The Magician 42

"I could leave you to your own devices last night because the plane was all but cleared and fearful of me but new demons are born by the moment. So, while I forge in this room, I need you to wait at its edges and not look at what I do. The will of this Abyssal plane is strong and could influence you but I need it for it's soul fire and ability to subjugate weaker afterlife planar wills."

The young mage hadn't needed his father's warning. He didn't even want to be in the room. There was a faint whining in the back of his mind and a fainter one rousing in his bones telling him to leave as soon as possible and avoid getting any closer to the center.

The oppression which he had gotten used to at the edges of the plane had become a nearly ever present creaking ache in every part of his body as well. As if that weren't bad enough, hazy wafts of invisible essence clung to him like gauzy films of scum. He wanted to rush to clean water and scrub a layer of skin off but there was no such thing as 'clean' in a corrupted place like an abyss.

When his father was done with the forging, Orison all but rushed out. Despite his desire to distance himself from the place as soon as possible, he was careful not to get too far away from the Marshlander. It galled the boy that the man seemed to walk a little slower and more arrogantly as if to tempt him into running into some danger so he'd have to face the humiliation of being saved.

A few viciously murdered mindless mobs later, a gore covered Orison was secretly glaring daggers at the man as they stood before a heavy, wall mounted mirror. Knowing it would make things worse for himself in the short term, the young mage fired off a Presto anyway. It was one of a handful of magics he'd figured out but didn't dare to use much for fear of being crushed under the abyssal will's oppression.

He wasn't slammed with more pressure afterwards, however. Firing a couple more minor spells to alter and mend the clothes the monk gave him to a presentable state, there was still no additional punishment. Seeing that his father was intently waiting for a sign in the mirror's surface, a sneaking suspicion entered the young mage's mind.

It would be pointless to ask the man if the oppression had been some sort of training. The dragon in hiding rarely answered with anything other than a cuff of the hand. But when he did, it was a cutting remark that did little to enlighten. The rare exception had been their conversation in the morning but the current faintly weary look on the dark Marshlander's face didn't encourage Orison to do more than silently wait.

When the first imp showed up and threw a spark of fire at him without interference from the Marshlander, the young mage wondered if something was wrong. Entering a duel of crap magic, he was exhausted by the time he managed to put the wily thing down but another was rounding the corner. Worried and starting to feel a little scared, he checked the Marshlander to see that the eyes of the man were dazed.

The dragon had left his landlord high and dry along with his son. Orison officially started to panic. Grabbing the dagger from the man's sword belt, the boy tried to weave into closer combat but the little demon kept skipping backwards. Fed up when the imp was joined by a second one, he threw the dagger. The hilt bounced of the imp's head, dazing it long enough for the young mage to freeze its face with a thin layer of ice.

Fortunately, the dumb thing tried to peel it off instead of hitting it one good time. It left Orison to fetch the dagger as he dodged another clumsy spark of fire that still singed his newly mended clothes from the second imp. As the first dumb imp slowly became weaker from suffocation, the young mage dodged back inside of the mirror room's archway. If the second imp wanted to lob any more lazy, weak fireballs, it would have to come to him to do it.

The imp obliged. But as soon as it rounded the corner, it didn't aim at Orison. It aimed at the Marshlander who had clumsily stumbled to sit hard on the floor. Missing his chance to stab the creature, he threw the dagger at the shaky spell ember instead, disrupting its pattern.

"Pull yourself together or you're going to die!" Orison yelled.

In hind sight, it hadn't been the smartest move. His panicked voice had drawn more attention. With as much force as he could, he punted the imp back out of the room, bouncing the creature off the hallway wall with a sick crack. The moment was ruined by the sound of a gurgling growl possessed by the bestial looking 'gator heads'.

There was little doubt in his mind that he didn't have the know-how to easily tackle such a creature but he wouldn't lay down and die either. Running to grab the dagger a second time, he saw that the Marshlander was finally checking out his environment, eyes slowly clearing.

"You've got a mean demonic cousin coming to visit in a sec-" Orison was cut short by another coughing growl.

Suddenly aware of the situation he was in, the Marshlander kicked into a wobbly fight mode. With more ingrained muscle memory than skill, he pulled his short sword and reached for his dagger. Finding it missing, he frowned but squared up against the gator headed demon.

That's when the abyssal oppression started leveraging back down on them. One of the newly born demons had claimed the abandoned abyssal will orb. The only reason the Marshlander and boy weren't being mobbed to death already was a bloody fight taking place there to determine the next ruler.

