Sacrifice Mage

I tried not to let Silhatsa’s anxiety affect me as we made our way to our respective positions. It wasn’t easy. She was buzzing like she was going to explode. How was I supposed to feel steady in the presence of high-strung energy like that?

Not that I blamed her. I wondered if she had ever taken an adventurous step like this before, or if this was her first attempt at doing something beyond the usual receptionist duties.

Her feelings were perfectly natural.

“Seriously,” I said. “No actual advice. I know we discussed a bit about him coming here being the main lynchpin of our little plan, but you never told me anything about what exactly he’s going to say.”

“I don’t read people’s minds or look into the future, Ross,” Silhatsa said. “All I can tell you is something you kind of already know. Just remember what people want, and you can manipulate that to get what you want.”

“I don’t know what the Guildmaster wants.”

She gave me a mildly exasperated look. “What would you want if you were the Guildmaster?”

Before I could reply that I didn’t have anywhere near enough of an understanding of how exactly guilds were run to answer that, Silhatsa was already leaving. We were basically out of prep time.

Our positions weren’t anything complicated. I needed to stand where I would be setting up my booth on the Mage Guild grounds. Meanwhile, Silhatsa’s position would be next to the Guildmaster, accompanying him on his little trek through the preparations for the magic festival, slowly but surely guiding him past my spot.

I blinked at the haphazard bundles and piles of rocks and everything else I needed to set up my booth. My booth… that wasn’t coming along at all. I hadn’t touched it one bit after making sure I had acquired everything I needed.

Looking around, I found that quite a few other mages had already made decent progress. One group had an automaton the size of a house partially built already. Yet another had created a small volcano farther off. A group of younger mages were running after a small menagerie of magical creatures.

And here I was with a pile of rocks plus assorted odds and ends. Fantastic first impression.

And all according to our plan.

Alright, fine. Mostly Silhatsa’s plan. That she had hatched so much of the mad scheme really raised my estimation of her.

Obviously, she wasn’t some master at it. We had already been discussing one of her failings. She hadn’t figured out the very vital component of our plan—namely what exactly the Guildmaster was going to say or want, other than my continued participation in the magic festival.

It didn’t take long for the man of the hour to arrive. I was forewarned of his actual arrival by the way the other mages were straightening up and making themselves look all proper and fancy.

Guildmaster Lancko turned out to be the first Therioceph I had seen in an actual influential position within Zairgon. They were generally rare in the city, kind of like the Se-Targa. Now that I thought about it, I had seen even fewer of the animal-headed people than I had seen the angelic beings of Se-Vigilance’s race.

The Guildmaster certainly embodied the dignity and power his position as the premier mage in all of Zairgon entailed. His gold-white robes were etched with glowing runes, the curling horns on his ram head looked like they were made of the same kind of abalone as Ring One, and his eyes seemed to sparkle like dim stars.

Besides all that, there was his aura too. He had a presence to him, a sensation like invisible mist was wafting around me in his proximity.

I could feel it even when he passed by at least thirty or forty feet away. It made me wonder just how strong he was. Surely, he wasn’t as strong as the Councillors, the strongest of whom was high Jade-ranked. Was he high-Onyx, then? Low-Jade maybe?

He was unsurprisingly tailed by a small entourage of people, including Silhatsa.

She gave me an extremely pointed look when she passed by with the Guildmaster, though I failed to decipher what it meant. Didn’t matter. I’d be ready when it was my turn.

Which turned out to be a lot later than I had been expecting. Was Guildmaster Lancko making me wait on purpose? Maybe some random cultist from Ring Four didn’t register very high on his visiting priority list. Why couldn’t there be a list of who he was going to visit and when? Then I could have spent some more time catching up with my friends.

It was starting to take too long. Had to be over an hour by now. So, instead of just wasting my time, I focused on my second mana core.

The sensation in my head buzzed lightly as it had done since the moment I had acquired it in the Nether Vein. I wondered if whatever had happened within the strange space that guided all that divine-coded energy to my mana core would have done so if I hadn’t had a small repository of mana already there, already trying to raise up my second depository of magical energy.

Basically, the Nether Vein had just vastly accelerated the process I was already undergoing. It hadn’t gifted me a mana core out of nothing.

