Don't trust anything, or anyone, that comes out of the Dungeon. Please, for the love of everything you hold dear, don't.
Excerpt from The Beasts of the Dungeon.
REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK p^o^q REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK
Xathar walked down the steep slope like he was born to it, Marcus balancing in the saddle with relative ease. Teleporting towards the Calamity would have been more impressive, but on the off-chance that she didn't know he could, he would rather keep that ability secret.
He also didn't want to waste the power, but honestly, just teleporting him and Xathar took a negligible amount. Less and less the more familiar he grew with the spell.
The Elf watched him descend and shaped a simple chair for herself, and Marcus wasn't entirely sure what the message was supposed to be. Shaping raw magic like that was exhausting, but then she probably wasn't mortal.
It could be a display of power, vanity or control, but in the end she shaped only one chair. Even made from dirt it looked surprisingly comfortable, though its design was basic. A limit to her control? If it was, he could exhaust her fairly easily.
Not that he found that likely.
Xathar exhaled another plume of air when he they came to a stop, close enough to talk but not so close as to risk her touching him. His full defensive suite was in place, augmented as it was with spatial magic, and it left him with one matrix.
Just enough to teleport with, though not nearly as efficiently as usual.
The Elf tilted her head, an easy smile on her face. "You wish to talk, then? Or are willing to hear me talk, at any rate. Fascinating. I've never known the surface people to be particularly accepting of us."
"Us?" Marcus asked, curious. "I'll admit, most of what I know about the Dungeon is second hand. I've seen the Hounds act like regular animals, seen how Champions are sentient and capable of reason, yet neither ever seek a solution past bloodshed."
She snorted, waving a hand dismissively. "Hounds are more monster than beast, and Champions have such a narrow understanding of the world, though I'll admit most of us wish for humanity to die. And then for everyone else to die too, really, though I wouldn't call mongrel human-elf hybrids proper Elves. Neither do I consider what you call Dwarves, or Giants, properly pure."
"Fair enough," Marcus agreed. "I've seen true Elves fight. Watched three-eyed Giants burn. What we have today is not the same, but neither are they lesser. What's your name?"
"What's yours?" she countered, rolling her eyes. "And I do consider them lesser, Archmage. But then I don't go around exterminating every nest of ants I come across, because while I won't tolerate being named as one of the lesser races, I have better things to do than exterminating them all."
Interesting. She sure seemed civil, if somewhat proud. He shrugged. "I'm Marcus. And no offense, but I can't take your word for that."
"Of course you can't," she agreed, smiling at him like he was a child. "You may call me Circe, human."
Marcus snorted, mildly amused and wondering if she counted among the oath he'd sworn to Nora. Probably not, and there was no chance in all the Hells he was telling her about it. "Nice to meet you, Elf. You called me here to talk. Talk."
"You have a spine," she replied, tone laced with approval. "Good. The meek ones are just so boring. Now, what do you want to let me pass?"
He paused, curious despite himself. "What do I want to let a potentially city-destroying, incredibly powerful mage Calamity walk freely into the wider world?"
"Exactly." Circe nodded to herself. "Humans always want something. I have about fifty thousand of your gold coins stashed away, no small amount of knowledge about directing magic, and I'm not opposed to killing one of your enemies. Or that horrific chicken creature I came here with, for that matter."
That… that wasn't what he'd been expecting. Not that he was going to go for it, of course. Circe didn't even twitch at his mental refusal, which was good. Vess' lessons would be quite a bit more tedious if they never bore fruit.
Marcus hummed. "You should probably know that the Empire will double any offer you could make."
"Then let's bargain," Circe offered, a surge of magic seeing another chair rise out of the earth. Marcus judged the action far less skilled than when Vistus had done it. "I'm sure I have something I could tempt you with. I, unlike the vast majority of my so-called kin, don't like to take unnecessary risks."
He dismounted slowly, approaching the chair and seating himself. The risk was minimal, because even if she knew he could teleport, he doubted she could beat him at his own game. "I do wish to know more about the Dungeon. Its depth, size, fauna and flora. That sort of thing."
