The HaRT Knight Decaverse

Heir of Magic

Chapter 07

The Fungal Furniture

The darkness that surrounded Alexander was heavier than usual, like a black veil covering all of reality. A breeze caressed his skin, like the fingers of the spirits of malice and discontent. He breathed hard, dragging the icy air into his lungs which threatened to rupture at any second.
Is this what it feels like to die? he wondered.
Another breeze blew by, scuttling the dead leaves on the ground, and in the distance, a wolf howled. The sound cut through him like a dagger, leaving behind the poison of fear. Alexander stopped running—he hadn’t even known he was running—to see the wolf. Inky blackness surrounded him, but he had a feeling that something was moving just out of sight.
Another breeze, but this time, instead of leaves, it carried the sound of a voice. “Come to me, come bow to me, come be with me. Come to me, come sit with me, come follow with me—” the voice repeated the mantra over and over, and it grew more rapid with every recitation. It caused Alexander to double over and retch. It felt like that voice had filled him with something disgusting.
He turned to run, but found his way blocked by an enormous white wolf. The creature stared him in the eyes. It growled, showing its razor-sharp teeth. Strangely enough, Alexander did not feel afraid.
“You need us, Alexander Angelus,” the white wolf spoke with a mellifluous voice that rang with power.
“It is our destiny to meet,” another voice said from out the shadows. This voice differed greatly from the first. Where the other had sounded like light given voice, this one had an air of danger about it.
“We are waiting for you, Alexander,” said the white wolf.
“And we don’t like to wait,” said the other voice.

Alexander awoke in a cold sweat, the dangerous voice still ringing in his head. As he sat up, he half expected to find himself still in that dark abyss. The dream had felt so real that the reality of the moondrake room seemed fake. If fact, he might have suspected he was still asleep if not for the arrhythmic snores that rumbled through the door that led to Dante’s room. The wizard’s nightly cacophony caused the events of the previous evening to rush to the forefront of Alexander’s memory and his anger at the king flared once more, burning away the haze of sleep.
Alexander and the wizard hadn’t spoken about the rings yet and he was overflowing with questions. He understood why he cared about the rings, but the usually calm, levelheaded septim’s rage made no sense.
“We’ll talk tonight,” Alexander whispered, deciding not to wake the old man just so he could bombard him with questions. Instead, he got up for the day’s training. As he pulled on his tunic and chiton, he wondered if word of his fallout with Ogie’iso had gotten around. If so, would the rest of moondrake resent him for treating their beloved ruler with such disrespect? Would Claus and the others even welcome him back at training?
But Alexander’s fears were laid to rest when he reached the park. He met up with Faulkner, who was as friendly as ever. The rest of the class gave him friendly smiles, but he noticed them whispering every time his back was to them. That’s not new. They’ve done that ever since we met.
Claus showed no more signs of animosity than anyone else. When he arrived, he bellowed for them all to line up for the day’s lesson and went on with business as usual. “Today’s lesson is one you will practice to a further extent in phase four training. It is a battle technique, but we will practice it today because it will help you focus your aeroturgy. You will need your spears—Alexander, you may use your swords as I know you prefer them.” Claus paused so everyone could retrieve their weapons before he continued, “This is the air arrow technique. Simple enough to understand. You manipulate the air around your weapon and keep it in the shape of your spearhead—or sword point. It sometimes helps, in the beginning, to rotate your weapon in a circular motion to collect enough air around the blade. Then, concentrating on keeping the air in the shape of your weapon, you bring your spear or sword to a sudden halt and launch the air forward. Like this.” Claus rotated his spear between his fingers before he brought it to a sudden halt, pointing the spearhead at a wooden target ten feet away. The wooden man splintered as the air arrow hit home.
Alexander and the rest of the moondrakes stared in wonder at the perfectly circular hole that looked as if the actual spear had pierced it.
“Easy enough, yes? Now there is a target for each of you over there. Start practicing.” Claus pointed to the army of wooden men standing nearby.
Everyone moved to a target and started measuring off ten paces. As Alexander turned to face his wooden target, Claus eyed him with an odd expression. Vaguely, Alexander wondered if the unwanted attention had anything to do with the fight between him and the king.
As his mind wandered, the rest of the class sent their air arrows at their targets with varying levels of success—or failure, seeing as no one punctured a target. The closest anyone got was Faulkner, who, at least, knocked his target over.
“Come on, Alexander, start already,” Claus said on the sidelines.
