Chapter 174: On the Road

Chapter 174: On the Road

“I spy... something yellow.”

“No.”

“Whaa— Come on, this is so boring!”

“That game is for children.”

“It is not!” Leland said, feeling a bit accosted. “Jude, Glenny, and I used to play all the time on the road.”

Isobel cracked open one eye, still leaning across the wagon seat semi-asleep. “Exactly, a child’s game.”

Leland frowned, feeling as though he walked into that one. Isobel smirked, closing her eye and shifting around a bit. The duo were still traveling away from the Graverender’s bastion, but unfortunately the journey was quite slow. And boring. And tedious. And bumpy. And slow.

“Gah,” Leland mumbled, looking away. He stared off into the distance, rolling plains rising and lowering with smooth hills and even smoother foliage. There was grass. And only grass. Tall grass, sure, but it was still grass.

There weren't even monsters around to defend the caravan from. What few beasts that did try and near the wagons were swiftly taken care of by Isobel. In fact, she did it so subtly that Leland wasn’t even sure the Huntress was doing anything.

One moment his instincts would tell him something was near, the next that feeling would go away. The only hint of Isobel doing something was a soft woosh of air and her adjusting her posture. But, like any bored person, Leland suddenly became very interested in watching Isobel. And, soon enough, he saw her flinch her arm out of the wagon, firing off a bolt of poison from her wrist without even materializing her parasitic weapon.

So, as Leland sat there, defeated in verbal sparring with Isobel, he toyed around with his magic. Unfortunately, besides his contracts, his magic was heavily lacking in nuance. Fracture worked relatively simply and just broke a bone or two. Curse of Collapse did much the same, but instead slowed the target.

Circle of Souls was quite interesting, especially if he focused on the soul of the Damned aspect of the curse. But he couldn’t exactly practice that curse in the open, at least not with normal people around. Harbinger Halo had infinite potential, but again, it was not a curse he wished to practice with others around. Less he be outed as a Harbinger. The Graverenders and the Sky Dwarves were definitely in the minority when it came to accepting a Harbinger for who they were rather than the halo marking them as strictly evil.

Then there was Soul Fire. And he just wasn’t going to practice that curse. Probably ever if he was being honest. The stars had to align for that curse to circumvent his self-imposed limitations. The target had to be a Harbinger or a particularly heinous Witch and the soul used had to be about the same.

So, Crow Massacre was the only curse Leland could practice. While the curse’s description stated he could only command his summons to attack a single target, he had found that wasn’t strictly true. The crows did as he often wanted, splitting off into small groups to attack multiple people or aiming for specific weak spots, like the eyes or joints. He had even used them as an intimidation factor, simply commanding them to look imposing while they sat on branches or ledges.

The curse was by far his favorite, for nothing more than the simple fact that it was fun. While the archetype of the summoner was not what he originally envisioned himself to be, it was nice to have some flavor to his attacks. There were only so many times he could break a person’s bones before it became lame.

But then again, Harbinger Halo and the many contracts he held, were also quite fun. But the power he collected was never his. Or at least, it didn’t feel like it. He hadn’t earned those spells, only talked himself into a favorable light or promised he could get a job done for a Lord. Which, while very true, he knew not to believe the negative thoughts. He had earned those contracts, regardless of how easy they were or how different the contract was to his usual magic style.

Still, Leland was glad he could dip his toes into every mage archetype. While he couldn’t see himself as a summoner, he also couldn’t quite picture himself as anything else. Before he accepted the Curse Lord’s Legacy, he saw himself as a lightning mage, like his mom. But even then, he wasn’t fully sold on it.

One day it was lightning mage, the next flame caller. Then the week after he would read a passage in a book and realize he truly wished to be a spellsword... until the day after when he remembered he was useless with a sword and retreated back into the comfort of his father’s spatial magic. At least until the next thunderstorm, when he remembered the true power of lightning magic...

So, contracts were perfect. Everything he could ever want, at the tip of his fingers.

Above the caravan, a murder of fifteen crows suddenly appeared. They were too far away for any of the horses pulling the wagons to notice, but a few of the drivers did. They hesitantly looked around, slowly readying themselves for a monster attack.

Leland instantly mentally commanded the crows to fly in figure-eights and or a wavy pattern. Luckily, this eased everyone and soon enough, most of the wagons had heads popping out of the covered tops watching the show.

They moved well with each other, synchronizing their wings and diving and climbing so close to one another that they tempted collision. They flew into various shapes, squares, arrows, triangles, simple things, mainly for Leland to practice group dynamics. The curse was a living breathing thing, well maybe not living, because they were mana summons, but they sure acted like it.

