It was pandemonium. The guards were trying to contain the Tiris intrusion but the fire everywhere made it difficult for guards to effectively coordinate, resulting in their efforts only slowing the horde. The civilians who were waiting for the festival to begin were screaming and scampering away from the battle while in the background the migration was beginning. In the middle of all of this, Ba-Khet-Sah and Aylenne were hovering over Ficus’ newly dead corpse.
Ba-Khet-Sah was confused. Ficus had been with it for a major part of the time that it was in this new world. But now, Ficus was dead. He had promised to help it, guide it, instruct it along its journey. But now, Ficus was dead. All the chaos surrounding it melted away as it focused on Ficus’ body and all that could never happen. Ficus was dead and Ba-Khet-Sah was lost.
“Why did he have to die?” Ba-Khet-Sah mumbled with tears streaming down its face. “What do I do now?”
“Ask those questions later,” Aylenne snapped. “We have a situation to fix. C’mon.”
Aylenne stood and raced off towards the guard's weak defensive line at the gate, expecting Ba-Khet-Sah to follow, but all it could bring itself to do was keep staring at Ficus’ body. Ficus is dead. Gone. No more. All for some stupid prophecy, which likely doesn’t matter, and the Ren. That Ren better be important for Ficus to make it his last words. Last. Final. Terminal. Ficus is dead and Ba-Khet-Sah had a new goal, to obtain the Ren.
Fighting through the tears in its eyes Ba-Khet-Sah took in the situation around it. The once pristine, carpet-like, grass of the festival grounds was trampled and uprooted, some parts of it completely gone leaving barren earth scorched by the Tiris flames. The wooden platform used for the ceremony was burning, with the occasional blackened section collapsing inward in a puff of smoke as the stage’s structural integrity failed. The king had long been hustled away to a safer location by a protective guard. Rebar was no longer by its side having been taken into custody and removed from the battle like the monarch.
As Ba-Khet-Sah’s eyes drifted towards the gate, bodies of Tiris filled its vision, both dead on the ground and alive rampaging over them. The makeshift staffs, clubs, and swords each dead Tiris used were scattered around the ground. Arrows rained from above in a never ending stream of death killing hundreds of Tiris before they even reached the wall. Just inside the gate itself Aylenne had used the guards' panicked defense to shove the burning bits of wreckage aside, clearing a space on the cobblestones behind the gate. The guards had retreated through the gate and reorganized in columns on both sides behind full body shields leaving the middle open creating a funnel. The Tiris who made it through the gate were either slaughtered by the guards or made it through the funnel to where Aylenne was standing to deal with them personally. The fire was still spreading deeper into the city uncontained, but it didn’t look to be affecting the fighting area or wall.
The storm of Tiris was never ending and Ba-Khet-Sah knew it had to make a choice. Leave to find and help its friend Rebar or help the city and its friend Aylenne fight the uncontrollable Tiris. Ficus’ last words drifted up into its mind again. Find the Ren.
The city had more resources to help with its search, so it should go help Aylenne. But Rebar appeared to have luck on his side, so it should go help him. But the Aurelians were smarter than Rebar, and Rebar was no longer enlightened. Ultimately, the Aurelians had power and control, so it should help them. Finding the Ren was paramount, after all.
With the decision made, Ba-Khet-Sah carefully shuffled towards the nearest pile of dead Tiris and rummaged around the corpses for the strongest weapon it could find. It knew the small dagger and sling it had was unsuited towards large scale combat, and it needed to kill a lot of Tiris to help Aylenne defend. There did have to be an end to all the Tiris eventually, and it would give Ba-Khet-Sah the best impression to have killed a large portion of the rat folk. Besides, how hard could it be to swoop into combat as a saving hero.
With that in mind, Ba-Khet-Sah hefted a massive, powerful-looking sword in the air and dashed towards the Tiris tunnel entrance. Only to trip from a weight imbalance and fall flat on its face, the sword flying out of its hands into another pile of weaponry. Ba-Khet-Sah didn’t bother to retrieve it, staying on the ground as some of the Tiris glanced at the scene and then continued to run at the city.
Groaning on the ground, Ba-Khet-Sah rolled over, then grimaced in pain as it rolled over several bladed weapons on the ground creating a multitude of cuts on the parts its small chainmail armor didn’t cover. With a sigh Ba-Khet-Sah sat up and glanced at the situation at the gate again.
Aylenne seemed to be holding strong, but Ba-Khet-Sah could see the tips of the blazing flame poking over the tips of the walls and knew it had to hurry up.
