Chương 13: Growing Up, Without the Up

Chadwick was currently sitting at the edge of a large empty field and breathing heavily. The large stretch of grass in front of him was flat and noticeably empty.

"So, boy. What was your mistake?" Asked Vander.

"I lost track of that air mage and then things spiraled out of control from there," he answered between gulps of air.

"And, aside from keeping a closer eye on him. What else could you have done?" Queried Vander, thoroughly in teaching mode now.

"If I could manage one more conditional magic in my list, I could do something that would still the air around me if his particular type of magic touched me. But, it seems like a losing game to try to keep adding to my current conditionals and just be on the defensive. They are too general and I can't really fit anymore until I can manage a 35-point." Chadwick was very much hitting the wall in adding new conditional magics. With the increased difficulty of holding each thing he wanted in his mind.

The jump from 33 to 34-point had been harder than the previous three increases combined. It was all just a matter of how many things you could hold in a mental image at once. It was easy to lose track of something when he was trying to focus on that many items at once. Vander nodded, approving of the train of thought, "a battle-mage always focuses on those conditional magics that are mostly likely to save his life in the most situations. Cover the broadest range possible. Not the extreme niche cases.

For most mages, this just means a basic proximity alert and as many different types of shields as he can manage - perhaps two for most mages." Chadwick nodded, "but they would swap them out if they knew, or at least thought, they were up against a particular type of mage, no?" Vander shook his head, "you forget how hard most people find conditional magic boy. It might have taken them weeks to get those conditionals in place.

They wouldn't risk going into a fight with none of them in place if they couldn't focus enough to get it right."

"So, relying on enchanted items seems like the only fallback," said Chadwick.

"Indeed, something they would usually need to acquire at great expense over their lifetime. And be hesitant to use it too often because of the cost of replacing it once it's done. Again, since conditional magic and enchanting are so inextricably linked, this is another place you have an advantage. So, what will you create to stop my memory of that pesky air mage?" Asked Vander.

Chadwick had once asked Vander what battlefield this was, but he refused to answer beyond the obvious that it was one of his memories, and therefore something he had been present for in the real world. He couldn't tell for sure if it was just the nature of the somewhat vague rules of the memory books, or if Vander just didn't want to speak of this particular battle and the various soldiers and mages in it.

Chadwick thought about his options from what he knew of enchanting, "nothing I have made so far is quite right. But, I can think of several options. Something to nullify magic in bursts would work to cut off his flight. I could increase the gravity, but the targeting would be complicated if I didn't want to harm the soldiers."

"You are thinking in the right direction, air mages are mostly only hard to deal with because they are very mobile and they can sense anything you throw at them because of the disturbance in the wind. Stopping them from moving is the key, pin them down and you can disable or kill them," said Vander. Chadwick still wasn't particularly happy with the idea of killing during his training.

But, each time Vander summoned the battlefield, all the combatants would return like nothing had ever happened to them from Chadwick's previous attempt. So far, he had aimed to incapacitate. He knew he would need to do more to pass this challenge. The battle itself was a camp of soldiers getting overrun. Chadwicks job wasn't to save anyone from the camp, but to stop all the attacking mages as fast as he could.

Vander insisted that he would end up saving more people by just stopping the enemy mages, than he ever could by trying to rush around defending the soldiers. The soldiers themselves could defend the position quite well from the smaller number of regular enemy troops. It was the mages they couldn't stop. Each time the defenders of the camp had all perished, or Chadwick himself was about to sustain a fatal attack, the battlefield would disappear. Returning to scene to flat grass.

Then Vander would walk him through what he could have done better. Chadwick considered all the options he had in his collection of enchanted items and decided it wasn't time for half measures anymore. He had to treat this battlefield like he was in Vander's position when it originally happened. Forced to fight for his life. He stood, "I'll need a few hours to test something, but then I should be ready for the next attempt." Vander just nodded and strolled back to the camp.