Each bird had its own semi-consciousness, enough so that they could act without Leland’s direct focus. They were far from actual crows, but the simple command of “attack that thing and don’t die,” had a lot of leeway. But when they flew as they were doing now, they forced Leland to actually command them rather consistently.

He wasn’t controlling each and every one of their flights, but he did split his consciousness fifteen different ways to complete the show. Practical for combat? No, not at all. Fun enough to ease his boredom? Yes, completely.

Then the curse’s duration ended and Leland didn’t feel like resummoning them. Instead he opened his grimoire, pulling it from his tattoo.

Fracture:

Type: Curse

Encase the souls of those within 50 yards, siphoning their lifeforce while chaining them to this reality.

Fully consume a soul to increase your magical potency by 15% for 1 minute.

Held lost souls may now be given to a soul of the Damned as payment for a task.

Damage dealt to one target within the circle is duplicated onto all targets inside the circle for 12% effectiveness.

Contracts:

Lord of Magic: For the duration of the contract, all magical abilities are increased by a factor of 5%. Only usable once per hour.

Lord of Spirits: For the duration of the contract, all magical abilities take on a single intended spiritual effect. Only usable once per hour.

Lord of the Moonless: For the duration of the contract, all works of art shine with the light of the moon.

Lord of Nature: For the duration of the contract, access to the spell, Touch of Regeneration, is available. Contract is usable once per hour.

Lord of Water: For the duration of the contract, access to the spell, Shield of Water, is available. Contract is usable once per hour.

Lord of Endurance: For the duration of the contract, if used while completely exhausted, each running step provides a small addition to your base stamina. Contract is usable once per hour. Steps: 249

Lord of Chameleon: For the duration of the contract, gain adaptive mage perception (sight, smell, or instinct). Contract is usable once per hour.

Lord of Erupting Skies: For the duration of the contract, access to the spell, Erupting Steps, is available. Contract is usable once per hour.

Lord of Space: For the duration of the contract, access to the spell, Spatial Bend, is available. Contract is usable once per hour.

Lord of Pathways: The Lord of Pathways has augmented the parasitic tattoo, Lodestar, with a pathway.

Lord of the Void: For the duration of the contract, access to the spell, Void Slip, is available. Contract is usable once per year.

He mostly skimmed through his contracts. There was a lot of information in those pages, but also a lot of redundancies. There was also a page for Soul Fire, which he didn’t flip to because it made his stomach churn just thinking about it.

Having gone through everything, Leland put the book away and decided to try something new-ish.He always felt deficient in cantrips, small Legacy-less spells.. Creating a drip of water or a spark to light a campfire were nice, but they were rather useless in combat. He and Isobel decided he needed a cantrip that made his curses invisible.

He also wanted to learn the cantrip called Memory Recall in order to decipher what one of the Archons said to him in the Valley, but he also needed a language contract of some sort for that to work. There was also non-verbal casting he wanted to practice, but that was less of a cantrip and more of a technique.

So he focused on invisible casting, and as it turned out, oddly enough, Circle of Souls was the curse to practice with. Well, at the curse’s build up, at least.

The cantrip worked by pairing the spell, or curse in Leland’s case, into the cantrip, thus resulting in a filter-like effect. There was a bit more to it, but that was how his parents described it to him years ago and that was how he pictured it.

So, step one: create the filter. Visualization came in handy here, allowing Leland to shape his mana into a form like a short tunnel. Step two added the “filter” mana, stylizing the mana’s aspect to “smother” the coloration and effect of the curse. Then came step three.

Under normal, non-invisible metrics, Circle of Souls started out with Leland gathering his mana and calling to the enemy to “kneel before me.” But technically the curse started out even before that. Before gathering mana, what mana was already floating around his mana system had to be engaged. And it was that slight difference that allowed Leland to “cast” Circle of Souls without ever gathering the mana for it.

The effect, often called “holding a spell,” didn’t invoke any power or magic, at least not outside his body. Inside was different. If someone was actually staring into his eyes, they would notice them burning with a faint violet fire. And it was that fire Leland attempted to “make invisible.”

So, with his funnel ready, Leland engaged his mana, pulling it into the funnel and holding the curse.

Isobel had been watching him with one eye open. “Better, but I can still see wisps of fire.”

Leland nodded along, knowing the attempt wasn’t his best. He tried again and again, for the duration of the remainder of the caravan ride. Before too long, they were departing their wagon and stepping into the research town of Jyn.