At the end of this survey, just as it was about to stand up, it saw in the stack of Tiris corpses a staff. Destructive ideas formed, Ba-Khet-Sah quickly stood the rest of the way up and rushed over to it. Rebar taught it to use one those and it was easily the way to cause the most destruction. Even better, the fire spells it would use are outside of the walls, so they wouldn’t impact the city at all.
It planted its feet in the dirt below, gripped the staff, and pointed it towards the Tiris army and their ground tunnels, remembering all Rebar had taught it. Imagination, emotion, and intent. It imagined all the Tiris were moving ladders and stairs coming to torture Aurelia. It felt rage from the helpful city being under threat and pain from the cuts it had just suffered. And it combined these things into its intent to burn all the Tiris, shouting as loud as it could, “FIRE.”
Huge gouts of flame rolled from Ba-Khet-Sah’s staff flowing over the Tiris army, followed by a stab of pain in its own body. Ignoring the pain and laughing, it continued firing off these blasts, feeling a spike of pain each time, while advancing on the tunnels. Once it got there, it pointed the staff into the tunnel and fired another blast of flame, scorching along the interior and burning hot enough to scar the tunnel. The Tiris that were inside all died.
“CLOSE,” Ba-Khet-Sah commanded next and flames roared into the ground and swerved through a small portion of the roofs of the tunnels weakening the integrity enough so that the tunnels collapsed, leaving a series of spiderweb trenches in the ground.
Grinning at its success it started to turn around to go back to Aurelia in success, when it stumbled in pain. The edges of its vision started going dark and then something smashed into the back of its head with enough force to knock its body unconscious.
-
Ba-Khet-Sah woke up slowly, ears ringing. It felt heavy, its arms sluggish. Smell returned to it then, the damp, unpleasant odor like in the sewers that its nose wasn’t good enough to make out the specifics on. After that, touch, as it felt the cold air in whatever place it was now and an even sharper cold on its arms. Then, once its ears stopped ringing, it heard the oppressive silence of being alone. Shifting slightly it tried to wake itself up only to have its arms not move outward when it tried to stretch. Sleepy confusion came to Ba-Khet-Sah as its body didn’t do what it wanted. Finally, sight came, as it opened its eyes and saw the small cell.
Fear consumed Ba-Khet-Sah as its most recent memories came to the forefront of its mind. Abduction from the battlefield by assailants. Ba-Khet-Sah shot up and started struggling to undo the bindings connected to its arms trying in vain to break out. After a while of this it stopped, admitting that they were stuck.
The room it was in was undoubtedly a prison cell. Stone walls, minimal furnishing, bars on the window of the only door into the place. Old, drab, and cold with the only thing to do being to wonder why it was taken while waiting. The Tiris were all gone and they weren’t smart enough for prisoners anyway. Aurelia was its ally, or so it was last Ba-Khet-Sah knew. So a third party. The only other people it knew of were a couple of merchants and those two random people in that desert hut. The merchants seemed peaceful, but that could have been misleading. So the desert people came all this way for it?
The near perfect silence was broken by murmuring through the walls.
“Is it awake yet?” a voice whispered out, Ba-Khet-Sah strained to hear more.
“Just a moment ago, it struggled a lot, but is still now” a different voice said, the sound so quiet Ba-Khet-Sah could only barely tell it was a different person.
“Good, I’m here to talk to him.” With that the cell door opened and Ba-Khet-Sah was nabbed from its cell and thrown into a different room so quickly it couldn’t identify who grabbed it.
This room was still constructed out of stone, but had a noticeably nicer atmosphere, likely because it looked cleaner than the cell. There was a divider from floor to ceiling made of bars in the middle of the room, dividing the space into two sides. Two chairs had been placed, one on each side facing inward, towards the bars. Two doors led into this room, the one Ba-Khet-Sah came through and one on the other side of the bars. Ba-Khet-Sah gently lowered itself into the chair, resigned to waiting again. Thankfully this wait was shorter than its last one as the door across the room opened and an Alcion walked in quickly taking a seat in his side’s chair.
“Ba-Khet-Sah, “ he began “you stand accused of treason to the king and Aurelia, the only reason you have not been executed is the princess's word. I, Ayanan, am here as a representative of the princess to tell you that you have a chance to defend yourself if you tell me exactly what happened.”