Chadwick pulled a few large stones from the ground and considered them, "these should be big enough". Then he set about testing his ideas. To an outsider, the testing would have mostly looked like him hurling smaller rocks into the air. Observing the results, muttering to himself and then peering closely at the larger rocks on the ground while running his hands over them. Then more tossing small rocks. After about an hour he started tossing piles of leaves into the air and watching them fall.

And then made more adjustments to the big stones on the ground. After he seemed to be finished, he picked up the three larger stones and moved them into the middle of the field. Then fetched Vander for another attempt. Vander eyed the stones, "I know stone is not a great source of enchantment base. So an equivalent item in brass or iron would be far more portable, but I still generally discourage the idea that you would have a chance to prepare something and place it on the battlefield in exactly the right place."

Chadwick nodded, "these are more a proof of concept. These, done in brass, would be equally effective if they were hanging on my belt loop as they would be if placed on the battlefield. I just couldn't carry all three stones." Vander acknowledged with a nod, "as long as you are aware of that, let's see what they do. Get into position." Chadwick stepped into the little circle of stones that was his designated spot. He would always start in the middle of the camp.

He stood up straight and took a deep breath in preparation. Vander waved a hand and all the soldiers, in various states of dress, appeared around Chadwick. A second later a horn sounded and those soldiers not in armor dove into tents to put it on, or at least grab a weapon. Chadwick turned towards the direction the horn came from and watched for anything in the air. There was a dirt mage and a kinetic mage out there that worked together.

The dirt mage could compress large balls of dirt, ones that would normally be too large for a mage to launch with any degree of speed. The kinetic mage could turn that slow moving brown mass into a deadly projectile. The combination of the two mage types made for an effective artillery weapon. Unfortunately for them, the more compressed the dirt was, the easier it was for Chadwick to deconstruct it.

As soon as he saw the brown projectile flying into the soldiers he would know which direction to go to find two of the enemy mages in one place. Vander deliberately kept the exact timing of the battle and the direction the mages came from different each time. This wasn't about Chadwick memorizing one specific battle. It was about learning to fight. In a slight change to the normal routine, the air mage came rocketing through the air, bringing a cloud of dust with him. Presumably provided by the dirt mage.

Chadwick shrugged, this just meant he could deal with the dirt and kinetic mages after testing his new enchantments. When the air mage got in range, Chadwick activated the first stone. The first completely stripped away the air in a huge column that started at about eight feet up and then went a good one hundred feet into the sky. Leaving the air mage with no air around him. Taking away his ability to fly, but not his momentum.

The mage was about halfway through the column that contained no air when Chadwick turned on the second stone. This one functioned much like the first, targeting a column that went straight up, starting at eight feet above the ground so as not to affect the soldiers or Chadwick. The second stone dialed up the gravity to an extreme degree. The mage went from flying sideways, to plummeting directly down at a prodigious rate. This kept him inside the vacuum column.

As soon as Chadwick saw the air mage trying to pull on the surrounding air to overcome the enchanted stone and force air back into the column, he let the stone collapse the field that was holding the air away, but only at the top of the column. The effect of the air mage pulling and the sudden release of the vacuum meant that the air rushed into from the top of the column with an enormous thunderclap.

The combination of the gravity rune and the air suddenly rushing back down the column, fired the air mage into the ground so fast that all that was left was a crater in the grass field. Vander was watching from the side of the field and gave a nod of approval. With the most problematic threat dealt with, Chadwick hunted for the duo of the dirt and kinetic mages. He knew the rough direction the dirt mage was in. He had never failed to find the kinetic mage right next to him.

He slipped between soldiers and used his smaller stature to avoid the melee going on around him. He had a proximity field of conditional magic that would deconstruct anything that was sharp or moving beyond a certain speed, if it got within about six inches of him. It was only good for a few charges though. So, it was better not to waste them on something he could easily avoid by just paying attention.