"Boring," Circe complained, tapping her armrest, "but cheap. I was born some four years from the surface, and to the best of my knowledge, it really is infinite. I have spoken with Champions that have traveled for decades, and some claim to have spoken with those decades below them."
Marcus tilted his head. "But why come to the surface? If you were born there it must be able to sustain life."
"Because of the flood, of course," she answered, shrugging. "I'm not going to wait around until my home is a playground for fish."
Xathar exhaled a great plume of breath, and Marcus stiffened. Just for a moment, just a single shoulder muscle, but Circe snapped to look at the horse. Marcus teleported back onto the demon a moment before his chair exploded, what little shrapnel reached him smoothly curving away.
"Don't be like that," she cooed, rising from her own seat. Marcus didn't reply, making her pout. "Aaaw, you didn't believe me for a second, did you? Good on you, little boy. Tell that nasty Elf to run off back to the Dungeon where she belongs."
She laughed, the sound as clear as a bell, and stretched her hands wide. Magic gathered, and Marcus didn't wait for her to finish. His elemental and sensory protection matrices were repurposed to create a third-tier spatial arc, which he slashed down at the Calamity.
Circe pivoted without interrupting her own spell, and Marcus pressed his will against his own magic. The closest part to her curved, slicing into her arm.
It should have taken the entire limb, and then the torso. Instead it left behind a small slice, as if he'd cut her with a kitchen knife. Of course she was resistant to magic while also being capable of it. Great.
Fortunately, he'd brought alternatives.
Marcus pulled the enchanted mace from where it hung on Xathar's saddle, the strength multiplying runes almost thrumming in his hands. He hadn't had a great opportunity to use it yet. Not properly. Now he did.
Circe laughed again, the sound not turning as mockingly evil as he'd preferred. Instead she sounded moderately amused, like a parent watching their child do something entertaining. No condescension, no hate. Just an expression of joy.
He teleported both himself and Xathar next to her, mace already swinging down towards her head when he arrived. Circe twisted out of the way a hair too slow, but his weapon hit a shield instead of flesh. Marcus moved on, two matrices focused on his defense and three on teleportation.
A hail of ice was hunting for him the moment after he returned back to reality, keening through the air and impacting his shield. Or trying to impact his shield, the spatial aspect to it curving the projectiles away. It took less energy than outright stopping them, though a few flew fast enough they got through.
One section of his shield broke, another rotating smoothly into place, and the secondary dome of protection inlaid in his armor caught the rest. Marcus teleported twice in quick succession, once right next to her and the other some ways away.
The instant he arrived the air around her exploded into a cutting gale, not even coming close to hitting him. Circe laughed again. "I'm not your first, am I, Marcus? Such a shame. It's only polite to tell a lady that before you dance with her."
Marcus teleported a rock above her head, which she smoothly stepped around. He tried to teleport her back, expecting it to fail and being correct, but for the first time she seemed annoyed. Irritated.
She answered with a spike of stone, Xathar dancing smoothly to the side. Marcus almost laughed, which must have shown on his face, because Circe's scowl deepened.
He wasn't laughing at her, though. It was the same attack the other Calamity had tried, who itself had had a massive amount of magic. They couldn't be more different, and yet similarities seemed inevitable.
Circe answered with a surge of power, easily twice of what he could have wielded on his best day. Marcus teleported back, then back again, and watched her scream in rage as a thousand feet of ice erupted from the ground. Spikes and blocks, peaks and valleys. An entire forest with her in the center, and the ice melted away rapidly as Circe walked through it.
"That was wasteful," Marcus noted calmly. Circe actually took a deep breath, which at least confirmed she had enhanced senses. "Do you have any idea how much good you could do with such power?"
The Calamity barked out a harsh word in a language he didn't speak, Xathar springing forwards. The lightning strike struck nothing, and Marcus shook his head. She scowled, not seeming to realize how narrowly he was dodging her attacks.
"Assist humanity?" she asked, scorn in her voice. "Be a good little druid and water their plants? No. I am no slave, not now and not ever."
Marcus hadn't expected anything different, so he teleported behind her again. A stream of black fog descended over them both in an instant, but his mace was already on the way. Circe grunted as it impacted her back, and she clearly wasn't a trained fighter.