Ba-Khet-Sah was shocked in momentary silence. Then it exploded, “Treason! I helped you guys kill the invading army.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” Ayanan dryly intoned, “Currently we are talking about how you appeared alongside the Tiris army when they first arrived. You were sent to find Rebar and turn him over to the kingdom's justice, but instead have reappeared on the same side of the rats. The king sees this as an egregious breach of his trust in you. I need you to give me a reason why, so Aylenne can justify continuing to protect you. Why did you help an army attack Aurelia?”
“I did no such thing,” Ba-Khet-Sah immediately protested, “The army was completely seperate, I found Rebar like you requested and now you try to execute me?”
“Let me be more clear,” Ayanan cut in, “I’m trying to help you, the king wants to execute you, just tell me what happened after you went into the sewers and I’ll spin it in your favor.”
Ba-Khet-Sah, easily swayed by the promise of help, did not protest this request. It told Ayanan how it quickly located Rebar, was shown around, taught and then joined a cause to help the Tiris. How it came up with Rebar as a way to get back to the surface and try to accomplish that task that seemed declared by prophecy, and how once it noticed that the Tiris weren’t helping it changed sides and fought them. Throughout the explanation Ayanan’s face was entirely blank. If anything his face got more devoid of emotion as Ba-Khet-Sah continued the story.
“And then I saved you all by stopping the Tiris army,” Ba-Khet-Sah finished his story.
Ayanan sat for a moment, then two. And finally said tersely, “You're lucky the princess likes you regardless of your care for those bottomfeeders. I’ll tell the king your story, with a few modifications. If you are questioned more, assert that you were with Rebar’s forces because you found his location randomly, you were training with him to find out his capabilities and report them the crown, and you appeared next to him at the festival because you tricked him into attacking early and were going to bring him to the king. Protest any accusations that the army was under your control.”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“What? That's not what happened though.” Ba-Khet-Sah protested.
“Doesn’t matter, if you want to not be executed, you go along with it,” was the annoyed response, “Next issue. Your killing of the Tiris army.”
“But that was good, right?” Ba-Khet-Sah asked, confused.
“The killing was, those dregs caused enough problems to be sentenced to a massacre or two,” Ayanan responded with a slight bit of joy before fading back to his neutral tone,” It is how you killed them that must be looked at. Mages are not common and the king likes to keep tabs on them to avoid powerful enemies. I am no magical scholar and know little about the art, you’ll meet one of those to get the specifics on the issue. I’m simply here to tell you that the second reason you are locked up, and will remain locked up, is that all mages heavily recommended it after what you did. Expect another visitor and remember your new story. Goodbye.”
Ayanan stood up and moved towards the door.
“Wait, stop, What else is happening?” Ba-Khet-Sah asked as Ayanan left, receiving only the closing of the door he went through as an answer. Ba-Khet-Sah stared at the now empty chair across from its mind going blank. What just happened? Treason? How could anyone believe that? It helped Aurelia, it helped kill the Tiris. Ba-Khet-Sah was so shaken that it didn’t hear the door opening behind it, or respond as it was quickly hauled back towards its cell and tossed inside.
The room hadn’t changed, not that Ba-Khet-Sah would have noticed if it had through the feelings clogging its mind. Treason? It asked collapsing to the ground in a stupor. How was it going to get help from Aurelia to find its soul if it was accused of treason? Everything was ruined over a good deed. Tears leaked out over its eyes, how did everything go so wrong when everything was going right? Aylenne, Rebar, itself, and Ficus had saved the city from Felix. And then Ficus died. Ficus died. It saved the city from the Tiris, but it is accused of treason. Why is everything going in cycles of good and bad, victory and defeat, triumph and then tragedy? How can treason be fixed and the cycle returned to good? Everything was ruined.
A day passed with Ba-Khet-Sah collapsed in the room thinking these thoughts on repeat. It didn’t need to eat, it didn’t need to drink, it didn’t need to have its injuries healed. Its body was already dead when it awoke in this world, unable to be killed again. It was functionally immortal, as Rebar said, but at the same time its injuries weren’t healing, and its body was starting to decompose without a living immune system. It was all too vulnerable without a complete soul.
The only thing to break it out of its stupor was when the door opened and it was nabbed again, the guard bringing him to the same room as before. This time though when the other door opened it was not Ayanan stepping into the room.
The new alcion glided around to the chair and sat down with a grim look at Ba-Khet-Sah.
“Do you have any idea what you were doing when you killed all those abominable Tiris,” she said, cutting straight to business.
“Mass murder,” was Ba-Khet-Sah’s simple response.