While Marshlander man and reptile demon were locked in a pitiful display of infant abyssal creature versus dazed swordsman, Orison was doing his best to pull blocking furnishings in the way of the alcove to limit more potential visitors. Eventually, the man finally got a good stab through the gator head's side and joined the boy in blocking the alcove.

"Where are we and what's going on?" the man demanded in a harsh and sibilant voice.

Orison smiled bitterly. "In an abyss that's currently in a newborn civil war for new leadership. We have hours, maybe a day before the mindless are organized enough by the semi-mindless to start clearing the remaining palace rooms. That's assuming we keep it to a whisper and don't make too much smells.

"Dead demon hardly counts but, as you can see. Dead equals recycled. The thing you killed is going to be born as an imp somewhere out there."

The man looked a little wild eyed. "We're at the heart of damnation... alive. Where are you going?"

The young mage pointed at the mirror. "I'm trying to see if I can figure out what happened and if this thing can be used. If not, we need to get out of here and try to sneak back to the edges. I don't know how much good it will do but..."

The boy tried not to let fear and despair take over. It was hard. But the best he could figure, more time meant more hope of rescue. He tried not to think of how unlikely that would be if something happened to the dragon that had been inside the Marshlander.

"What do you think happened to the... other one who was with us?" the man asked, obviously not so firmly glued together either.

The young mage grimaced and said, "I want to believe this is some sick joke to test me or something but I'm not going to bet my life on it. Mostly because he MIGHT for calling his bluff, even if that's exactly what it was."

The man grew silent as Orison studied the mirror to see if he could pull any inspiration from it or trigger any hidden bit of lore buried in his head. It wouldn't be the first time he had known something that he had no reason to. It was better than waiting to die or running out into the plane with no idea of where to go. Or seemed to be, at least.

Minutes sifted by and both the boy and the Marshlander were getting more on edge. Casting caution aside, the young mage put his hands on the mirror's surface and tried to funnel magic into it with no real form, just desperation. Something within him answered and helped reconnect it to where it was last aligned.

The young mage turned with a smile and was about to whisper his success to the man but a rough hand pushed him through, following closely behind. As soon as the Marshlander had seen the mirror ripple, he wasn't taking chances. The semi panic to reach the other side sent them both sprawling across a large cavern floor.

While they picked themselves up, they looked around the cave. In the dimness only relieved by a single small beam of sunlight from a hole far above them, there wasn't much to see. That was, until they realized there was a very big 'thing' in the cave with them.

"Get under me. I'm going to rise up. The resulting cave-in will crush you both if you don't."

Even spoken softly, the deep base of the voice coming from the creature shook some dust loose. Not needing much more explanation than that, the Marshlander and boy ducked under the slowly clarifying outline of a massive black dragon with a dusting of opaline luster on its scales. As it raised itself, the creature came to a sudden jerky stop and let out a roar.

A scent of blood and spicy herbs filtered into the air. A string of curses both new and ancient soon followed. Eventually, the dragon calmed down enough to complain about fractured planes. Small slivers of mono-filament sharp dimensional splinters peppered the outer edges of their current location and the dragon had backed into a couple, slicing him open.

With some effort, the dragon reverted to a human form. A sturdy built, swarthy man with dark red hair stood where the dragon had once been. Bright, Caribbean blue eyes dripped with such spiritual potency that it looked as if he was crying wisps of spirit essence. And with droplets of blood falling from small lacerations on his back, he very well might have been at least a little watery eyed.

The Marshlander that had came with the boy was also doubled over in pain for a bit before standing back up in human form as well, losing his pants and desperately scrabbling for his loincloth in the process. "My tail is gone! I've turned into a smooth-skin!" the man said forlornly.

"I doubt we will. But if we run into natives who farm this planar shard, you tell them that you're parents are from a land known as Brazil if they ask." the dragon in human form said.

Still muttering a lament over the loss of his 'beautiful' tail and scales, the man nodded sullenly.

Feeling some pity for the guy, Orison attempted to mend his clothes. At first it didn't look like anything was going to happen but everything just clicked into a different model pattern and worked. It was as if the boy subconsciously already knew the differences and changes in how magic worked where they were and automatically adjusted.

As his father shuffled around the cave looking for something, Orison observed the ex-Marshlander's struggles to walk normally after suddenly missing a large balancing tool behind him. There was something familiar about it that tickled buried memories but he stopped poking at it when he felt a headache coming on.

The transformed dragon began muttering complaints of his own. "There was supposed to be someone waiting for us. Because the trans-dimensional mirror wasn't activated on this side, I had to force my way through and ended up getting pulled out of my host. Now my main body is subject to the laws of this garbage pile low dimension."

