Rebirth and Second Chances

Chapter 292: Wild Magic

I moved through the city, plowing directly through the buildings that had been abandoned the longest and fallen into disrepair. I ignored the damage I was doing to Limerick in my quest to get to the Leanan and stop the evil she was doing. My constitution and vitality were high enough that the stone, metal, or wooden walls that were used for constructing the buildings barely slowed me as I crashed through one after another.

I may have taken some caution and worried about the city if I hadn't noticed that what I was seeing of the city was a pale reflection of what was really there. The real Limerick, the bones of the city, was located, Underhill.

The city that was sitting on the banks of a river was not glamour or illusion, more a carbuncle. A pustule that had escaped Underhill. An Underhill that was being starved of magic because of the Leanan's insanity.

That might explain how Hades or Hel had managed to intrude into this place. Underhill was as much an alternate dimension as it was part of the same reality as the Elysium fields and Valhalla Hall. They were a unique paradigm, a place betwixt and between, and that allowed the walls of reality that contained them to brush against both heaven and hell.

I couldn't see past the dimensional membrane that separated Underhill from Limerick. So, I was unable to tell if Underhill was populated and if it was, how Leanan's siphoning energy was affecting those that might be alive. The missing energy that should have gone to maintain the structure and anchor the Underhill also corrupted its natural defenses.

My crash through buildings, my dash forward to reach the event horizon that would allow me to transition betwixt and between was careless and thoughtless. I admit my rage blossomed out of control. But when Balfour had shown me how she had corrupted Sidhe's healing ability, forcing her soul-bond to straddle the line between life and death, it left me feeling helpless.

The memories of Irvin's torture, a person who had sworn service, a person I had adopted into my House, punished for no other purpose than to strike at me, rekindled emotions that I thought long forgotten. It was the first time I had lost control since I had established my Kingdom and confronted Mab, Queen of Seelie.

The passage through the city was without incident. Even with my abilities and spells diminished, I was still a [Ranked: King]. I may have to adapt to what that meant on this planet. Caraid's explanation of proportional equivalency made a certain sense, but I was still a Power.

A bit of testing had helped me to realize that. I was able to kludge together a way to come to terms with my expectations and the new reality. I was a [Ranked: King] with the power output of a [Ranked: Prince] on Talahm, and that would serve.

I began to swerve the closer I got to the castle, missing more of the buildings as I approached. I could have continued to plow through them, but the buildings began to have more purpose. They hadn't been cast adrift from Underhill, as it was starved of magic. And they hadn't been neglected and allowed to decay into uselessness.

The connection to Underhill was vital and as long as that connection, even as tenuous as it remained, the buildings needed to be safeguarded. If I didn't stop the Leanan from siphoning the magic from the Nexus, that last bit of magic that tethered the area above would be forever lost to Underhill, and I wasn't certain what the death of the city of Limerick, a true death, would mean for Underhill.

The Sidhe that had built Limerick had been smart. They had diverted the nearby river to surround the main castle, creating a moat that was half a mile wide and a focal point for the event horizon. The bridge that allowed passage could be easily destroyed, making it all but impossible for the armies of Man to gain access to this small piece area that connected the two realms.

It wasn't impossible. Caesar and his armies had proved at the Battle of Alesia exactly how effective siege warfare could be. But with the river providing fresh water and fish as food, with the ability to escape Underhill the path of final retreat, those techniques used at Alesia would be ineffective.

Eventually, they would tire of laying siege and give up and either attempt to forge the river or retreat. Zeus and Odin were working in concert, so a contingent of Vikings and their warships might well be used to sally against the castle walls. The loss of life would be staggering, in that event. The castle, when fully staffed, could have provided enough defenders to turn the river red with blood.

With the return of magic to the Sidhe, the castle's protection would have become even more destructive.

For me, running as fast as I was, the river wasn't much of an impediment. I simply ran across it, my speed making it possible to run on water.

I leaped as I approached, gaining traction on the bank of the river, allowing me to ignore the walls and land inside easily, my feet barely gaining purchase before I was off again, gaining entrance into the castle. I had to slow at this point, unfamiliar with the layout of the Keep.

It took time, but I was familiar enough with Sidhe sensibilities and biases to know that the sub-floors would have been used for storage and staff. It didn't take me long to find my way down once I found the stairs near the kitchens.

They built the castle when the Sidhe had access to magic. There was no other way to explain how deeply into the substrate each floor had been dug. The water table would have been too high to allow for much of an underground footprint without the use of magic or technological knowledge that wasn't available on Urt.

