Spellscribed: Ascension (8 page)

 
                    Endrance remembered the feeling of her lips pressed hard to his. “I would love to hear about it sometime.”

 
                    “Really?” Selene asked.

 
                    Endrance hesitated a second, thinking. He nodded. “Yes.” He agreed. “I want to be able to love all of you, no matter which part of you it is. Maybe in time they can become one and the same.”

 
                    “You mean you want to love both of us?” Selene asked.

 
                    Endrance waggled a finger. “Now, now,” he mock chided. “The goal is that the both of you become one, not two conflicting forces in your body. Thinking of it as you and her is the wrong direction.”

 
                    “Right.” She said, hanging her head.

 
                    “But loving all of you is a start, isn’t it?” he asked, touching the ringlets of hair shrouding her face.

 
                    Selene nodded. “Yes, it’s good. For now.”

 
                    Endrance mocked stretching. “You know,” he began. “I was going to go take a bath, the water’s sure to be warmed up some by now. We could talk some more about whatever you want in the bath.”

 
                    “Are you sure?” Selene asked with a wink as she sat up. Immediately his face heated. “We don’t have the best record of successfully… talking for very long whenever we share a bath.”

 
                    Endrance nodded with a grin. “Then I’m all the more sure.”

 
                    The bath was fantastic.

 
                    He awoke at noon, having had a few hours of sleep. He came downstairs and found Selene busily storing cloth into a trunk. She was wearing a simple white dress and doeskin shoes, so she must not have been going out in the cold. He caught a glimpse of red before she shut the trunk lid and then turned to him with a smile. “Sleep well?” she asked.

 
                    He winked at her. “Never better.” He lied, not wanting to complain about every little ache and pain he felt. He had rested enough for the day, and he had vowed to get more sleep that night. “So did you do anything with the parchments that I had penned last night?”

 
                    Selene shook her head, her black curls bouncing. “No, I left everything where you left it.” She stated.

 
                    He looked around the room. “Excellent. Is Bridget up?”

 
                    Selene shrugged. “She’s out running. Joven’s with her.”

 
                    Endrance nodded. He wondered how long they had been doing that. “I want to show you what I’ve been working on!” he said, walking into the other room without waiting for a response. Selene followed, puzzled.

 
                    “You know I can’t read that language of yours.” She stated.

 
                    Endrance shook his head. “No, I wrote up what I needed, but I was too mentally fatigued to test it. Now that I’ve been very well rested, I can show you what I’ve been working on.”

 
                    Selene watched as he picked up the short stack of parchment and walked to the outer wall. He opened the window shutters and then the window itself, letting cold winter air drift into the room. He turned back to her and smiled as he cleared the table of everything upon it.

 
                    He took a minute to review his notes, making sure everything was fresh in his mind. He committed all of it to memory as quickly as possible, but was prepared to study it again if he felt unsure about his retention. He handed the parchments to her and turned to the table. “Watch.” He exclaimed.

 
                    He began the long form casting of the spell, his hands and arms weaving and forming the proper positions as he supplied the power of his aura through his body. The words of power he carefully enunciated gave his spell substance, and when he completed his spell he clapped his hands together once.

 
                    As his hands came together, Selene felt a sudden rush of wind through the window which swirled around her, and in an instant, spiraled into his hands before they met. He kept his hands closed for a second, and she could see his eyes shut in concentration as he muttered something incomprehensible. Mere moments later he turned to her, his emerald eyes bright and his smile broad as he slowly opened his hands.

 
                    Hovering in the air half an inch over his palms was a beautiful winged woman made entirely of whirling winds. Like a miniature cyclone, her body was vaguely humanoid, but composed of dark swirling clouds that never ceased motion. Wings formed of slowly arcing lightning danced in the air, seemingly moving as a flat surface like a butterfly. The tiny storm creature had eyes like twin orbs of clear sky.

 
                    Selene’s breath caught in her throat. Endrance smiled and made a little shooing gesture with his open hands. “This is a storm sprite!” he explained joyfully. The sprite flitted through the air in the room, zipping up to examine Selene before going about in a quick circle to explore the room before settling into a slow rolling hover over the table surface.

 
                    “She’s beautiful.” Selene said. “How did you- ?”

 
                    “I called to her.” He said. “On the surface it seems like summoning, but in essence it is completely different.”

 
                    “I don’t understand.” She said. “It seems like you summoned her.”

 
                    “She would say otherwise.” He said, digging in his pocket and pulling out a copper coin. He set it on the table on its end and spun it with his thumbs, causing it to spin underneath the sprite. It playfully zapped the coin with a tiny stream of lightning, causing it to arc in a scatter across a few inches of the table. By the time the coin had ceased its spinning, the table had a new pattern of tiny scorch lines across its surface.

 
                    “The spell just sent out the call to a nearby elemental within range. If the sprite were truly unwilling to come, it would not have.” He explained. “Even so, the sprites usually have no noticeable physical form, so the spell also uses some of my power to give it form for a short while.”

 
                    “So,”  Selene reasoned. “you’re not summoning then?”

 
                    “No.” Endrance said. “Summoning comprises an imposition of my will upon another, forcing them to act against their base nature. I don’t think I could ever do that to something.”