He raced to where the dirt cloud had come from and altered his course slightly when he heard a squeal of tortured metal and some screams coming from a little to his left. He had been on this battlefield enough times to recognize the dirt mage at work. He had to duck as a soldier flew over his head, along with a shower of dirt. As soon as the dead man was past him, he could see the duo mages hiding behind a wall of compressed earth at the edge of the battlefield.

Chadwick's tiny particle launching, his main source of offensive magic, wouldn't do much to hard packed earth. So he raced up to the wall, dodging one smaller ball of earth that the dirt mage fired without the help of his kinetic mage. Neither of them prepared for a young boy to come running at them so fast. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. As soon as got close enough to touch the wall, he deconstructed the whole thing.

The closer he was, the easier it was to deconstruct something. It still took quite a lot of his reserves of magic, but it left the dirt mage suddenly very exposed. He was used to being safe behind his wall. And it was suddenly gone. Chadwick had tried a few times to deconstruct just the section in front of the mage, but that left him with too much available surrounding dirt to work with. Which he could use to block Chadwick's follow up attacks.

In the dirt mage's moment of panic, he reached out to the dust that was now falling around him. But his magic failed him as the dirt particles were so small now that there was almost nothing to grab a hold off. Moving five thousand tiny particles was infinitely harder for an elemental mage than it was to move an inch of material that was made up from the same amount of particles in one solid piece. But, amongst the particles was where Chadwick thrived.

He didn't hold back this time and decided he was going to finish this task thoroughly. No more attempts at just incapacitating. He grabbed as many particles as his magic and focus would allow and bombarded the dirt mage from all directions. The result was… messy. The dirt mage was left with thousands of minuscule burning holes that had shot all the way through him. In most places, the burning trails had cauterized themselves from the heat of the fast-moving particles. Leaving his skin blackened.

In many places blood just seemed to well up to the surface of his skin. Seeping out of thousands of tiny holes. Like the man was sweating blood. With how many particles Chadwick had fired straight through the man's brain, there was little chance of him retaliating before enough blood leaked out to fully kill him. With one down, Chadwick was already turning to deal with the nearby kinetic mage who hadn't managed to do more than try and slow down the particles Chadwick had fired.

The kinetic mage had ran into the same problem as the dirt mage though, his magic was more suited to altering the kinetic energy of single objects. He could stop a lot of particles, since movement was his specialty. But he could only sense the movement of them and then react, he couldn't see them at all. And he certainly couldn't stop them all. One thing the kinetic mage excelled at was blanket stopping things as they got within a certain range of his body.

The closer something got to him, the more control he had over it. So, even if Chadwick blasted him with particles from all directions. He couldn't get past that defense. The kinetic mage didn't need to see the particles to stop them at that point, he just had more control over the particles than Chadwick as they got closer. So, Chadwick had come up with a better way to handle the kinetic mage five attempts earlier. It had worked extremely well every time since.

He physically attacked the much larger man, who — perhaps because of being more inclined towards being a ranged attacker — instinctively ran away. The kinetic mage could move very fast. A quick dodge to one side would actually speed up as he applied his kinetic magic to himself. With his magic being stronger the closer it was to him, it didn't get much closer than using it on himself.

Chadwick found the effect very disconcerting when his brain insisted the man would slow down after he leaped, but he instead sped up. The kinetic mage must have had a lot of practice at it, because he would rapidly speed up and then slow down. Making him almost look like he was zipping to one side. His usual follow up move was to throw coins and then speed them up. They would make a horrific whirring noise and Chadwick had to be very quick if he wanted to deconstruct one before it hit him.

But, like the five previous times Chadwick had tried this move, it worked perfectly. He lunged at the mage, and as soon as the mage started to jump in a direction. Chadwick used one of his enchanted items that would grab particles from the air and compress them into a wall so thin you could still see through it. He was effectively summoning an invisible wall. A wall that the kinetic mage leaped into head first at the peak of his acceleration.