I descended more than ten floors before I reached the bottom and found the tear in the dimensional membrane that connected the room where the reflecting pool of magic had accumulated, and Underhill intersected.

The Leanan noticed my entrance but ignored it as insignificant. I found out why when I continued my headlong flight to enter the room, only to be blasted back.

It took me a moment to peel myself out of the wall. The blast of magic had had enough kinetic force that I would have died from that initial attack if I hadn't advanced as far as I had. I might bemoan the difference in my power level, but I was still as strong as one of the Olympus Demi-Gods.

Hercules would have survived that blast, but I doubted any mortal from the armies of Man would have had the same luck. I had barely freed myself when the Leanan made her next move. She still hadn't turned to acknowledge me, but she knew I was there, proven when the waters of magic that had been gathered and contained within the nexus pool were encouraged to spread freely.

Whatever barrier she had been using to keep the magical liquid contained and used as a reflecting pool had been removed, and the expanding fluid was slowing filling the chamber. It didn't take long before the waters were able to reach everything on this basement level, the fraying membrane between realms losing even more cohesion.

It was like standing in dry ice, and as the liquid gathered around my foot, it affected my foot in the same manner. The liquid magic leached all heat and life from that appendage. It was an attack born of winter, but I was a child of Cyronax, God of Winter, so although it worked, it wasn't as destructive as it should have been. My foot shattered, but only my foot and not my entire body. And that shattering didn't stop me from advancing.

Each time I took a step forward, each time I placed a foot in that pool of liquid magic, my foot would shatter and be destroyed. As I raised it to take another step, my healing magic and regenerative abilities would restore the foot so that it was healthy and hale, only to be destroyed again.

Step by step. Each step was a test of will and endurance. A test I forced myself to endure as I advanced.

As I waded through the waters of the nexus, I activated [Cyronax Aura], allowing my control of the deepest cold to billow out in front of me. As my aura filled more of the room, my body acclimated to the void-like cold that she had constrained the magical pool to mimic.

My feet stopped shattering, and my path forward was no longer a test of will. I placed caution and determination over speed and impertinence as I approached the deepest part of the room. I ignored the Leanan completely, even as she finally bestirred herself enough to notice me.

I would fight ice with fire, making my intent obvious when I conjured [Beleros' Sword], a spell construct I created at that moment to power a weapon of such devastating heat that my swing to cleave the arm of the Changeling submerged within the pool allowed me to ignore the properties of the magical waters.

The Leanan would have been better served to maintain a kinetic defense and attack strategy. That would have taken a much greater effort from me to overcome. But in her madness, she had failed to notice my affinity with the cold. She had allowed me to get within melee range, and I had collected a price for her hubris.

She had thought me inconsequential, beneath her notice. I had proven otherwise.

As the connection between the Leanan, Changeling, and Nexus was severed, the Wild Magic stirred. An avalanche of anger. I wasn't anthropomorphizing the Wild Magic when I said it was angry. Those things lost and buried deep within the earth that spoke of the slow grind of billions of years as the planet formed and evolved was contained in that anger.

It had a heft and weight to it that impacted everything. It first forced the waters of the Nexus to retreat, creating a whirlpool of tidal energy that gathered every drop of liquid magic and restored it to the Nexus deep below ground.

Once that had been accomplished, it released a deep thrum of Earth energy as the Wild Magic responded to this invasion of Nexus and magic.

The world around us paused. Creatures with even an ounce of awareness attempted to hide as the ominous presence of Wild Magic stirred to action. This action was not the playful flirting the Wild Magic could express. This was the deep thrum of world energy that was the true bivouac of the Wild Magic.

A Power just as great as Zeus, Odin, or Gwyn ap Nudd.

Intelligent, slow to act, but if you gained its attention, then anything was possible. They had named it the Wild Magic because it twisted the rules of creation in ways that made the impossible possible, even in a world where magic existed.

The crack in the earth that had allowed the magic to escape the Nexus was repaired. The Castle that had been built over the Nexus was moved, transported over half a mile away from where it had been built, and a new kind of stone amalgam was created. One so hard that there was no way to drill, blast, or destroy it in any manner.

The Wild Magic spread across the globe, coating every ley-line and each Nexus with this new stone. It allowed magic to permeate the stone, to enter and escape, and to continue to supply the world holistically, but no longer would any species be able to tap into ley-lines or Nexus pools to siphon or steal the magic that accumulated in these places.

The entire world waited, each animal or person holding their breath as the phenomenon spread until the Wild Magic had passed and animals scurried to safety and people released their breaths. The changes were made, and it forced even the Gods to watch helplessly, unable to undo what it had done.