“Magically, you stupid thing. Were you doing anything other than point, yell, and hope magic does what you want?” the new alcion verbally berated it.
“I was imagining they were things I hate.” Ba-Khet-Sah explained, “Isn’t that how magic works?”
“No, idiot. Magic is not so simple. If it was, everyone would be doing it. You're lucky that little stunt didn’t create a bigger fire than the one in the city. Who was the fool that taught you to cast?” The new alcion continued in her condescending tone.
“My friend, Rebar the Tiris,” Ba-Khet-Sah replied, “He was enlightened.”
“A Tiris,” She growled, voice filled with rage, “no wonder you almost killed everyone, forget everything he ever told you. It will do you no good!”
“Hey, the stuff he told me worked, and it didn’t seem that dangerous, you old bat.” Ba-Khet-Sah replied, offended.
“It also almost killed you and everyone else around. The mages of the city have decided it is too dangerous to let that reckless kind of casting remain. We advised the king to kill you, but for some reason he’s gotten cold feet about that so now we have to teach you proper casting instead so you're less of a danger. Listen up!” She barked, “Your first task, forget everything the unintelligent Tiris told you. Point and shout does not work. It is more liable to blast you into a million tiny pieces and create uncontrolled explosions of chaos from the forces you improperly channel than do anything you want.”
“Is it really so dangerous?” Ba-Khet-Sah replied, hesitantly remembering the sharp pains from when it was casting before.
“Yes. You're extremely lucky it didn’t happen to you up there when throwing around all that fire. The Tiris have no concept of danger, forget everything they taught you.” She repeated.
“Okay,” Ba-Khet-Sah agreed, despite its body’s immortality it was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be able to re-piece together its soul, while living a life split in a million pieces.
“Good, your second lesson. Magic comes from the soul. How? No one knows otherwise there would be more mages. What we do know is that magic is produced from some part of the soul and stored in the rest of it. Stored magic is called mana. Got that?” She briskly teaches.
“What if the soul was damaged…” Ba-Khet-Sah began.
“Hypothetically, if the right part was broken then the soul would no longer create magic. Most likely the soul’s ability to store magic would be drastically reduced. As I said, one part of the soul produces mana and the entire soul stores it. If parts of it are non-functional, the other bits still work. A damaged soul would simply have less available magic to channel, and the mage is subsequently weaker. The inverse of this is true as well, in fact, we suspect this is part of how Felix started becoming so powerful. He used more soul than his own to power his spells,” was the curt response.
Ba-Khet-Sah figured that it was its damaged soul that prevented the destructive effects of mana on its body. It probably couldn’t channel enough magic to have the level of destruction it was just warned against. But if it was so weak why were the fires so powerful? Questions for later, it thought, there was another subject it was more curious about. Felix.
“What was Felix doing?” Ba-Khet-Sah asked slowly, “And if he was so powerful how did a gun kill him?”
“Not that it’s important to this discussion. He was using a powerful attraction spell to draw treants into the city in order to slaughter them for their parts which he then used to somehow increase his power further, Felix was all about gathering power. As for the gun,” She grimaced when she said gun, “we have no idea. All mages usually have at least a basic anti-movement barrier up during fights to slightly slow blades that come near them. Bullets don’t have enough mass to press through the fields like traditional weapons do so they stop and fall to the ground without hitting the mage. This is why guns are so useless against mages. Our best guess is Felix got overconfident on his power, believed himself to be invincible, and didn’t have a barrier up like he should have.” She explained, “Now your third lesson. Magic takes the form of natural elements. That can be things like water, air, fire, earth, lightning, temperature, light, shadows, life to an extent, and so on and so forth. As long as it is natural it can be harnessed and manipulated by mana. Not magic, mana. Got it?”
“Mana casts natural magic, yep.” Ba-Khet-Sah confirmed.
“Your fourth lesson. Mages have specialities. They can cast any spell, but they naturally use some elements better than others. Since you seem so interested in what would happen to a damaged soul, I’ll tell you now we don’t know. The soul all works together but the intricacies of the specializing process are beyond us. Take an example. Felix was a pyromancer, he specialized in fire. If his soul was damaged his flames could grow stronger, or sputter and grow weaker or go out of control. His wind spells might become stronger or weaker, same with every other aspect of his magic. His elemental speciality might even change if his soul was damaged enough. Understand that?”