Alexander jumped, then nodded and closed his eyes. Clear your mind, feel the magic in the air, he thought. He snapped open his eyes, and once again, he could see colored rivers of air flowing all around him. He focused on channeling his magic through his sword, and after a second or two, the ruby and azure aura took form around the blade. As he rotated the sword through the rivers of air, his aura caught them and pulled them along its path like a stick through cobwebs. With a little concentration, he folded the cobwebs around his sword’s blade until they were more like a red and blue silk scarf.
Alexander brought the sword to a sudden halt, pointing the sword at the wooden figure. In the blink of an eye, the air he had folded around the sword launched forward with an explosive force that knocked the moondrakes to either side of him off their feet. The blast of air raced across the ground in a violent tornado that reduced the wooden target to a rain of splinters—it was just a shame that it was the target next to Alexander’s.
“Well—At least that would have been a fatal attack,” Claus said, and expression that was equal parts awe, shock, and fear. “But power isn’t everything, nor is it the point of this lesson. We want accuracy and control. Try to hit your own target, but I want the hole as small as possible.”
“Sorry. I guess I got a little carried away,” Alexander stammered with a nervous laugh. He repeated the process of creating another air arrow, only this time he used a third of the amount of air and focused it all into the area around the tip of his sword. He launched the concentrated blast of air, altered its trajectory mid-flight, and sent it through the head of his own wooden target. The wooden man bobbed back and forth and the pinprick hold in the dead center of its head smoldered.
The others stared on in disbelief.
“The rest of you continue on,” Claus said, then beckoned Alexander to the side. Once they were out of earshot from the others, the admiral said, “Are you sure you’ve never had aeroturgy lessons before?”
“Well, there was that one yesterday,” Alexander said.
Claus looked back at the wooden target with the still smoldering hole in its head. “And that was enough for you to master this technique.”
“What’s the big deal? So I can send a blast of air through a target,” Alexander said.
Claus remained silent for a while as he watched his other student struggle to imitate the success of the ‘land walker.’ “Did I see you alter the trajectory of your arrow mid-flight?”
“Yeah, why? Wasn’t I supposed to?”
“To know how, no, you weren’t supposed to know how. Yet, you did it,” Claus gave him a shrewd look. The next second his demeanor changed completely, and he sounded all business again as he said, “Tell me, Alexander. If you can pierce your target using the air-arrow, do you think it would be possible to apply the same theory to a slicing attack with your sword?”
Thinking for a moment, Alexander said, “I can’t see why not.”
“Good. Then, while the others work on their air arrows, I want you to use the rest of the day to experiment and see if you can’t make it work,” Claus said. “We’ll talk again after class, but I don’t think our current training is right for you.”
Alexander was concerned about what Claus could mean by this, but he knew better than to ask. He had not known the moondrake admiral long, but he had met people like him throughout his travels. Once he said they would talk after class, they would only talk after class and nothing would change that. So, instead of allowing worry to plague him, he chose to focus on developing the new attack. It proved a fair bit more difficult than puncturing a hole through a half inch piece of wood. It was so difficult, in fact, that by the time the sun went down he still hadn’t managed anything more lethal than a paper-cut. When Claus officially called for an end to the day’s lessons, Alexander was not the only one to be frustrated with his lack of progress. The only other person in the class who was able to perform an air arrow was Faulkner, and even he was so irritated at his lack of consistency and accuracy that he immediately stormed off when class was dismissed.
“You never severed a limb from your target, but no one can fault your enthusiasm,” Claus said with an amused chuckle as he took in the shredded grass all around Alexander. “I have an idea, though. Try it again, but this time, don’t rotate your sword.”
Not knowing what this will help, Alexander shrugged and turned to face his target again. This time, he didn’t move his sword, but held it out to his side as he folded air around his blade. Once again, the reaction was instantaneous. He stared down at the folded air, then back at the target. Alexander lifted his sword over his head and brought it down with both hands. A razor thin pocket of air, no longer than his thumb, shot forward and hit the target in the chest. Alexander ran to inspect whether it had worked. As he reached the wooden man, it still vibrated with the impact of the blow. An inch deep, slender cut was visible in the wood where the blow had landed.
“I did it!” Alexander said. “I doubt it would be deadly unless I aim it at an artery in the neck, but I did it.”
“Yes, you did,” Claus said, but he did not sound impressed. Instead, he sounded like this minor feat of aeroturgy confirmed something he had already known. “Why did you look at your sword when you started the aeroturgic spell?”
“What?” Alexander said.
“Your sword. You looked at it while you were controlling the flow of the air,” Claus said.
“Of course, I did. It’s one of the steps. Envision the air.”
“Yes, envision. But it’s almost like you do more than envision. It’s like you can actually see the air you are about to manipulate.”