And the fog was clever, but his teleportation wasn't based on sight. It could be, but that was more a limit of memorization than power. Marcus twisted and vanished, appearing four feet off the ground.
…So his memorization skills needed work, fine. Better than to be stuck right next to a Calamity.
Xathar caught them smoothly enough, teeth gnashing. "Break her shield and I shall eat her spleen."
"I'm working on it," he replied, teleporting twice to avoid another lightning strike. Circe seemed to favor elementalism, which made sense. It was the easiest discipline to manipulate with raw power. "Not like I can just disrupt something that powerful. I get the feeling that even at an efficiency rate of one to ten, it would be in her favor."
His mount huffed, stamping his hooves on the ground. "Words, bush mage. Kill the creature, feed me its liver."
"I thought you wanted her spleen?"
"Both," Xathar decided, not hesitating for even a moment. "Now fight."
Marcus shrugged, not really feeling the pressure like he probably should be. And the reason for that clicked after a moment, feeling a surge of energy and teleporting away the moment he did.
This was like fighting Elly. Circe used magic instead of Life energy, but she was mortal. Thought like a mortal, fought like a mortal, experienced pain like a mortal. And just like Elly, she fought aggressively. Tried to push him in a corner, smash through his defenses, then finally break his spine.
It wasn't an absolute copy, but similar enough to matter. Marcus teleported to her side, swinging his mace with one hand while the other slapped against her shield. Disruption magic surged into it, weakening the structure, and his mace impacted it a moment later.
A crack formed, and Circe did something he hadn't expected.
She screamed.
Marcus recoiled as the infernal sound wormed its way into his brain, snapping his sensory shield back into place in pure reflex. Space twisted oddly and the sound died in absolute vacuum, but even having experienced it for a second, his vision swam.
He tried to teleport and failed, concentration disrupted, and a hand slapped his shield much like his own had done moments before. She didn't quite disrupt it, though. There wasn't enough skill for that. Instead she blasted it with enough power to level a town, ripping through in a manner of seconds.
Marcus' reserves emptied rapidly as his adaptive recharge matrix tried to keep his shields alive, but even so it only bought him a moment. A moment was enough for Xathar to kick her in the face, though, which apparently made even a Calamity flinch, shield or no.
Circe growled and pressed the attack, Marcus vanishing a split-second before her hand could touch him again. He nearly fell off Xathar when they landed, a spike of belated fear shooting through him.
Fighting to the death wasn't like sparring at all, it turned out.
With his full defensive suite active he was limited to only one remaining matrix, which turned this from hard to almost impossible. Circe wasn't limited like that in the slightest, had more power to spare and enjoyed magical resistance to a point of near immunity.
Marcus shook his head, some remnant of strain remaining but feeling mostly better. Yet Circe seemed to smell that last exchange had cost him, and suddenly there wasn't a moment of peace.
Xathar ran as superheated air shot towards them, the two hundred feet wide stream of skin melting death chasing after them. It wouldn't kill him, not with his elemental defenses raised to full, but it would cost him. And if his magic ran dry…
Marcus dropped his inertia and adaptive recharge matrices, teleporting up and away. He'd learned all that he needed to know to kill her, and with Elly by his side Circe would be dead in moments. Running away felt somewhat cowardly, but it was better to be a coward than a fool.
Then a stone wall rose in the far distance, and Marcus was so startled he almost teleported straight past it. Except he could see it was almost three hundred feet thick, and soon after another three rose.
He teleported both himself and Xathar up, up so high he would be able to see over the walls, and lightning struck him like a war hammer. His shield, unable to pull on more of his magic to sustain itself, shattered. The protections built into his armor followed a moment after, though they bought him enough time to teleport to ground level.
Xathar staggered but remained on his feet, shifting his weight so Marcus wouldn't fall off. Pain laced through him like a thousand daggers, adrenaline spiking as his emotions drained away.
The sun vanished as the dome completed, and Marcus had no idea where to go. He couldn't force his perception out so far as to look past it, and teleporting blindly was suicide. His room in the Eastfort came to mind, but he'd need a portal for that.
