A Soldier's Life

Chapter 134: All We Need is Time

Castile returned with the others over an hour later. Three specters had stumbled into the large library while we were gone, and the company had been killing them repeatedly as they reconstituted, waiting for Castile to return with the kettle of souls. As the company arrived, Adrian used the five offices and set them up as small bunk rooms. There were twenty-five of us if you included Maveith, Castile, and Scholar Favian.

I was rooming with Maveith, Konstantin, Mateo, Felix, and Scholar Favian in the largest office. Our job was to protect the Scholar while he worked through the books. Every office in the small library had a fireplace, but we were warned only to burn enough to fight off the chill. The firewood was being hauled up from the collapsed shelves of the main library in shifts.

As we set up our room, Favian paged through the single shelf of books in the office. Half of them fell apart at the spine as he flipped through them. I claimed the only desk in the room to sleep on. This desk was made of the same black wood as the other desk but was much larger. I guessed this office belonged to the chief librarian of this tower.

Felix scoffed from his position near the fire at me setting up my bedroll, “Wish I had thought of that; this stone floor sucks the heat right out of you.”

I ignored him. “Anything interesting?” I asked Scholar Favian as I sat in the chair at my bed/desk and went through the drawers.

He didn’t answer as he paged through his most current book and replaced it on the shelf with a huff, “No—mostly administrative books. One is a log of books to be copied and loaned out to requested parties. I think other ancient elven libraries, but I am not sure. The titles listed are interesting anyway. It would really be useful if I had an elf fluent in the language here to help.” He didn’t say more as he lay down exhausted on his own bedroll near the small fire Felix was starting.

I found a lot of paper in the desk that crumbled to dust when I tried to move it. I sifted through the dust and found what looked to be, a bag of shiny steel marbles. The bag was brittle and cracked as I took out the seven marbles. I rolled them in my hand, and they had a good weight to them. They were perfect spheres—maybe ball bearings of some kind, or I thought they might go to some game the elves played or possibly ammunition for a sling. I left them on my bedroll in front of me as I meticulously searched the rest of the desk.

The only other thing of interest was a dozen vials with murky black liquid. They were obviously potions that had not deteriorated over time. The elvish writing on the vials had faded entirely with the centuries.

The room was filling with light blue smoke as Felix’s fire started to get going. It was a more confining space than the massive open library, and the small amount of smoke was building up. “Open the flue!” Konstantin barked as he entered the room. He went to the fireplace himself and operated a small stubborn crank. It groaned, and we found it had been a mistake to use it as centuries of dust in the chimney vent crashed into the fire. The fire went out, and the room filled with dust.

Everything and everyone was coated, and no one looked happy. Scholar Favian started coughing. Angry eyes tearing, as the smoke and dust filled the small space, trained on Konstantin. To me, it felt like an unnatural anger. I started laughing, a loud, boisterous laugh, “Damn it, Konstantin. I can’t believe the all-knowing legionnaire didn’t realize there were fifteen hundred years of dust in there. You are never going to live this one down.” I was trying to cut the tension, and finally, Maveith coughed hoarsely and started laughing too, taking my lead.

Konstantin finally joined the laughter, and it was awkward to see him jovial. “You are right. I will shake out everyone’s gear. We should see if that window opens.” He spent some time, but the block of clear stone had no hinges or method to remove it. While Konstantin was cleaning the room, we made two trips for firewood from the primary library while the dust settled.

That night, as we all ate an insignificant dinner, as I studied everyone in the company. It was clear they were depressed. It was hard to tell if it was linked to our circumstances or if the ruins were doing something to them. I was leaning toward the latter.

That night, I was tempted to use my dreamscape amulet. I asked Maveith to sleep close and remove it if necessary. I also only planned to be inside the dreamscape for two four-hour sessions. In the dreamscape, I added ten of the elven books on herbalism to my secret shelves. That was as much backlash as I thought I could handle when I left.