“I can. I thought that was what you meant by envisioning,” Alexander said, confused.
“Amazing. You’re by far the most gifted student I've ever had.” Claus flattened the feathers around his chin as he thought for a second. He nodded as he seemed to reach a conclusion and he said, “I will make some arrangements tonight to have someone else take over the basic training of the others. There’s just no way they will be able to keep up with you. So, as of tomorrow I will train you and you alone. We will start with your phase three training.”
“Phase three? Already?” Alexander said taken aback.
“Nothing in phase two training will be of any challenge to you. Besides, what you don’t know yet, I’m certain you'll figure out as we go.” A curious expression fell over Claus’s face as he said, “I wonder if all angelians are this naturally gifted.”
“Were,” Alexander said.
“Sorry?”
“Whether all angelians were this gifted. Cain wiped them all out, remember?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Claus said, looking sorry for voicing his curiosity.
“It’s okay. You said nothing wrong. My people are gone. It doesn’t help to pretend they’re not. When it is all said and done, after empires have crumbled, and warriors turned to dust in their rusted armor, the truth will still be the truth. It’s the one indestructible thing out there.” He gave Claus a sad smile. “In my youth I was like everyone else, I claimed the truth was what I wanted most, while in fact, I wanted to hide from it. But I refuse to hide anymore.”
Claus gave him a strange look. “Alex, what are you talking about? You still are in your youth. You’re a young man. By the customs of your people, you haven’t even reached maturity yet.”
Alexander laughed bitterly. “Yeah, I forget that sometimes.”

The night painted the city a velvet black and sent an invigorating chill through the air. Alexander seemed to have all of Moondrake to himself as he made his way back to his chambers. He took his time, enjoying the peace and quiet, two things that were all too rare in his life. At times like this, when I actually get to experience them, it always feels like a beautiful dream, he thought, and just like that, the dream shattered as the wall of Alexander’s chambers exploded with a red flash that illuminated the entire street.
Alexander drew both his swords and rushed into the room through the hole in the wall. “Dante?” he called.
“I’m here, I’m all right,” Dante said through a coughing fit from somewhere in the middle of the reddish-brown haze that filled the room.
“What happened?”
“It was my fault. I made a mistake.”
The haze dissipated and Alexander swore. In the room’s corner where his bed had been, now stood a giant mushroom covered in smaller mushrooms that continued to grow until they themselves grew mushrooms of their own.
“Dante! What in the name of bloody Tartos did you do to my bed?”
“It was an accident. I made a slight miscalculation, that’s all.”
“What are you talking about?” Alexander made his way to the wizard, leaping over a patch of green moss that hissed as it devoured a pair of his sandals. In the main sitting room, Dante was throwing a fit as he tore a stack of papers to shreds. “How did a ‘miscalculation’ turn my bed into a fungus?”
“Gate Magic requires the use of dimensional gate keys created by manipulating our thaumaturgic energy into elaborate and precise pentacle keys. There are millions of gates and each gate can only be opened with a specific key. If you get the key even slightly wrong, well—” Dante pointed at the giant mushroom “—there is no telling what the results will be. Fortunately, as far as mistakes go, this was a mild one.”
“Mild?” Alexander exclaimed. “My bed is a fungus and there’s a patch of mold that’s not housebroken currently humping a pair of my pants.”
“Yes, well as unsettling as this is, I assure you, it could have been a lot worse. When we were kids, my brother Vergil made a spectacular mistake that destroyed not just our house, but half the village.”
“You have a brother?” Alexander said, so surprised by the revelation that he completely forgot about the mold defiling his wardrobe.
The septim froze. Looking like he regretted the slip of his tongue, he said, “I had seven brothers, once.”
“Why didn’t you ever—”
“Because it doesn’t matter,” the septim said shortly. “I’m sorry about your bet and clothes. I’ll get to work on a pentacle key to reverse it immediately. The equations shouldn’t take me more than an hour.”
Alexander still itched to ask the old man more about these mysterious siblings he had never mentioned before, but he stopped himself. There had been something in the old man’s eyes that he knew all too well.
“Isn’t the pentacle to reverse this in here?” he asked in an effort to distract his mentor and spare him any more pain. He picked up a book off the floor and held it up with the cover showing to Dante. It read, Grimoire of Zacchaeus. Volume one. Principles of Pentacles.
“I’m afraid not,” Dante said. “The spell I was trying to perform has been lost for ages now. I know it can be done because we have a lot of references of ancient septims and Voynich using it in the past, but nothing on how it worked.”
“Oh,” Alexander said, disappointed. He had really hoped to lie down for a bit once he got home.