Circe's laugh echoed softly through the dome they were trapped in, the thing easily half the size of Redwater. That amount of power was impossible. Madness. A thousand mages barely had enough reserves for that, and their brains would shatter trying to direct it all.
"Little human," she cooed, stalking forward in the pitch blackness. Marcus tilted his head, following the sound, and he expected to be afraid. He expected to be terrified, and instead all he felt was cold. "Trapped in my web. Now you can't run anymore, and we can finally play."
Xathar danced to the side, the keening of air the only proof of the attack. Marcus exhaled, feeling his muscle spasm and skin burn. His defenses had made the lightning survivable, but only just.
He was going to die here.
His reserves stood at a quarter full, he was injured and couldn't see in the dark. He grunted and closed his eyes, an older part of him rising to the surface. A military part he'd long since thought gone.
Circe was powerful, impossibly so, but she was about as subtle as a kick to the face. His magical perception locked onto her, three things happening in very quick succession after it had.
He teleported next to her, mace in hand and snapping his full defenses into place. Her shield was strong, but clearly unable to take advantage of her seemingly endless amount of power. The moment they arrived Xathar charged, ramming into her and screaming something about how foul she smelled.
Marcus, meanwhile, felt something crystallize as he jumped to the ground. He felt a moment of connection, bringing his mace down on Circe's skull while she was still twisting around. Power gathered in her hands, but Xathar bellowed into her face.
Her concentration wavered, and Marcus hit her again. A spike of ice slammed into his arm as he did, a much smaller version of her previous ice attack bursting around her, but he ignored it. His reserves drained to less than a fifth capacity, his muscles barely did as they were told and Xathar vanished as something hit him in the head.
Circe twisted to strike him, a gale of wind picking up around her. His inertia dampening matrix drained yet more power, and all the while his mind felt like it was on fire.
The strain peaked then shattered, his focus narrowing to a point. Circe launched a spike of water at him, the liquid condensed a hundredfold, and Marcus twisted to the side. It shot past him, a stream of light entering their perfect darkness not a moment later.
It showed Circe's panicked expression, scrambling back and away from him. He moved after her, his mace going up then down. Once and twice, each blow amplified fourfold. Over and over, never more than a second between each hit.
Circe wasn't a fighter, Marcus knew that. Had known that, and yet he'd fought her like a mage. But he wasn't just a mage, was he? He wasn't even just an Archmage, though for some reason his acceptance of death had unlocked a sixth matrix.
Marcus didn't care. All he saw was that siege mage from the School of Life, sitting in her tower and burning hundreds alive. How she'd frozen him, killed him over and over as he struggled to reach her.
But after he had? The mage hadn't known what to do. She hadn't fought like that before, hadn't felt her enemy's breath on her skin as they tried with every fiber of their being to kill her.
Circe's shield broke, a raw pulse of power trying to fling him away. Marcus scoffed at the crudeness of it, acting on instinct more than planning. His defenses drained away, six matrices linking together to create a tear in reality. A tear he'd long since known how to weave, but had been unable to make until now.
Her attack flew through it and out behind him, the portal vanishing a split-second later. The last of his reserves went with it, and Circe seemed stupefied her attack had failed.
His mace hit her again, and her shield shattered completely. If she'd been able to weave an adaptive recharge matrix, she would have been unstoppable. But maybe she was incapable, or maybe she was so arrogant it had never occurred to her that someone might overcome its innate power.
Marcus didn't wonder. Didn't think or hesitate. Circe screamed something he didn't care to hear, and his mace hit her in the face.
For all her power, her flesh was just flesh. Her skull was just bone, and Marcus was far from the skinny teenager he'd been from before the School of Life.
Circe died, and Marcus sat next to her corpse. Fell next to her corpse, more accurately, breathing loudly and barely able to weave a first-tier healing matrix together.
He inhaled the horrid smell of his own scorched hair, felt lightning scars burn along his left side, and was more than happy to just sit for a while.
A small pearl caught the light, and Marcus pulled it from Circe's neck. The string broke with barely any resistance, and he tucked it away in his pocket before slowly closing his eyes.
Fifteen minutes, then he'd go and see how Elly was doing.