Basic Thaumaturgy for the Emotionally Incompetent

Severa stared at him as if someone had abruptly rewritten the script of reality in front of her. She hadn’t even managed to form a single syllable before flames wreathed up his arms in a roaring spiral.

“Tommaso Ardefiamme, at your service! Border Army, Third Pyroline, Frontier Cleaving Division! Also, Instructant Lugano is on the way!” Tommaso shouted. The title alone sounded like it could punch holes in mountains. A whip-thin jet of fire arced out from his gauntlet, spiraling down into a cluster of Chasm Mantes attempting to flank them from below. The fire detonated in a tight burst that left a ring of scorched air.

Tommaso swooped toward them. “Fabrisse, dude. Drop the rocks into my gauntlet!”

Fabrisse blinked. “Your gauntlet?”

Tommaso thrust one gauntlet forward, turning it palm-up. Along the sides were small compartments lined with faintly glowing runes. “Look at these sweet side compartments!” he shouted, grinning. “Fire-resistant and shockproof! The future is today, my man. I usually use them for ember capsules, but rocks work just fine.” He blasted away another cluster of mantes as he spoke. “Come on, lad! Load me up!”

Fabrisse winced. “I can’t reach my pocket . . . the insect inside will bite me . . .”

Severa shot Fabrisse a sharp glance. “You can summon the subject. Just think about it.”

“Are you sure?” Fabrisse shouted, ducking under another jet of fire from Tommaso.

“Of course.” She fired a column of violet-and-gold aether that incinerated a diving Chasm Mantis. “Mental commands are how archmagi design their Aetherrealms.”

“I’m not an archmagi.”

Tommaso conjured a sweeping cone of flame from his other gauntlet to incinerate a pair of swooping mantises. “Damn—you open your own Aetherrealm now?”

Before Fabrisse could answer, Severa’s voice cut across the roar of fire and shrieking mantises. “Ardefiamme! Attend the flanks immediately! Intercept those descending from below! Do not let anything reach the ground—and remember, don’t channel any emotion into your spells. It might destabilize the rift even more.”

Tommaso grinned, spinning as jets of fire streaked out. “On it! Keep your columns coming!”

Severa fired again, this time splitting her attention between the top and lower rift edges, her sigils whipping through the air like living threads of light. “Kestovar! Just summon—actually, just do nothing!”

The moment Severa said ‘just do nothing,’ Fabrisse felt his resolve crumble. Nothing? Now I don’t want to do ‘nothing’ anymore.

He pictured the insect tearing into his fingers, mandibles gnashing, the sting of a puncture and the slick scrape of chitin against skin, and instinctively flinched. Yet, just as Severa had instructed, he focused on the rock he wanted.

Severa was right. He got the rock.

He glanced at Tommaso, whose flaming gauntlets whipped through the air in precise arcs, carving a deadly rhythm through the unending swarm. Each Chasm Mantis he incinerated seemed to be replaced by two more, then three, then four. The swarm was unending, and Fabrisse knew better than to interrupt him now.

Check the inventory, he thought.