Spell Weaver [Book 2 Complete]

The ritual lines blazed with unnatural light as they were augmented with white, magical fire. Alex held his arm up against the heat that pressed outward. Where the flame touched the white lines, the mana channeling along its pathways seemed to speed up several times.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Alex muttered while trying to process what he was seeing.

Through his Heavenly Eye, the mana flow appeared as a torrent of golden energy. He followed the lines up into the sky and saw that the small golden sun that had been providing them light the entire time was now feeding mana to the flames. Each pulse carried more power than the last, and the magical pressure building around the Rift seemed like a dam destined to break.

Mana! Hot mana!

Val circled nervously overhead, and his small form darted back and forth.

Val, can you see any weak points? Any place where the flows look different? Like… lots of mana in one spot?”

Val gained some more height before circling once more and descending.

All burn same. Big mana in the middle near angry Jonathan.

The Rift pulsed again, and Alex staggered back as a wave of pressure swept across the clearing, and there was a percussive blast of wind that accompanied it, causing the dirt of the forest floor to go airborne. He glanced over his shoulder at the portal and caught sight of Jonathan as he roared in fury and continued his relentless assault on the remaining elf.

Alex edged a bit closer to one of the outer lines of the ritual and felt the heat from the flames intensify.

It didn't look like the substance and the fire were just channeling the mana; instead, they were amplifying and refining it somehow. He'd already known that the ritual wasn't crude or novice-level magic, but for the first time, he could see the immense gap in magical understanding between their world and the elves. Whatever mana-conductive metal they were using was clearly used with deliberation, and the runes used in adjusting his ritual magic were unlike any he’d seen before.

"Maelis, what happens when an enchantment overloads?"

“Nothing good, kid. Either it fails catastrophically or exceeds its intended purpose. But even then, it's usually not an item that can be used a second time. If that's what happens here, neither scenario ends well for anyone around."

“Shit, we need to try and get rid of some of this mana… how can I stop the flow?”

Val fluttered down and flapped his wings to hover several feet above the flames on one of the lines. The small dragon opened his mouth and began to absorb the mana. For a brief moment, hope flared in Alex's chest as he saw it being consumed. Then Val recoiled with a hiss and flapped his wings around wildly, looking more like a panicked bat than an elegant dragon.

"Hot! Spicy mana! Hot, hot!"

"Val!" Alex reached up as his companion regained control of his movements and returned to his shoulder. As he moved through the air, Valtherion's scales seemed to shimmer with some lingering white flame energy that made him shine. "You okay, buddy?"

"Don't like drinking fire."

Another pulse of energy rocked the clearing.

Alex turned toward where Jonathan had been. Teresa stood in her defensive position, watching as Jonathan came down from his berserker's rage. He stood over the elf's mangled corpse and stumbled a bit before beginning to make his way back toward the team, looking exhausted and like he could sleep for days. Damien rushed forward and slid a burly shoulder under Jon’s arm.

"Hey!" Alex shouted as he ran toward Teresa. "Do any of you have magical training? Do you have [Mana Manipulation] or the ability to draw mana into your body?"

Teresa shook her head, her silver hair seeming even more white in the light of the flames. "Nothing like what you're looking for. Only in the most basic sense."

Greg responded in her defense, "We are fighters, not mages. It’s no different than any other weapon system that’s issued to us. A lot of the research and understanding isn’t our job. It’s to learn the skills we’re given and be damn good at using them."

"Great," Alex muttered as he turned back to face the ritual.

Alex looked at the ritual and couldn't tell if the portal itself was expanding or if that was just the vast amounts of blue mana beginning to swirl in time with the portal.

"Kid, you need to think of something fast," Maelis urged. "I don't know much about rituals, but I do know a lot of magic, and this thing is getting close to being done. If you don't think you can fight off an elven army, you should probably start making space."

Alex paced along one of the nearby lines and let his mind run through possibilities. Physical force didn't work. Val seemed to be able to actually drain some of the mana from it, but it was hot because of the fire.

Wait… Val couldn’t handle the mana because he probably tried to consume it like he does when he eats mana. But what if…?

Alex let his mind race as the sounds of chaos filled the area around him. The image of a water balloon appeared in his thoughts. He thought of a time when he and Jake would poke tiny holes in the sides of them with their teeth and then use them like a small water gun as a jet stream of water came out. His thoughts also drifted to what happened when the hole was too big. The entire balloon would rupture, and spray water and latex into his mouth.

He frantically removed his notebook from the spatial pouch at his hip. Flipping through the notes, he looked at his newest spell circle that had been designed to siphon the mana from the warding barrier. His eyes flicked back and forth across the page, and he thought about how he might tweak the design and replace the barrier rune within.