The man grabbed onto the young mage and said, "Open your spiritual seat to me... Not your soul, your spiritual seat. That's in your head."

A surge of power reached in and touched the edges of Orison's own. The environment blurred and there was a few new additions to the cave. An otherworldly elven woman laid in a platinum plated casket with uncountable and small arcane carvings on it. Several gems, primarily black opals, were inlaid at specific intersections of the carvings.

Standing behind it, an obsidian elf dressed in cheap looking spiky metal jewelry and garishly colored clothes said, "The time traveling artifact sensed our activities somehow. It's a sub-conduit rather than the replica we thought it was. We were abducted by Dr. Odd."

The transformed dragon tossed the young mage a strange looking orb that looked as if it bled into different layers of space. It didn't hurt him to look at but the ex-Marshlander beside him started gibbering insanely. Orison's father slapped the man hard as a circle of smoky essence snapped into being around the boy.

"I'm going to cut this area off from the space-time around us. Stay in the circle until the dragon orb binding ritual's ready. We're almost done with this stupidity," his father growled as a curtain of darkness slithered over the edge of the magic circle.

Alone in a dimly lit magic circle, Orison's nerves were jangled. Under the hypertension of cooling adrenaline that made him feel shaky, he heard a whisper telling him about things it wanted him to do with a few items he supposedly had. With everything that happened, he wanted to ignore it and ask the man about it, concerned about yet another possible spiritual parasite or some being trying to manipulate him.

The whispering voice sighed and showed him mental pictures of what would happen if it's suggestions were carried out. After that, it grew weak and indistinct. Not particularly understanding but seeing no immediate harm in doing it, Orison soon had a small hand mirror, a book and the 'dragon' orb sitting before him.

After picking up the hand mirror, he carefully lined it up so that the three items all fit in the reflection. A rush of built up power his 'other knowledge' understood as 'power of existence', seeped from him into the mirror. It was a collection from other beings and not his own or he would have been concerned. It felt too important.

In a flash of light blocked by the magic circle curtain, the hand mirror disappeared and there was an identical copy of the barrel, book and orb. He felt leery about disobeying his father but Orison put the original barrel and two books into his space. The copied orb and barrel, he put into his ring mere moments before the curtain of darkness went down.

Aside from the cave floor, the rest of their surroundings were gone, replaced with ribbons of soft and muted light. Under the lapis, indigo and violet illumination, a colossal dragon reflected astral radiance back upon itself in darker hues. The Marshlander and obsidian elf were surrounded in an opalescent sheen and sent shooting off into the distance.

"This is a ceremony for dragons, son. As you are only half, you can only remember half. I choose the second half. A person has a right to know what curses they are given for the blessings they receive."

Between boy and dragon lay a floating orb circled by globes of liquid. One shined in the astral dragon's hues while the other sparkled with soul blue flecks. The moment they touched, the boy's mind went blank. When it turned back on, he found himself surrounded by six figures. Three were indistinct outlines of dragons. The other three weren't as easy to identify by the hazy outline, save one. Electric blue eyes stared at him menacingly.

The three dragons took their turns saying something in a language he couldn't understand but the meaning was clear. He became resistant to structured reality's ability to 'cheat' him and take different things from him. In exchange, he couldn't 'cheat' reality and receive things from it. From spirit to mind and body, the three dragon's offered and demanded a balanced reckoning between structured existence and himself.

The boy's father, who witnessed the event from the sidelines, grew tense and curious once it was the other three entities' turn. Judging by how he was reacting, the additions weren't something the dragon had any expectations of. It was likely a consequence of including his mother's influence into the ritual.

Orison was just as unable to understand the first of the other three entities but the voice was too pleasant. It was so melodious and enchanting, it achieved the opposite affect. The boy found himself repulsed and unnerved by it, instinctually rejecting its influence.

Their addition to the mixed blessing/curse was simple, however. To carry the idea of personal time anywhere or when he went, he or anyone within the influence of his domain was unable to 'break' time wherever or when he was. As far as the young mage was concerned, that was a blessing all the way around but it did mean that half of one particularly potent ability would be nearly pointless in his hands and the other half far more risky to use.

The second entity, the young mage could understand. "When I was an infant void walker, I hated how often I was banished, forced to deviate my path or outright denied entry to places I desired to go without paying some price. So many eons later, my heart is still stirred in frustration at the memory... Laws of impedance may not be used to extort you or they will cease to impede you. You cannot extort others with whatever abilities of impedance you possess or they will cease to impede."

The last entity with electric blue eyes darted for Orison as soon as the second finished speaking. None could react before the entity dived into the young mage like a ghost preparing for possession. A sense of crisis came over the boy that was quickly erased.