Rather than leaving the unconscious kinetic mage there, Chadwick fried the man's brain with a burst of high-speed particles and then went hunting for the last mage. The one that would be in amongst the soldiers by now. A metal mage. Vander was still watching carefully, but he was almost frozen in shock now. He thought it would take the boy months more to reach this point. Not only had he seemingly gotten over his urge to play nice with the attacking mages.

But he was currently done with three of the four mages and only four of the soldiers had died. The boy may have the advantage of getting to repeat a fight against the same enemies over and over until he got it right. But Vander was pretty sure he himself, at his peak, couldn't have taken out three such mages in the roughly 30 seconds it had taken Chadwick. And certainly not without so much as a scratch on him.

The dirt mage may not be too bad because of his tendency to compress his dirt, which only made it easier for a particle mage to assault. But the other two mages were some of the most difficult fights a particle mage could face. Only a liquid mage was worse out of the common mage-types, and Vander was saving one of his memories of fighting a liquid mage as the last fight he would have Chadwick learn from. When Vander actually experienced this fight he only came out of it with four of the soldiers still alive.

And he himself had several broken bones. If he wasn't so certain that he had died long ago in the real world, he would be slightly scared of what this boy could do when he finished his training. Since the lad still hadn't snapped out of the trance-like state of being in a book, the Chief Mage decided to take care of some tower business. He turned to Sal and asked, "tell me, could the boy handle all your enchanting duties?"

Sal looked miserable at the question, he had kept his position at the tower through the sheer inability for anyone to replace him. He knew that would eventually be sent to the war front anyway, but he was… scared. He'd had to admit that to himself when he first started teaching the lad enchanting. He knew this would be coming. He felt bad at himself for the fact that he was somewhat relieved to be able to answer, "he is working on a 22-point conditional now.

So he isn't at the point yet where he can make new messaging stones." He was almost certain that by saying that, he was condemning the boy to a one-way trip to the war. The Chief Mage nodded and then said almost to himself, "he will need to turn over the message decoding. It might be time we just get one of the assistants to do it." Sal breathed a shuddering sigh of relief.

The creation of new messaging stones only required a 25-point conditional and there was a chance the Chief Mage would have insisted he get the boy ready to take over, and Sal himself would be sent to fight. He felt himself panic a little as the Chief Mage continued though.

"Nevertheless, find one of your students that would be capable of taking on the task. Find someone who has the capacity to make it to 25-point conditionals, ideally around the time they would reach two large weights," said the Chief Mage. Sal's mind went to a dark place, he could practically hear the bells tolling his death, but he still nodded and quietly answered, "yes, Chief Mage."

"Oh, and make a new batch of necklaces before you go, the one I have on me for the lad is almost my last," said the Chief Mage. Sal's eyes twitched around the edges a little and he was screaming internally, but he once again answered, "yes, Chief Mage." After all, he wasn't able to say anything else. Chadwick added another notch to his fishing rod and whistled with surprise when he actually decided to count them.

He had been so thoroughly invested in his training that he never really gave much thought to how long he had been here. It also helped that he didn't actually age here, so the biological imperative to get on with life wasn't really present. There was literally no reason to hurry. He double-checked his notching count to be sure and then did the math in his head, finally saying, "six years. Huh, all grown up."

He turned back to Vander who had followed him down the stream that day and was sitting on the grass reading another book.

"I'd be officially an adult now, if I wasn't stuck in some terrifying dream of a raving psychopath," he said to Vander. Vander looked around at the idyllic forest and fields with the bubbling mountain stream next to them stocked with endless fish, and nodded, "it really is a horrible hellscape, the fetid nightmares of a madman no doubt. What do you want for dinner?"

"Deer might be nice. We still have some left, right?" Asked Chadwick, still idly flicking his fishing pole.

"Yep, I even think there were some Siyene yellow peppers growing in that western field," said Vander, still sitting flipping through the occasional page.

