Sortie

  Items

  A Fucking Anti-Scrying Amulet, Innit

  This prototype amulet of scrying protection has been crafted by Artificer Emma, and is unique in its construction. While wearing this amulet any spells lower than tier 5 with casting range beyond visual will fail when cast on you. This amulet will not function while you are immune to spells, but that’s sort of a moot point, isn’t it?

  “Seems perfect,” I said, putting it around my neck. The amulet she’d made was circular with a series of interlocking octagons inside the circle, covered in runic script with a mana crystal set in the middle of it. My own follow-along version was on the ground in front of me several steps behind in the process, and it already looked bulkier and had less fine etchings of the runes required. Even so my artifice skill had increased several times over the several hours we’d been working on it, and I kind of began understanding how magical crafting worked. I was quite certain that my amulet would work the same way once it was completed, even if it would be a little less comfortable to wear.

  The simple part of it was that craftsmanship is, essentially, a form of expression just like chanting spells or, for example, waving your hands in specific motions (which I assumed could, in theory, also produce spell effects, even if the Tower had never given us spells with that particular casting procedure).

  Visualization was also more or less the same. It was almost inevitably more complex, as when crafting magic items we often had to hold multiple spells in mind simultaneously for an extended period, but getting better at that was a major effect of the Arcana attribute, which meant every spellcaster in the Council could do it with spells up to third tier and Emma, Ajit, Anna and myself could push to fourth if we didn’t have to do too many others at the same time.

  The difficulty for someone who was familiar with spellcasting, but not artifice came from attaching a power source and externalizing both of the prior functions to it. Strangely I found my ability-based Elder Speech skill helpful. I still couldn’t understand the language that the spells in the Tower was spoken in, but I was starting to at least grasp at the syntax of it.

  “Figured. Kind of wank that most of you cannot do it with Alex’s new spell. Might as well go do your own shit then,” Emma said, “Finish a version with a mix of invisible barrier and dispel though, might be good enough for government work.”

  “How many are we making?” Anna said.

  “Shit, I dunno, one for you three what already got face to face with that ####, probably need to get one for Artemis and the rest of the top ##### on the Council, more is better, innit?” Emma said, already setting out new rods of silver and magitek welding tools to start working on the next iteration.

  “Artemis will probably be staying in here. And we need to do as many as possible for people who’ll be going out in the woods to crack down on the portals. And we need to do it before she’s put all the portals back up,” I said.

  “Bring it to the Council tonight, not my circus. I’ll just be making more of them shits,” Emma said, and put in ear-plugs so that we wouldn’t bother her anymore while she worked.

  I turned to Ajit.

  “So, Council meetings?” I said.

  “Still one every evening at six. You can call for an emergency one, we decided that made sense pretty early on what with all the emergencies that keep happening,” he said.

  “It’ll probably be six by the time I’m done with this,” I said, and got back to work.

  As it turned out, I barely made it in time. As I’d suspected, adding in the power crystal to the item was the hardest part, and it was just nothing like anything else you did with magic in the Tower, so I just had to keep trying over and over again until the trick clicked. It wasn’t even an Eureka! moment or anything, I could just kind of feel it on the first try, and over fifteen tries or so I got close enough that it clicked into place.

  I took it to bring it to Artemis, checking quickly with the Journal to see that it was functional, and rushed over to the guildhall where the meeting was to take place. I was directed to the second floor, where there was a single set of double doors among the various office-like simple wooden ones, and when I entered the room I was faced with an overly grandiose meeting room.

  It was wallpapered in dark green and gold and in the middle there was a round table with five chairs around it, with space for a lot more. Artemis was already occupying one and working on some paperwork as she waited for everyone to get there, but I was surprised that I was the second one there. I just about had the time to say hi to her and sit down when Marcus and Octavia- warrior and specialist leaders- arrived together talking about something concerning tunnels under the walls. And we didn’t have to wait long for the mysterious ranger guy who, apparently, couldn’t share his name with anybody due to a trait or an ability.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “I take it this means Alex is back to being the Archmage?” Marcus said, sitting down in a relaxed pose in the seat opposite me.

  “That is an inappropriate title that was never officially acknowledged, can we please keep it out of this room at least?” Octavia said, bringing out her Journal and a few notebooks.

  “I’m back representing the spellcasters. And we have a lot of news,” I said.

  “Emergency or important?” Artemis said, not looking up from her work.

  “Uh, important, I guess,” I said.

  “Any emergency issues then?” Artemis said and looked over each of us in turn.

  “Not since we smashed the sapper forces that were going to hit us tonight,” Marcus said, “y’all keep talking about Nowhere and the space between the walls, but let me tell you, there is more and enough rock and dirt under our feet to dig tunnels.”

  “Alright, let’s get started with important issues. First of all, do we have a way to break the siege?” Artemis said.

