C. Sebastian Nutt
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Chapter 202 - Alerted
🕑 Added 2025-07-18 19:50:20 +0000 UTCDovik feels a buzz tingle through his fingertips. It is a slight thing, barely registering, but he feels it all the same.
He sits inside the vault Charlene had deposited in the dome, his chair pulled up to the bed where Jess lies. On the other side of the bed, one of the healers sits in a similar chair, his head lolled back against the rest, his eyes closed. The man collapsed from mana exhaustion; several of the healers had. Dovik doesn’t think less of the man for it, the opposite, if anything. The healer had put every ounce of his magic into saving Jess before collapsing. It hadn’t been an easy thing to get the man in the chair, not with his leg cut up like it was, but Dovik had done that much.
He stares down at his leg, at the red bandage wrapped several times around the wound. There it is, just a single injury, and he is out of the fight. Dovik understands well the nature of magicians, of how they can train their various aspects to make them stronger, of the cost in doing so. Training the ability to recover is the hardest, he knows. His father had lectured him time and time again that he needed to do so, had made him do so more than once.
He has never gotten over those days, days spent stabbing himself in the meaty parts of his thighs with small knives to make his body heal itself, of running until he vomited to make his body improve at its recovery time. When his father no longer cared to monitor his development and began to look to other proteges, those days were the first thing Dovik stopped doing. He developed a plan of his own, to never get hit, then he would never have to heal.
Rubbing his leg, a sad smile comes to his lips. “I guess that didn’t work, did it. And now it’s probably too late to change course.”
Something sparks between his fingers, the buzz running through his hand arcing from one appendage to the other. He stares down, the bit of magic reminiscent of something from long ago. The flavor of mana is evident from the outset. If there is one kind of mana Dovik knows, it is space mana. But, how could it be here?
A thought, a prayer, forms in his mind. With a grunt, Dovik levers himself from the chair, favoring his injured leg as he bends over the bed. “I have to check something out,” he says to Jess, stroking the back of her hand. The warmth of her skin is almost as good as a healing potion might be, just then, not that anyone in this backwater could afford such extravagances. His eyes linger on the exhausted healer still unconscious in the chair. How many people might a few mana potions have saved tonight? Best not to think about it.
His gait as he makes his way from the vault isn’t as bad as a limp. The ache in his leg worsens with each step, but with each step comes better mobility as well. Dovik follows the buzz of magic in his fingers, the barely perceptible pull he feels that drags his attention beyond the wards of the dome. No one stops him as he makes his way through the rows of dirty blankets housing the injured and insensate. It isn’t until he reaches the barrier that a woman steps in his way, talking to him as if he is some delirious patient wandering around in places he ought not be. In some ways, he figures that is exactly what he is.
It doesn’t matter. The woman doesn’t physically try to stop him until he is within reach of the overlapping barrier, and by then, he can push out his soul presence to cross between the manifolds. In a flash, he disappears, reappearing on the other side of the barrier. Not many magician created barriers can stop space magic; it appears this one is no different. A sword appears in Dovik’s hand as soon as he crosses the threshold, but nothing appears to attack him from all sides. He releases his held breath, looking around at the mostly deserted battlefield.
Out here, past the protection of the domes, he can hear the bombastic crackling of magic. It sparks overhead, signatures of powerful magic of every kind exploding above the crown of the giant tree. His friends never came back to the hospital. If they were anywhere, they would be up there or out among the dead that litter the ground.
Dovik shakes his head, pushing away the thought. No, if Charlene managed to survive this long, she wouldn’t die here today. That would just be too tragic to stomach.
The explosions of magic high overhead are not the only things that grow louder past the walls of the protective dome. He feels it again, the tingling in his hand, but now the buzz has grown into a real pull. No longer confused about the sensation, he hobbles off in the direction he is needed.
He spots a few demons as he makes his way through the battlefield, but those that spy him steer far clear. Some hide beneath benches or broken pieces of wood, but most have run off somewhere, far gone by the time that he made his way outside the domes. They would head to the city, he knew. The 4th would probably be hunting them for weeks through the city. What a shitshow.
The pull of magic continues to drag him on, leading him into a nondescript building set to the far west of the estate grounds. Dragging himself there becomes an agony, the wound through his leg opening again to leak blood. Inside, he finds exactly what his growing suspicion tells him that he would. An enchanted ring of silver rests, set into black volcanic stone. He recognizes the general formation; the circle isn’t so different from the one back in Grim. There are more bodies here, guards scattered around the room, most dead but a few still clinging to life.
Dovik halts at the entrance, his eyes roaming over the bodies on the floor, his eyes scanning the few souls still lingering on this side of the mortal divide. Nothing stirs at his presence, nothing notices. A trickling line of blood follows him as he makes his way into the room. Magic hums through the enchanted circle on the ground, a building charge of space mana trying to run through a broken circuit. The stone is chipped here and there, lines broken in places along the enchanted ring–a clear attempt at sabotage.
The culprit didn’t know what they were doing, that is clear to Dovik at first glance. They managed to knock out portions of the ring here and there, to misalign it, but the damage isn’t irreparable. As he bends down, pulling silver coins from his inventory and stuffing them into the breaks in the ring, he wonders at the circumstance, how it was he that should be here now. Perhaps his mother was wrong, perhaps there was some god out there looking out for them. Probably not, but the thought was a soothing one.
As he works, his eyes continue to stray up, landing upon the body of a woman lying against the far wall, smoke still rising from her. She is burned badly, but she still breathes. He continues to hobble around the circle, glancing at her every time he moves, wondering if this will be the time she wakes up. She doesn’t, but he can’t help but keep looking, because that woman, she has a soul that he recognizes, the soul of a monster.
Comments
Tarrim
I assume it's an emergency teleportation enchantment.