"Oh no, you aren't tricking me with those horrible things again. No matter what you say, nobody willingly eats anything that spicy," said Chadwick firmly. Vander looked affronted, "when have I ever lied to you boy?"

"What about those giant slugs in that swamp battle? You insisted they wouldn't try to eat me," said Chadwick with a slight glare. Vander let just a twitch of a smile break his affronted look, "look, I honestly thought they would consider you inedible. Not an ounce of fat on you." Chadwick just snorted and then looked serious for a moment, "I think I want another try at the caves tomorrow." Vander closed his book with a snap, "very well, but the offer still stands boy, you can leave any time, just say the word.

Having to deal with nightmare shades and mind spikers is very much not on the standard curriculum." Chadwick nodded his understanding, "I said I wanted perfection. I'm not backing out just because you happen to have such evil creatures lurking in your mental basement. Makes me wonder about your fitness for teaching children though." Vander scowled, but it was mostly for show, then responded, "it's not my fault some baby-faced scribe wandered in here without an ounce of training.

I'm supposed to receive the best of the best! Those who wish to perfect their craft with a master!"

"Yeah, yeah. The pinnacle of human achievement," Chadwick said with an exaggerated yawn, "heard it all before. Just make the cave old man." Their banter over the years had increased as Chadwick mentally aged, even if he was still the same physical age as when he arrived. He did find the banter was happening more often since he started the mental resistance training he was doing inside the cave. As something of a defense mechanism. The nightmare shades in the cave were insubstantial creatures that looked like fog.

They would make Chadwick experience his worst fears when they floated over him. He couldn't escape the mental attack until he could calmly face those same fears. The last three times, he needed to be rescued by Vander. But he was determined to make it on his own this time. The mind spikers were less terrifying since they just looked like big toads. Even if they were equally hard to deal with. They just assaulted the mind directly and required building up mental defenses over time.

These defense were something that Chadwick apparently had none of when he started. The attack itself felt like suddenly being exposed to flames, ice, jabs with needles and being hit with deafening noise all at once, directly in the brain. It was a sudden and horrible overwhelming of all the senses. The traditional way of training mental defense was apparently meditation and forcing yourself to handle a difficult, but pointless task, over and over.

Like moving heavy boulders up a hill and then pushing them back down. To master your willpower. Vander scoffed at these ideas and said his way was much quicker. Chadwick could certainly see the change. He went from lasting only a second against a mind spiker, to three seconds, to almost ten seconds. Provided he could stay standing, Vander would let him continue.

It took him eighteen more tries, with several days of breaks between each to recover before he could finally stand before a mind spiker and not so much as flinch. The nightmare shades took another three months. Being told to "face your fears" apparently wasn't as easy as actually doing it. Especially when each time you conquered a fear, it would pick a new one to throw at you. Conquering your biggest fear just meant that the next-biggest was waiting in line.

Chadwick wasn't even aware he was scared of house-sized spiders until he had to face one down. It took almost as long to get over as the wolf from his travels with Mage Sloan. And these two were just the first two monsters with mental attacks that Vander had in his memories. The bit that worried Chadwick wasn't how long it might take him to learn to deal with the seemingly endless parade of nasty creatures that Vander said he would prepare him for.

But that Vander actually had memories of all these things, in enough detail to summon them for Chadwick to learn on. The combination of those nightmare creatures and Vander's memories of fighting a seemingly endless stream of different types of mages, was making Chadwick worry that the life of a mage was a rather violent one. Not that he had much against a solid bit of violence anymore.

He had actually asked Vander to let him face the water mage a few dozen more times than needed after he finally beat him, just to get the sensation of drowning out of his system by killing the man some more. It helped him get over the more than one hundred losses he had had against the water mage before finally beating him. So, in certain circumstances — especially where liquid mages that wanted him dead were involved — he could see the need for violence. Extreme violence even.