  “Potentially,” I said, ordering the plan into place just before I had to say it out loud.

  “Enlighten us,” Octavia said.

  “Our main issues are two- first, Jea, Xem’s apprentice, is creating portals to whatever the fuck and calling in monsters faster than we can close the gates or kill the summons. That has more or less been resolved- Anna can burn them, and I have taught a spell to everyone who can cast tier 4 spells a spell that will bring the portals down in under a minute,” I said.

  “Shit, we move out now. Small teams, a caster and ranger support, hit them everywhere at once and get out of there. We win on attrition with their kill/death ratio,” the ranger said.

  “The second issue is Jea herself. If she’s out there and capable of making more portals, we’ll be tied up here forever. It won’t be as bad as it is now, but at what rate can she make them?” I said.

  “Portals have generally appeared at a rate of two per hour with an apparent cap of 50 total,” Artemis said.

  “Right, so if she’s around, we have to dedicate at least one squad of casters full-time to dispelling portals. And she’s smart, slippery and deadly. We only got out of there because I have an overpowered anti-magic spell which she didn’t have a good counter for for now, I don’t want to imagine what she can do without that, and I’m sure she will come up with a way to overcome it. There are at least two ways that I can think of myself,” I said.

  “So we kill her,” Marcus said.

  “Ideally. If I were her, however, I’d know that the worst thing for us is if she stays hidden and keeps pressure on us. She wants to wipe us out, but I’m sure she’s getting levels somehow and she already knows all the spells she needs. She just needs to stay out of sight until she’s strong enough to take us on directly, while we need to get rid of her now,” I said.

  “Find one person? Leave it to me,” the ranger said.

  “Sure you can handle it?” Artemis said.

  The ranger shrugged. He’d been leaned back in his chair, but now leaned forward and turned to me.

  “Tell me about her,” he said.

  “Beautiful, crazy, can cast fourth, but probably not fifth tier spells and rides a giant elk,” I said.

  “Elk? That should make things easier. Can you take me to where you last saw her?” he said.

  “Yeah, I can,” I said, only at that moment realizing that between my survival-based skills and Mind attributes I absolutely could.

  “Sounds like a plan then, no? Me, the Archmage and a couple of heavies hit the apprentice, all the other wizard types go out there and knock off the portals at the same time,” the ranger said.

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Marcus said.

  “The morning. Ever try seeing tracks in the woods by torchlight?” the ranger said.

  “Gather up an hour before dawn, three person teams with a caster. If anyone but Alex finds the apprentice, disengage and report immediately to me and I update Alex on the chat,” Artemis said.

  “We’re working on anti-scrying amulets. She’s deadly at any range without them,” I said.

  “How long?” Artemis said.

  “We can get ten done by the morning. Emma might be able to do a couple more by herself. It’s a rough enchantment, most of us cannot do it,” I said.

  “Ten teams then, we can reinforce a bit harder. Five person teams with a fighter and a specialist,” Artemis said.

  I was going to argue that an amulet per team wouldn’t be enough, but in fact, with everyone relevant knowing Spellrod by now, it would be. If they got targeted by Jea, they could cast the spell while individually protected from scrying and get out of there in a challenging but practical relay.

  There were a few more issues in the council, but nothing that concerned either myself or the wizards. We were clearly supposed to be making amulets through the night. I learned that the attrition rate on our side was ten people per day on average. The monsters had a tendency to charge at the walls head-long, climbing them with claws and hooves- fish in a barrel for any decent ranged fighter, though some inevitably got overwhelmed by sheer numbers and couldn’t be rescued in time by casters and melee fighters. That the Guild was managing to hold them off with such little casualties was undoubtedly impressive, but with our relatively small numbers we couldn’t waste time.

  And, of course, letting people die was wrong.

  Even as we stood in the field in front of the Swinging Donkey that had become the de facto town square of Checkpoint the next morning, we heard sounds of battle from several directions on the walls. Fifty of us stood ready and rested- all of us had taken the time to at least use our recovery abilities and sleep for an hour, which was nearly as good as a night’s sleep by now for most of us. There were no grand speeches or instructions. We all knew what we had to do, and how we were going to do it.

  Anna was going supported by Hannah and Clarence, with two rangers I didn’t know. In addition to myself and the ranger leader we had Zack and Marcus on our team, along with a second ranger I didn’t recognize. Marcus had insisted on coming and, frankly I was happy to have the intimidating and professional man with me.

  As the twilight turned to dawn, we sprang to action, splitting in every direction. Everyone had their set of portals to close, and everyone went off in a jog towards it. I climbed atop the wall the way I’d come and saw the carnage in daylight for the first time. It was monstrous and no worse than what I’d seen a dozen times over. Monsters were still gathering in the killing field beyond the wall.

  And we went to kill them.