 
                    “So what are you going to do now that you have one?” Selene asked.

 
                    “Well, this sprite is a fast flyer, and her element also resonates with someone I need to speak to.” Endrance summed up.

 
                    “Oh, she can deliver a message.” She said. “Is it about those Ironsoul men Joven has locked up?”

 
                    “Who?” Endrance asked, for a moment not remembering. “Oh! Right. No, not them. I still haven’t figured out what is going to happen there. Send them home, I suppose.”

 
                    “Then who are you sending this to?” she asked.

 
                    “Someone that I met that might be able to help Bridget.” He said. “Let me talk to the sprite some more, then I will happily explain it to you.”

 
                    He relayed the message to the sprite, giving it instructions. It was capable of sensing the position of the artifact that Valzoa carried, and with a few words of explanation, the elemental shot out of the open window, into the sky and vanished in nearly an instant.

 
                    “Now, perhaps, I can make some progress on one of my problems.” He said with a sigh. He felt dizzy, lightheaded and he steadied himself on the table as Selene took his arm in hers.

 
                    “What’s wrong?” she asked.

 
                    “New spell.” He said. “They always take more energy than they should. There are ways to make a new spell more efficient, but you don’t know until you try it out, in most cases. This one was many times more expensive than I thought. I must have had something grossly out of order.”

 
                    Selene didn’t really understand the depth of what he meant, but got the general idea. “You’ll be able to make it better if you practice it though, right?” she asked. “Joven always says if you practice a tiring exercise, eventually it won’t tire you out so much each time.”

 
                    Endrance rolled his eyes. “That actually sounds a lot like him.” He muttered. “How does he manage to do it even when he’s not here?”

 
                    Selene frowned. “Do what?”

 
                    “Nothing. Never mind.”

 
                    That afternoon, Joven stepped through the doorway and into the house he had commandeered for the messengers from Ironsoul. Last he had checked, Endrance was sleeping off another night spent entirely in study.  His charge had a habit of giving him rough assignments, but as his bodyguard and friend, Joven was one of the few people Endrance trusted implicitly. Which was why he hadn’t had the men executed and sent back to the kingdom in a bag for even trying to take their Spengur prisoner. If he had his way, they wouldn’t have even had the chance to see Endrance, but he didn’t know they were coming. He hadn’t even considered the idea that the kingdoms of Ironsoul would send people to try to arrest the mage in such a way. If anything, he figured they had left the matter solved back in Ironsoul when they’d left their borders. The fact that they would seek the mage out in potentially hostile territory said much for his friend’s importance to them.

             
He looked about the front room, which had been mostly for shucking one’s snow gear. None of the men were present in the room, but he didn’t expect them to be. He expected them to be in the central hall, where the fire pit was. That would be the warmest place to be, and that was where he knew they would gather.

             
He walked through without taking any of his gear off; having grown up in the territory, such cold this far down the mountain was tolerable, and he had dressed lightly. The door to the main hall swung open loudly, and he stepped into a room with six men with drawn steel awaiting him. He raised an eyebrow and held his empty hands up, the corner of his mouth quirked up in a barely suppressed smile.

             
“Be at peace, men.” he said in jest. “If I wanted you dead I would have just set fire to the house.”

             
“At least then we would have died warm.” one man quipped as they sheathed their hastily drawn weaponry.

             
Joven almost chuckled. “That you would have.” he replied with a nod. “I came to make sure that you were, how did Endrance say it? Comfortable.” Joven said, crossing his arms.

             
The main hall of the house was large, meant for, at minimum, eight men and women, plus their children. Even with seven trained military men in the main hall, there was plenty of room for Joven to move about around them. Solid stone floors were covered in heavy rugs and the walls were supported with a framework of actual wood. In the farmlands, trees were more readily available and had been used more frequently for construction. It gave the room a friendlier, warmer atmosphere than some of the higher altitude homes.

             
The messenger, the only one who hadn’t drawn a weapon the moment Joven burst in, waved his hand to encompass the room. “This place was well stocked and warm enough, despite my men’s complaints they’ve been warmer today than they’d been all month. I do wonder what happened to the people that lived here before we arrived though; I mean, when we got here there were beds half made.”

             
Joven leaned back against the wall. “The Spengur requested this place be made available to you for a time, so the people abandoned the home before your arrival.”

             
“Abandoned?” Ezeilo asked.

             
Joven checked the nails on one hand as he spoke. “The Spengur is a man who is greatly feared in our country; the people fled their home the minute he asked, rather than risk him bringing ruin upon them for not moving fast enough.”

             
Ezeilo’s expression turned to one of confusion. “What?” he asked. “Sir Mage is not a tyrant, is he?”

             
Joven shook his head. “Not in the slightest.” He replied. “In fact, he’s already helped this farm keep its crops from failing this fall harvest. He’s been very good to us since he got here.” he frowned. “Or did you not understand the whole ‘Demon Summoning King’ thing I said before?”

             
“I... I got that,” Ezeilo responded, “I just don’t understand how they can be so afraid of him when he’s been nothing but helpful to them.”