The Butcher of Gadobhra

Chapter 426: He Bidged! He Budged! Today is the day!

Deep beneath the frozen ruins, Arthamax the Valiant struggled to free himself from his prison of ice and rock. It was slow going, but he was making progress. Famished from long weeks of little food, he'd lost weight and was able to slither upward towards the goal of the chamber holding the teleportation stone. His Mastery of Ice had grown, as had his Draconic Force of Will. Between the two skills, he could reinforce the ice around him to hold back the rocks from slipping further. His head minion, Chillhands, had been useful. The little minion was growing in confidence and power under Arthramx's excellent tutoring, and aided by the three drops of dragon's blood that his master had gifted him. Chillhands had been properly grateful after that when his Ice Affinity and mana had soared to new heights. Arthramax had explained to him that it was the traditional gift to a head minion, binding the human to his master and ensuring his loyalty. It also allowed the drake to see through his minion's eyes, and kill him with a thought if the drake became displeased with him. Arthramax never revealed the last part, it was more fun to do it right before he played 'Pop Goes the Weasel'.

So far, Chillhands had behaved properly and even exceeded expectations. He'd brought enough human food to keep the lesser minions alive and even managed to increase the flow of captives to feed his master. His fellow Ice Wizards had been surprised at his increase in power, especially when they were bound and gagged with ice and dropped into Arthramax's maw. His superiors were happy with the increased flow of ice-tainted mana into the stone and left the work in the lower caverns up to him.

Barky and Sparky weren't learning nearly so fast, but the drake was becoming fond of them. Their terror was so complete that they used their meager fire magics to the fullest to melt away some of the ice. They often passed out from mana exhaustion and Chillhands would gather them up and place them in a little cave to sleep and warm up.

It was a big day for the Drake and his minions. Sparky and Barky were heating the ice under his last set of legs, freeing them, and Arthramax had enough leverage to pull himself forward. A little bidge, a little budge, and he could slide free. It was risky. The stone might shift again and pin him worse than before, but Arthramax was so bored that he didn't care. He wanted food, the adoration of his harem, and the feel of the open skies. He didn't know where he was going, but he couldn't stay here. With a last effort, he slid forward into the large chamber dominated by the teleportation apparatus and pulled the rest of his body and his handsome tail free. The ice and rock groaned but held.

Mana from the rift poured into the chamber, no longer limited by a dragon-shaped blockage. It swirled around the teleport chamber, becoming a thicker and thicker stream of mana until Arthramax forced it to begin flowing into the stone. Eight runic arrays on the walls and ceiling of the chamber began to glow as the pressurized mana was forced into them. As the teleport stone began to glow brighter and brighter, the dragon laughed and roared his pleasure. "Now, I wonder, where should I go? What far land has earned a visit from Arthramax, the Grand and Glorious?" The Dragon confidently reached for the power of the blizzard raging above him, drawing down its power and using it as well as the rift to energize the stone and send surges of power into the system. Somewhere, he would find a large enough stone, and give it enough power to send his huge self traveling through the human's system.

He couldn't wait to sample the local foods when he arrived.

Throughout the Empire, the teleport stones in operation began receiving a bumper crop of mana. Most of it was the wild mana from the rift, leached of any aspect, but enough was ice-tainted to frost the stones and fill their carved runes with glimmering blue ice. Wizards who had disregarded the earlier warnings panicked and hurried to shut down their stones before disaster struck. Some made it, and some were late, the magi-tech components beneath them shattering as surging mana shattered their fragile structure making them to brittle to function.

One by one, the stones shut down, and the flow of mana was forced into the remaining few.

In the Capitol of the Empire, the Tier 7 central stone and four Teir five regional stones were surrounded by mages who worked to purge the stones of the ice-tainted mana and control the flow of mana. Shutting down these stones, or the Tier 5 stones in each of the Ducal capitols would be disastrous, requiring days and weeks of recalibration to bring the system back up. The Emperor, appraised of the situation, knew he wouldn't get that much time, and ordered the stones kept active, at all costs. "We cannot lose our ability to send troops to where they are needed. Keep those stones in operation, and alert every garrison and mercenary company we can contact to be ready to move. And I want fire mages in Stoneburrow and Sunvale, those stones in particular need to survive and be in operation." Gustavus knew what many of his advisors didn't, that both the Orcs of the Southern Forests and the Lizardfolk of the far south were becoming active and sending out scouts. The incursion of Winter into the far North was more obvious, but less of a threat than the vast armies that a powerful orc warlord could mass.

The irony of the situation made more than one Mage tear out their beard. Since the destruction of the mana siphon, they had worked to keep the system going on pitifully low amounts of mana and now they were doing everything they could to get rid of it. The easiest and most direct way was to teleport objects, and more preferably, people. But the chance of a mishap was incredibly high and no sane Mage would send people if there was a chance of scattering their parts over the countryside. Which didn't mean it wasn't happening. More than one group of players was given free travel to faraway destinations when they complained of their long wait in line.

In Wolfsburg, the Butcher was sitting on the end of his wagon, watching a sweating Rastfian take instruction from Caldrius as the old mage walked him through the basics of touching the molten core of the world. Ozzy took a last bite of his sandwich and downed the healing potion he was currently working on. After his talk with the Duchess, she had told him to sit here with Caldrius and recover from his ordeals, leaving a satchel with dozens of potions for him. "I don't know how many of those you can drink without becoming ill, but use all you can. This may not be over and frankly, I'm going to take advantage of your willingness to take abuse."