I was not concerned with practicing with the men in the ankheg room. Instead, I went to the shelf and pulled off the compendium of spell forms for the displacement affinity. Displacement magic was used to run the massive teleport gates in the city. Displacement Mages were highly sought after, and with my sixty-one affinity, I thought I might be able to imprint the spell form for their ability.

I opened it to the index. It was remarkably similar to the time spell form compendium. There were four suggested spell forms at three different power levels. I was happy to see that with my sixty-one affinity, only two of the major spell forms were not available to me.

Displacement Affinity Lesser Spell Forms (10-25)

Anchor (10)

Quick-Step (20)

Summon Object (10)

Ethereal Body (25)

Displacement Affinity Major Spell Forms (25-40)

Blink (30)

Dimensional Door (35)

Send Object (40)

Connect Portal Gates (40)

Displacement Apex Major Spell Forms (40-70)

Teleport Other (50)

Plane Shift (60)

Create Portal Gate (70)

Greater Teleport (70)

I skipped the spell forms beyond my affinity so I wouldn’t know what I was missing out on. I spent all four hours I had allotted figuring out the portal gate spell form.

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Create portal gate also required the anchor and connect portal gates spell forms to create the portal gates that the Empire used in the larger cities. There was more to the process as the gates themselves had to be artificed to create a permanent weave to feed aether from ley lines, which was then activated by a displacement mage with the connect portal gates spell form or the actual spell. It allowed me to cross off anchor, connect portal gate, and create portal gates off my list.

With the ability to cast actual spells being so rare, I could see why they had these spell forms in this book for Telhian Mages. The thing was, I did not see myself spending the rest of my life making portals for the Empire.

I exited the dreamscape to the room’s chilly air, even with a fire burning. My head was pounding from adding the books, and I couldn’t imagine doing that twenty-nine more times just to get all the herbalism and apothecary books into the dreamscape amulet. I even questioned their value as I couldn’t read Elvish.

I focused on the room around me, stilling my breathing. Maveith was breathing loudly in his sleep, and Mateo was snoring softly. The Scholar, I was happy to hear, was also sleeping. He had been too excited by the massive amount of elven knowledge we had encountered. I let my headache fade before returning to the dreamscape.

I started to review the simplest of spell forms, quick-step, also referred to as flash-step. It was a very short-range teleport that was always the same distance in the direction you were facing. The distance was dependent on your affinity for displacement magic. With a ten affinity, that distance was just under five feet, according to the text.

I started to do the math to see what my sixty-one affinity would get me. The answer was about one hundred and seventy-one feet. Utterly useless unless I was trying to run away—so maybe not that useless. The good thing about this spell form was you could not materialize inside objects.

It shortened the distance until there was space to complete the teleport. And if you didn’t teleport, your aether was still expended. I looked at the aether requirements and swore, “Fuck!” Oscar jumped and went on alert at my foul language, barking and looking for the problem. I started laughing at the absurdity of someone invading the dreamscape. Quick-step only moved the mage—not their possessions. How was it even remotely useful?

Okay, I had misread the text. The mass of the mage’s equipment would add to the base aether cost for the quick-step ability. You could also not take anyone else with you when you flashed forward due to their aether resistance. I did not find this spell form appealing.

The summon object spell form did appear much more useful. This spell form brought an object to you. The distance and mass determined the amount of aether. The object had to also be within the mage’s line of sight. It was an extremely useful combat ability for disarming foes. The problem was the orientation of the object was fixed. So, I would be summoning a sword pointed at me.

I read a little more on the spell form. It was useful in evading arrows as the arrows were light, and all inertia was halted when an object was summoned. But once again, the aether cost seemed prohibitive to me.

I moved on to the next spell form, hoping it was a better option for me. It required at least an affinity of twenty-five, so it had to be more useful. Ethereal body allowed the mage to push himself into the astral plane. This meant my afterimage would be immune to damage. Well, runic weapons and aetheric magic spells could hit creatures in the astral plane. We were doing that with the specters, so this was not an invulnerability spell.

