Our path through the brown lake was a perilous one, and after we spend most of the first day trying and failing to get around the muddy hole, the other two quickly went to sleep, while I fell into meditation and opened myself up to the world around me, the power within my soul fighting to be given the attention it was due.
Going with my priorities so far, I would have had to go with ebb, but I had only three free runes and the powers offered to me were too great at loving my current powers. Pocket areas? Controlling corpses? It was at my fingertips, and the choice was seemingly impossible, until I actually thought about it.
I had damaging spells and curses enough for any combat that was not the titanic monstrosity I needed to face soon, and in both cases, I needed mobility over everything else, and that would most likely require the area rune. Next I took the mirror rune, which would hopefully open up some opportunities for illusion stuff or something similar.
My third pick was mostly because I am a completionist and would go mad not having the options of tier two aqua runes for the next effect.
The choice was among the harder ones, and I would come to regret everything I didn’t choose, like the obvious laser spell, the obvious start to proper necromancy or any of the other things.
When I awoke from the meditation, I looked upon the lake of mud while the analyze skill helped me do its namesake, combining extremely well with the spellcraft one to come up with a few ideas that basically floated to the top of my head, already prepared for me.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Both would be beautifully suited for what I needed, though none quite filled the niche I required,
When I created the mirror area spell, it was an exercise first and foremost, and it did everything I wanted it to do, just for no more than six seconds.
Slowly, I made the next attempt, creating Close mirror area as a spatium spell and suddenly being covered in a weird coating of something, a something that drew upon my attention to hold itself up.
“Did he just turn invisible?” Asked Ember, Pale shaking her head at the question.
“Kind of. Do you see the way the air shimmers a bit weirdly here?” And then she slapped me, her hand bouncing back as I dropped the effect.
“Seems to be a space disturbing background mirroring effect, thanks for the description.”
I called it invisibility cloak and shoved it towards my other tier one spells.
None of my other Ideas did quite what I wanted, until I got annoyed and simply decided to try ‘Ebb area’ and ‘condense close’ which both did something that helped a bit more than I expected.
The first simply moved all liquids outside the area it was cast on, while the second condensed that shoved away material and froze its placement, allowing for a temporary sanctuary against the waves, which would still float above the dome this spell combination, which of course meant I needed it to be a tier one, two or three spell so it would last a bit longer.
I made ‘Open ebb area’ and ‘Condense close movement’, the first quite literally clearing just about everything that obstructed the area out of it, while the second stopped the movement of its target, both of course tested on Hannibal to see how it reacted, the first not interacting with him at all while the second spell froze him until his willpower and natural magic resistance overcame my halfhearted channeling, freeing him from his confines. Thanks to becoming tier six, I had finally achieved the power needed to channel two tier one spells at the same time, and thus we began our walk beneath the muddy water, making me feel like a young, necromantic and quite egoistic Jesus version. That I probably just described the anti Christ was quickly shoved to the back of my mind, it was not something I wanted to think about while I had to focus my everything on keeping us from being crushed by corpse and mud infested waters.