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"That's fine by me. It keeps life interesting and it never hurts to earn a few favors. I may need them someday." Ozzy was already looking forward to not paying Wolfsburg taxes. With how aggressive some parts of the government were, that was going to come in handy.

She'd ridden off with a full squad of cavalry to handle some other emergency and Ozzy had rested and watched the Mages at work, keeping the teleport stone frost-free and the flow of mana under their control.

"It will feel strange at first, very wild and untameable. You can't pit your will against the Magma the way you can command loose dirt and rock. The molten core is connected and far more powerful than any mage, maybe even all of us together. You have to work to understand the slow flow of heat and rock and learn how to draw power from it and be part of it If you feel a little hot, focus on the stone in front of you."

Rastfian nodded and did as Caldrius said, transferring the strange Heat he was drawing from the earth and using it to counter the Ice coating the stone. He'd almost cleared it when a surge of mana knocked him back ten feet and the stone began to throw off blue sparks and a cold mist.

Caldrius put a hand on it and looked up in alarm. "The rift is active again and pouring mana into the system far too rapidly, at this rate, the stone will reach a critical point in less than an hour." He looked over at Rastfian as he stood up and brushed the dust from his robes. "And the flow isn't stable, that will make keeping control fun, at least until the stone explodes. The procedure for venting the excess mana has always been to transfer energy to another node in the network, which isn't going to be possible in this case. An ironic error since it was one of the points of contention that Vladimir the Mad had with the Arcane Council. They couldn't conceive of a situation like this and didn't want anyone to have a way to drain the system."

Ozzy had been content to simply sit and watch while regaining his strength. The situation hadn't seemed dangerous until he'd seen Rasfian tossed into a heap from a surge of mana. He'd seen less concern from Caldrius about charging a building of Ice Mages, so something serious was going on. "Any reason you can't drain off the mana by teleporting people? Seems like you have a line of folks wanting to do just that."

"Oh, we could! However, I estimate that there is currently a 10% chance of catastrophic failure. The wild mana surges are making teleportation unreliable. And it will get worse as the stones reach critical levels of stored mana. We can certainly try sending goods, but they take so much less mana than living creatures that I'm not sure if we have enough shipments to matter in the long run, and the act of teleportation can be a destabilizing factor as well. I wouldn't want to be traveling when another surge like that one hit."

"Tell you what, why don't we at least get my wagon out of the way? Just give me a second to write a note for the folks at the Keep."

At Rowan Keep, Suzette was kneeling on the teleportation stone, running her hands along the mana channels, feeling for the coolness of the icy mana and finding nothing. "Whatever you're doing Delbert, it's working. The stone is filtering out any of the odd mana or converting it to pure mana. I can move the incoming mana to the Hermetic Shield and keep the stone empty." The surges coming into the stone were annoying but the new stone was handling them with ease, and with Delbert's help she could keep the situation under control.

Delbert was enjoying himself. "Simply a small aspect of my growing Wizard powers. Maintaining the temperature gradient of the stone allows me to filter the mana entering it from outside sources. Have I told you how much fun this is? These last couple of months have let me become a true wizard and flex my new muscles a little."

Suzette smiled at the shy man, happy they had been able to draw him out of his shell, and thrilled with his growing confidence. Delbert had worked as hard as the rest of them, but was out of sight, keeping a lonely vigil over the growing storage areas. "You've been such a big help, it was the least we could do." Food storage was a problem for any village, but Sedgewick never lost stored food to rot or vermin, making Suzette's life a lot easier. She started to say more, but another surge of mana arrived, which she quickly shunted again to the Hermetic Shield. Whatever problems the Empire was having with excess mana, it wouldn't affect them here.

"That was a big surge. We can handle it fine, but I'm worried about the rest of the system. I wish Ozzy hadn't taken an extended visit to Wolfsburg." As if summoned by her words, a large wagon appeared with a note on the driver's seat. Ben grabbed it, read it quickly, and laughed.

"Your Butcher is fine. As usual, he got into a couple of fights that he'll tell about later. But the important part is about the teleport stones. He's asking if we can take extra mana from the Wolfsburg stone. The whole system is in trouble, with a chance of blowing up unless they can vent the excess mana."

Suzette thought for a moment, but couldn't see a reason not to. "We're in good shape. The Shield can hold any amount of mana they send to us, and the Legion will be glad to have it. And with how everything is linked up now, we could charge up all of Billy's murderbots and shift some mana to the Smokehouse, and uh...other places." She was still trying to figure out the crazy way mana moved around Sedgewick and Gadobhra now. She'd have been worried if Ben hadn't been one of the people setting that up.

Ben nodded, understanding what those places were. It was better to let everyone believe the old stone was destroyed, and not sitting beneath the Kalvek's store. "I'll let him know to go ahead and send us the excess. Should we send the wagon back with the note? After we quickly unload it, of course. It looks like he went shopping"

"Sure, one wagon teleporting as soon as we get his packages out of the back. Make sure you stay a foot away from the stone or you might go with it."