Thankfully, there were no other accompanying sensations from the new mana core in my skull. No feeling of cracks that foretold a terrible, dungeon-wiping detonation. No constant tug of an enormous amount of energy that had to be used up one way or another.

In fact, I couldn’t even sense anything odd about it all. Wasn’t it supposed to have something to do with the Beyond? With how frightfully odd the place had been where I had helped pull Se-Vigilance from, I had expected my second mana core to exhibit that same kind of sensation to some extent. Nope. It was cold. Just a ball of dormant energy I couldn’t even access.

With Urhei out of commission, I’d need to find some other way of acquiring the information. Core awakening processes were highly individualized to the core and the person who possessed it.

Still. There surely had to be standardized methods for discovering what that process was supposed to be.

I was playing around with my Aspects when the Guildmaster finally came around.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from NovelFire. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Ross,” Silhatsa hissed.

They still hadn’t quite reached me, but she had flung out the call anyway. It made even Lancko look at her very oddly, though his glance quickly returned to me and my floating rocks. And my floating blobs of heat and light. And the tiny floating blobs of energy I was emitting from them too.

“A mage through and through…” Guildmaster Lancko had a strange drawl to his voice.

I offered a short but polite bow with my fist to my chest. “Glad to finally meet you, Guildmaster.”

If he noticed the little emphasis on finally, he gave no indication of it. I had seen his other form, Kliezeg the tester, wielding incredible magic back during the Blight Swarm invasion. Silhatsa had laughed it off. The possibility that Lancko was Kliezeg was absurd. And I agreed with her. But that wasn’t going to take away what my eyes had witnessed.

“Likewise, Mage Moreland.” The more Lancko talked, the more his drawl just made me think I was talking with an extremely dignified American southerner. “Are you prepared with your booth?”

I looked around us. How embarrassing. “There’s still time to set things up. The auction isn’t for another few weeks from what I recall.”

“Indeed.” His eyes sharpened, the starry glint within them turning a little sharp. “But please, enlighten us as to what sort of magical experience you intended to deliver. After all, the foremost priority of the magic festival is to make people fall in love with it, just as we all have, in our own ways.”

His words were all too knowing, almost like he knew how much time I spent training, practicing, ranking up, and experimenting with my magic. I supposed he had just seen me doing all that.

“My intention was to use my Gravity Aspect.” I focused, sending void deep threads to the rocks via the ground and channelling Siphon to reduce their weight. Soon enough, they were taking to the air, hovering around us. “With it, I can basically give people rides. That sounds pretty fun, doesn’t it?”

The Guildmaster stared at the floating rocks, as did everybody else behind him—not only his hangers-on, but a few of the mages that had wandered over as well. All but Silhatsa, who looked like she wanted to tear her scales off.

“No,” the Guildmaster said. “This is not fun.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Tis minor. Surely, a mage of your calibre can do better?”

“A mage of my calibre, huh?”

The Guildmaster’s curling ram horns seemed to glimmer ever so lightly. “You are the awakener of the Nether Vein, yes? You are the one who ended the plague of the Scarthralls in Zairgon. A man of your propensity surely cannot be satisfied with mere floating rocks.”

All his entourage nodded in vigorous agreement. Several scowled at me like I was a lazy punk who couldn’t be bothered to put in actual effort.

I just wanted to smile, especially at seeing Silhatsa’s expression turning into one of relief. “I disagree. This is exactly the kind of effort I need to be putting in.” Before the Guildmaster could reply, I looked past him to all the other mages. “We’re doing this for free. You’re not paying us for anything spectacular.”

“You truly believe this is a matter of money?” the Guildmaster countered, sounding almost disappointed.

“Isn’t it?” What I really wanted to say was to tell him to stuff the appeal to emotion. “Those ticket prices are going to rake in a terrific amount of profit for you, Guildmaster. Profit that none of us here are going to share in. Making it worth the money was why you want me to do something a little extra, isn’t it?”

Several of the entourage spluttered at that. Even Silhatsa looked shocked. She hadn’t expected me to call the situation out that explicitly. Not my fault we hadn’t discussed the particulars yet.

“How dare—”

Whatever the robed Rakshasa attendant had been about to say never made it out. The Guildmaster had raised a hand.

“You raise a valid point, Mage Moreland,” he said. “The mages who are making this festival possible should see a commensurate return on the effort they’re spending for the benefit of both the guild and Zairgon at large.”