The blink spell form was a more advanced form of the quick-step spell form. This spell form functions the same way but lets you control the distance you travel. It only required a thirty affinity to learn, so I moved on to the next spell form, dimensional door.

The dimension door was a very impressive spell form that required two castings. The first casting was the anchor used on any doorway. The second casting was also cast on a doorway and connected to the first. As long as the mage sustained the connection, people could pass through from one doorway to the other. There was no restriction on distance. However, once the mage dropped the connection, both anchors faded and would need to be reset.

The limiting factor for me came down to the distance the doors were apart, which determined how much aether would be required per second. I just did not have a large aether pool. Send object could teleport any non-living object to a place with which the mage was familiar. The mass and distance determined how much aether was required.

I couldn’t even cast the higher affinity spells once. So, teleport other, plane shift, and greater teleport were off the table for me. I was having enough trouble on this plane of existence anyway. Not being able to learn greater teleport was a disappointment. This spell allowed you to send your mind to a location and pull your body there. The cost in aether was immense.

Maybe there were more spell forms options out there. If these were my only choices, then it would either have to be blink or dimension door. I started thinking maybe dimension door would be a good way to escape a terrible situation. I certainly wish I had it at this moment.

I returned from the dreamscape. I sat up, my back aching from the hard surface. I wished I had pulled out my pillow. The window had the gray of the morning light shining through, and Konstantin was sitting there looking out the window. It was just the two of us awake.

He slowly turned to me, “The snow has stopped. But I do not think we are done with the elementals.”

“Why, what is going on out there?” I asked, moving to the window, and almost tripping on Maveith.

I reached the window, and the blue flashes in the sky were still there, but Konstantin was right. The sky was clear, and just an ocean of white was out there. “They are dropping the temperature. I have been scraping frost off this window for the last two hours.”

“We were not planning to go outside anyway,” I responded while noticing a huge amount of snow drop from the massive hearth tree in the distance. A giant eagle took flight and circled into the sky; it quickly returned to the tree, not daring to approach the elemental lightning.

“Those eagles are going to freeze to death,” Konstantin nodded out the window, “They might be our best chance of food if we can get to them.”

“Breakfast!” came a call from the central room. The entire small library instantly came alive as men felt the start of the hunger pains. I went with Konstantin to find a thick soup for breakfast.

Lirkin smiled, “Mashed up the stale bread and used a little extra jerky this morning in the soup. Don’t tell Delmar.” His request was moot as Delmar was behind him and just rolled his eyes. I guessed that Delmar had told him to use what he did this morning.

The starchy soup had pea-sized pieces of rehydrated jerky in it, but Lirkin made sure to scoop from the bottom for everyone, so they got the sediment. My protesting stomach thought it was one of the best things I had ever eaten.

The air felt colder, but the five side rooms all had small fires, making the central room bearable. Delmar spoke after everyone arrived, “We are all going to remove our armor. Armor is not much use much against the specters anyway, and it should help you bundle your cloaks tighter to your body. If you have spare clothes, layer them. Castile is going to lead an expedition to the other tower this morning. Mateo, Blaze, Brutus, and I will thin out the specters there with Castile.”

After Castile left, my job was to guard the men who were gathering firewood from the shelves in the primary library to haul up to our rooms. Adrian was supervising, making the floor of the tower we now occupied more hospitable. He had groups taking what they could from the upper floors. I think most of us realized it was busy work to keep our minds off our predicament.

I was on my fifth trip with firewood when Castile’s group joined us, climbing the stairs. Maveith was carrying a large bundle of wood and was not afraid to ask, “What did you find in the other tower.”

Delmar answered for Castile, “Half a dozen specters. The roof completely collapsed, and there was nothing to salvage on any of the floors. All the books have long since been destroyed by weathering.”

Castile said steely, “We will start thinning the specters under the city. It will take time, but as long as we have the kettle, we can clear them all.” As we climbed, she reassured everyone around her, “Scholar Favian will find out where the dungeon is located soon, and we can seek refuge there.”

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