“Even if it were in there, it wouldn’t be that easy. The majority of pentacle keys are location sensitive, which means their composition changes slightly depending on where you are. There are some you can merely memorize and reproduce, but not many,” Dante said as he set about the complicated task of working out the pentacle that would reverse the chaos he had caused. He stopped suddenly then looked at Alexander and then at the book he had just placed back on the table. “That being said, I think you should pick that back up. As of tonight, you will study it from cover to cover. I will expect you to be able to draw every last pentacle in that book to perfection before I will teach you the practical parts of Gate Magic.”
“How in all of creation am I supposed to memorize all of this?” Alexander said incredulously. His memory wasn’t bad, but no one could memorize all of this.
“By working hard and diligently,” Dante said simply.
“But you just said that most pentacles change—”
“I did, and they do. But you need to have the basic shapes memorized before you can even hope to start on altering them according to the calculations I’ll teach you later.”
Alexander still felt that this was an impossible task. He stared down at the book in his hands and said, “So gate magic is basically memorizing a bunch of random shapes and math.”
“And both need to be done to perfection, yes,” Dante said.
Aeroturgy is a lot more fun, Alexander thought. A sudden realization dawned on him and he said, “So that’s why you sent Dora to me while I was with The Golden Spear.”
“Yes, she came from a very wealthy family in Mag Findargate and grew up with some of the most genius men and women in the world as her tutors. She showed a particular aptitude for math and geometry, which is why I paid her and exorbitant sum to find you and teach you everything she knows; to prepare you for your eventual Gate Magic training.” Dante stopped his scribblings with his quill and asked, “Was she on the ship when it sank?”
The memory of the loss of all those people, all his friends, sent a pulse of pain through Alexander again, but this time, there was a bitter sort of relief that accompanied it. “No,” he said in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. “She left the company seven years back. She used the money you paid her to build her own ship. She should still be alive. Out there, somewhere.”
“Ah, so she finally got her dream of exploring the world,” Dante said, the relief in his voice palpable. “Good, I’m glad. I liked the girl.”
“I did too,” Alexander said fondly. He cleared his throat and fought back the tears as he said, “So, what was this spell you wanted to figure out anyway?”
“It’s called the Dimensional Bridge. It’s a sort of trick of Gate Magic, where you create two dimensional gates that are inches apart from each other in another dimensional space, but miles apart in this one. That way you can travel great distances in a matter of seconds.” Dante scratched at his nose with his quill, leaving behind a black smudge. “When I was still a young man, before I became the adviser to Tír na Angelus, I spent years trying to figure out how the ancient Voynich did it.”
“I admit, it sounds useful, but why are you suddenly so determined to figure it out today—” Alexander cut off as realization dawned. After the long day’s training and Claus promising him more intensive training as of the next day, he had completely forgotten about the altercation with the king from the previous night. “The rings. We can’t get up to the palace, so you want to use this spell to travel there so we can steal the rings.”
Dante held a finger to his lips. He threw his hand into the air and sent his reddish-brown thaumaturgic energy onto the ceiling where it rapidly formed a simple pentacle key. When Dante snapped the gate open, a translucent red curtain dropped around them.
“It’s not stealing. Those rings belong to you, Alex,” Dante said.
“What is this?” Alexander pointed at the pentacle.
“Silence veil. To make sure no one is listening in,” Dante said. “And yes, I want to find a way to get to the palace so I can get those rings back.”
Alexander looked over his shoulder through the hole in his bedroom wall and at the Moondrake Palace. “But we can’t leave the city defenseless. You told the king we could make argentari to replace the rings. Will they keep the city safe?”
“If you and I both spend about a month to create an argentari ring each, that should provide them with enough power to remain hidden for another three to four years. If we can get all seven radiances, I can guarantee we’ll have defeated your uncle by then.”
“One month. All right then, that should be enough time to finish my aeroturgy training,” Alexander said.
“You really think you can finish that soon?”
“Claus says that at my current rate of progression I’ll have finished the basic training by the end of this week, and that ill finish the advanced training in two months. I’ll just have to apply myself and do it in one.”
“Alright. That gives me another month to figure out the dimensional bridge—”
“No, that won’t be necessary,” Alexander said quickly. “Apparently part of my final exam will involve having to be able to fly something like a small boat up to the rooftop of the second tallest building in Moondrake.”
Dante smiled wickedly. “So they’re going to teach you how to reach the place we need in order to steel the rings. Brilliant.”
“Yes, but if I want to be able to do this within a month, I’m going to need my sleep, and for that, I’ll need a bed that doesn’t send a cloud of poisonous spores into the air every time I roll over in the middle of the night.”