“And you’re going to tell me most of the profit raked in by the festival is going to be fed back into the Mage Guild and maybe even into Zairgon at large.” I tutted. “Without seeing the margins on actual binding contracts, forgive me if I remain sceptical, Guildmaster.”

“You idiot.” The familiarity of the voice had me jerking my head around until I recognized Casvat. What was the roguish Rakshasa doing with the Guildmaster? “This isn’t just your typical magic festival. If we actually made it unaffordable, don’t you think the Councillors would have something to say about it? You got confused by the prices you saw and forgot the context.”

I didn’t let his seemingly sudden appearance faze me. Why hadn’t I spotted him before? “The context? What kind of context makes it alright to rip people off?”

“It’s just excuses.” Casvat turned his sneer at the other members of the entourage and to the Guildmaster. “He’s all bluster and showmanship. Perfect for the festival, if you think about it, Guildmaster.”

“What?”

“Casvat is right,” said the Rakshasa who had earlier been forced to hold his tongue. “Mage Moreland is deflecting. It’s more likely he’s not capable of much beyond what he’s showing right now, so he’s turned this into a matter of morals instead of magic. Pathetic.”

I blinked. “Morals are more important than any kind of magic, you ass.”

Oh boy. The equanimity I had held with the Guildmaster had apparently evaporated as soon as they had made things personal. There was the slightest possibility of the plan veering a little bit out of my control. I needed to be more careful.

“And now you veer into insults,” Casvat said, taunting. Slimy prick. “Honoured Guildmaster, I think you made the very right decision in coming here last. It’s a waste of our time. We should move on before we embarrass everyone present.”

One of these days, I was going to kick Casvat’s ass so hard.

“Mage Moreland,” the Guildmaster said. “I am rather pleased with all the preparations I have seen from the members of the Mage Guild, on the average. In due time, before the actual festival, I’d like to see a demonstration of what every mage in Zairgon is capable of. A presentation, if you will, of the showcase they will provide at the festival.”

This was clearly news to everyone, not just me. Silhatsa looked surprised, as did a bunch of other mages, all of whom had their attention fixed on the Guildmaster now.

“But perhaps it doesn’t need to wait days,” the Guildmaster continued. “Not for all of us. Especially not for those who need such… little preparation.”

“I mean…” I looked pointedly at the rocks floating around us. “Aren’t I already demonstrating what’s going to happen at the festival?”

“Insolent—”

Once again, the Rakshasa’s angered outburst was contained by the Guildmaster himself stepping forward.

“Perhaps you are,” he said. His robes fluttered and a sudden sense of danger almost made me step back. That misty aura around him flared into something that made me think I was going to plummet for a thousand feet if I took even a single wrong step. “But I’d like a different sort of demonstration.”

I pursed my lips. Even though I really wasn’t supposed to, my eyes very briefly glanced over at Silhatsa. She was one step away from tackling the Guildmaster.

Which made me smile at Lancko.

“Alright then,” I said. “I’m ready whenever you are, Guildmaster. On one condition.”

The others sputtered again, infuriated that I was actually demanding something of the Guildmaster of all people. But once again, he didn’t give them much of a chance to express it.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s simple. If I pass this test of yours, then you’re going to make the festival a little more affordable.” I spread my hands to calm them before they assumed I was about to ask for a drastic price overhaul for all the ticket categories. “I’m not asking for much. Just a simpler ticket tier so that the destitute and the less fortunate can afford to attend as well, even if it’s limited.”

“Your cause is… noble.” The Guildmaster’s eyes flicked to the dishevelled state of my booth. “Even if your efforts aren’t.”

“I just want everyone to get the chance to enjoy the wonders of magic.”

“Alright then. We are agreed. If you pass this little test, I will create a new price tier. Tickets that even Ring Four can afford.”

I grinned, though it was aimed at his annoyed entourage. “Thanks, Guildmaster.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” The ground shook as he stepped forward. His eyes were even starrier now, glinting faintly with the backdrop of a dark cosmos making up his missing whites. “Kostis used to teach you himself, didn’t he? After all the times I asked if he was ever going to take an apprentice and pass on his teachings… he chose you.” The ground rumbled again. “Now, let us see what you learned.”