to inquire about becoming master and mageling.

Aproa bid everyone goodbye, as she was leaving in the morning, and Tala invited Rane back to her and Lyn’s house for the celebration with Lyn’s new mageling.

When they were all about to depart, Alat reminded Tala of her duties the next day.

“Oh! Apologies, everyone, but I have to leave the city tomorrow for an errand. Does anyone wish to accompany me to do some harvesting?” After a prod from Alat, Tala amended. “The harvesting is of berries, not arcanous animal parts, but the danger is still there.”

Most bowed out immediately. Jean and a couple others inquired a bit before thanking her for the invitation but declining as well.

Cazor, however, was quite intrigued. “Sure, I’ll come.”

“Great! Meet me at the northern gate around… ten or so?”

He shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

“Do you have a mount, or other means of traveling quickly?”

He returned a cocky grin. “I’ll bet I can move faster than you.” His eyes moved to Terry and back. “Even if you have someone to carry you.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“Then, I’ll see you tomorrow.”