"What’re you thinking, brat?" Maelis asked in a dubious tone.

If I can create a small enough channel and drain just enough mana away from a key junction point…

“You’ve been making decent progress with your runes. And you’re innovation with spell circles could actually be impressive in some circles. Don’t do something stupid now and throw away the opportunity to actually take that to its proper heights.”

Another pulse rocked the clearing, and Alex’s jaw clenched. He turned and watched more white flames surge through the ritual lines. With the enhanced vision of mana that he had, he could see exactly how the power was building, and it reminded him of a dam about to burst. The amount of raw energy flowing through the ritual would probably be enough to kill him a dozen times over.

But Alex knew that his unique skill set set him apart from most mages.

He ran his fingers through his hair as he finished calculating the modifications to the spell circle. His Willpower was his greatest asset, and if his control over the two complex skills was any indicator, he felt he had a real chance of making this plan work.

If anyone could create a controlled leak in the ritual… it should be me.

“Don’t even think about it. That much mana would–”

“Burn me from the inside out? Only if I can’t control it,” Alex finished. “But if I’m fast enough, if I can channel it away as quickly as it comes in…”

The ground trembled, and he knew that there wasn’t any more time to think through the situation. He scanned the area nearest the Rift and crossed the distance with his movement skill, passing a bone-weary Jonathan on his way there.

He closed and put his finger in the notebook to hold his position and slid to kneel at the major junction of ritual lines. He opened the book and held it in his left hand while holding his right hand, palm open, over the intersecting lines. He created the spell circle over the burning pathways and let his hand sink into the open hole at its center.

Val, I need you to move back with the others.

Val chirped in protest. “Stay with you.”

“Not this time,” Alex said while gently prying the small dragon from his shoulder. “Watch from a safe distance and I’ll let you know if I need any help, okay?”

As he positioned himself, the dire nature of the situation finally seemed to settle on him. Unexpected thoughts flashed through his mind, and the mental image of his friends appeared as he began to weave the modified draining spell. Olivia smiled at him, with Mark and Sarah on either side of her. Sam's excited and innocent face appeared next, poking out from behind Mark's large frame.

Others popped into his thoughts briefly. Edwin and Gabby, John and Ian, and, most surprising, the mental image of Jake. His brother's recent attempt to mend their relationship after years of tension and competition had been a welcome surprise. Despite everything, he appreciated that awkward apology more than he realized.

"Moore!" Jonathan's voice cut through his thoughts clearly, as if the surrounding chaos wasn’t there. "What the hell are you doing?"

Alex didn't look up and flexed his hand within the spell circle while readying his mana. "The only thing I can think to do. The ritual will finish in a minute or two."

"Stand down," Jonathan ordered. "We pull back and prepare for whatever comes out of the Rift and use our home-field advantage in modern weapons to hit them hard before they have a chance to dig in."

Alex shook his head.

"You don't even know what you're doing. Greg says that much mana is going to kill you."

Alex felt a bitter laugh escape him. "It might. But if an army of elves almost double the level of the most powerful people on Earth comes pouring through a broken Rift right now, there's absolutely no way that we can fight back how we are."

Without waiting for a response, Alex pressed his hand further down over the flames and felt the heat begin to burn. But as soon as he pulsed mana and the spell circle began to greedily drink in the nearby mana, the flames went with it. The circle's lines glowed blue, then white as his energy activated the pattern, and it flashed into normal physical existence.

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For one heartbeat, nothing happened. Alex activated [Mana Siphon] to try to pull more of the foreign mana through his body, and he knew he would need to prepare a spell to dump as much of it out as possible.

Then, the world exploded in agony.

Mana flooded into Alex's body like a tidal wave crashing through the ritual. Mana channels within his body that were designed to carry normal amounts of magical energy suddenly burned white-hot. The pain was worse than anything he'd ever known, and he felt like his nerves were being seared from the inside out.

His back arched involuntarily as the mana crashed through him. It felt like molten metal poured into veins of glass as they were stretched beyond capacity. He clenched his jaw down so fast and tight that he could taste blood. Alex wasn't sure if he bit his tongue or his cheek as he fought to maintain consciousness.

Maelis's voice cut through the haze, "Dump it! Now, kid! You can't hold it in!"

A desperate kind of clarity settled on him, one that he'd only seen come from moments where his life was on the line.

Drawing on his Willpower, Alex forced his trembling free hand into motion. He kept his right hand in the spell circle while dropping the leather notebook and thrusting his left hand over his head. Allowing as many mana threads as possible to spin into existence, he traced a complex pattern in the air as he clenched his eyes shut through the pain. It all threatened to overwhelm him, but he pushed through it all.