“Yep,” Ba-Khet-Sah replied. It figured this answered its earlier internal question about why its fires were so strong, even though its mana is so small. Since its soul was damaged its mana wasn’t being influenced by the missing parts of its soul, like what would happen in a healthy soul. This was causing weird things like massive gouts of flame. Ba-Khet-Sah felt like it could only cast magic after picking up the Sah. Maybe that was the part that magic came from that was discussed earlier. Ba-Khet-Sah, mentally added discovering more about magic to its list of tasks as the lecture continued.
“Fifth lesson. Mana can flow through various materials. Mana moves through wood, but this only brings it from place to place. In order to affect the world it needs to go through gemstones or metal rocks. You’ve seen all the staffs around. They all carry those stones either inside the staff or on the head of it. Depending on the rock, the staff is attuned to different elements, granting them power when channeled through the staff. Though you can still cast any spell with any staff. It is possible to cast spells with just the rocks, but it is much harder and requires an experienced mage to guide the mana without a wooden tunnel. In general, always use a staff even if you learn how to cast properly” she finished with an edge to the words.
“Okay,” Ba-Khet-Sah responded. It was fine sticking with staffs after the million pieces warning earlier, no matter how useful the rock only technique sounded.
“Last lesson. Magic responds to your intent. While using a focus it is possible to cast at any time. Mages need discipline to have the magic they control go where they want it to be used. Emotions are not something you control and cause changes in intent making them a dangerous combination with magic. Logic is the preferred choice to create the intent that controls magic. Casting magic isn’t the hard part; it’s getting it to do what you want, in a safe way. You understand all the lessons.”
“Absolutly, magic is dangerous, so be careful. I will do that.” Ba-Khet-Sah answered.
“Good. Remember that and goodbye.” She said and stood up and walked out of the room.
Moments later Ba-Khet-Sah was also hauled out of the interrogation room and thrown back into his cell to reflect on what it just learned. Magic was actually dangerous and could have killed its body the entire time it was channeling the magic, but did it stop using magic now that it knew that? Obviously not, magic was way too powerful a resource not to use, though how to do that safely… Despite having a few moments of inspiration while in this world, Ba-Khet-Sah knew it wasn’t the best at logical thinking. Which led it to the conclusion that since it was stupid most of the time using emotions to create strong intent would be the only way to utilize magic. Exactly what it was warned against. Then again, with its damaged soul who knew what kind of magic it would cast, so did it have control in the first place. Which was a stupid line of thought because of course it did, after all it did before. Though that was all destructive magic, so it might be limited to only casting destruction. If destruction would happen anyway it should be all in on not controlling the magic and use emotion as power. Or was that too much of a personal risk?
Another day passed as Ba-Khet-Sah agonized over a good balance to personal risk and using magic to benefit itself. At the end it tentatively decided on a wait and see approach, until it could ask for advice. Aylenne seemed like a good person to go to for advice, once it got out of this jail cell it would do that. Why was it taking so long for a verdict on its treason accusation anyway? Did they just leave it down here or were they still deciding?
It was at the end of Ba-Khet-Sah’s third day in prison when it was nabbed from its cell again. This time though, instead of being escorted to the conversion room it was led up into a grand hall that it recognized from its time in the castle.
“Why are we heading towards the throne room?” It yelled to ask the guard dragging it, who just ignored the noise and kept walking.
“I’m not being executed am I?” It tried to ask and was once again ignored by the guard.
Their arrival to the throne room was one of fear from Ba-Khet-Sah. It still thought Aurelia's resources would be the best help in finding the missing parts of its soul. Being declared a traitor would sound horrendous and would hurt its progress towards regaining its soul.
The guard dragged Ba-Khet-Sah all the way up to the throne and then took up a position behind it.
“Ba-Khet-Sah,” the king started, “you put me in a very unfortunate position. On one hand you physically harm my family, ignore my generosity in letting you go and come back with an army. On the other you saved my kingdom and wiped out the Tiris savages. To let you go would make it look like hurting my family is okay. To kill you would be sending a message of tyranny and exploitation of good will. You see my dilemma." The king paused, “it has been decided that you will not be killed for your treasonous acts, but consequences will still be inflicted. There is another coastal trading nation that is an enemy of Aurelia. As of a week ago, shortly after Felix’s death, they began building up a larger navy. Our two nations agreed to restrict our battles to those of competing commerce, however their creation of a warfleet endangers that agreement. You will be sent there to figure out what is happening and stop it. Aylenne will go with you to make sure you complete this task. Go now.”
With those words the guard stepped forward again and unchained its hands. The guard then grabbed it and hauled it to the front of the palace where Aylenne was waiting, ready to go.
