Four days later, Mena and Leslie arrived. They arrived with the merchant from Lark that normally came to sell us food and sundries. The addition of the lad from Woodhoot, Fin, came as no great surprise and I had him settled into a partitioned room near the kitchens that he would share with Rolf.

The ladies were suitably chastised and embarrassed by their performance as my attendants, or at least tactful enough to act that way. They also seemed to have come to some kind of understanding, even if it was only the kind that they agreed not to speak to each other more than necessary.

Over the next two days, there was a pretty large quarrel when Leslie discovered that Philipe had visited one of the nature elementals. Evidently, they were in a youthful romantic relationship and Philipe’s actions broke a trust. A trust that was already broken by a not-so-secret entanglement between Leslie and Jax.

In the end, the argument made all three of them sulk about for a few days until I assigned extra duties to keep the three separated. I would need to evaluate their morals separately, as none of them displayed the refinement of character I expected from my pupils.

Leslie and Mena had also been tasked with seeing to Rolf and Fin’s education. Fin needed to be brought up to speed on his reading and writing, though he seemed very astute with arithmetic already despite not knowing the written numbers. Leslie saw to that with exacting standards. Mena, on the other hand, led the boys in an afternoon practice of swordsmanship with wooden swords. Meathead helped, in his own way.

Within five days of their return, I deemed it time to travel. I donned my flight attire, a set of weather-resistant tunic and trousers. The trousers were incredibly uncomfortable, not because of their make but because they were trousers. The things were fine for other people, such as [Loggers] or [Cartwrights], but a wizard should wear a robe! Yet, a robe can easily lead to impropriety with an errant gust of wind. It was the type of conundrum that left me wearing a thin robe over the trousers in an effort to remain minimally fashionable.

Six of the wind elementals and two of my gargoyles were sufficient to carry me and my experimental materials. My gargoyles were stone owls, each inhabited by a fourth-tier earth elemental and two lesser-tier wind elementals. One gargoyle carried the large emeralds, and the other carried my most dangerous experiment, the triple-sealed case with the parasitic mushroom spores. My six wind elementals followed with what was needed for my other experiments as well as food and sundries.

My assistants and underlings all came to the top of the tower to bid me farewell, and I waved them goodbye.

Once in the air, I got a firsthand look at my magnificent tower and the surrounding dismal bog in which it lay. I could track the pathways that Kine and Walker had created as they looped back and forth among the waters, and easily saw the smoke from distant towns and villages. Though time was too short to enjoy the sight, I took a moment to take it all in before directing my elementals to travel southwest.

It only took a few hours’ time to make it. The sights along the way were trivial, mostly bog and forest with the occasional hunter or adventurer until we reached Mist Town. A misnomer, as Mist Town was only a little larger than a village, built along a crevasse that a mountain stream fell into. The stream's waterfall created a pleasant ever-present mist that gave the village its name.

Turning west from there, I headed to Llal Town, the Baron’s seat. From what I’ve been told, it was once a town called Bark, but neither names were terribly imaginative, so I didn’t see much of a difference. As I approached the town from the air, I was not impressed.

Three roads connected to that eastern entrance, a wider dirt road that ran north to south, and the path I followed from Mist Town. I could see cavalry that patrolled the length, and assumed that the wider road likely led in the direction of the Baron’s adventuring party’s domains. The entire town itself was locked in among four large forested hills.

While there were several larger buildings, including a church and the stone keep that was the baron’s home, the keep looked to be in disrepair. The church was under construction. A flimsy wooden arena was built beside the keep, and a large stable constructed beside a field at the entrance of the town. Most of the homes were made from unprocessed logs with mud or clay sealings and some kind of dried wooden leaf used for the roof.

I paused over the town, ignoring the strange looks I received from the townsfolk and scanned the hills for anything that could identify the witch the Baron had mentioned. Eventually, I started flying back and forth over the surrounding forests until I came across a clearing and a building that I suspected belonged to her.

Even more hidden than the town, the witch’s hut was a pocket of bramble grown and shaped into a dome. To the sides of the hut were a thick assorted garden of vegetables, and a ring of stone for a fire was in the center of the clearing. The entrance was marked with only a curtain, and several skinned rabbits hung nearby to drain. With careful direction to my wind elementals, I bid them to lower me slowly to the ground. I brushed the wrinkles out of my robe and cast a quick cleaning on myself before I spoke.

“Good Afternoon,” I called with a smile in my voice.

After a moment or two with no answer, I called out again a little louder. When there was no answer the second time, not even a rustle, I couldn’t help but frown. Is she not home? It was presumptuous of me to assume she would be. Perhaps she is ill and requires my aid? I paced back and forth, running a hand through my beard as I thought.

The chances of her being injured or ill were very slim. It’s likely she was out hunting more rabbits or other game. Though, if she were injured or sick, and I left her alone she would hold that against me, wouldn’t she? If I were in that situation, would I hold it against someone else? It’s not as if I know where she is, okay or not. A quick peek is all I need to be certain, after all. One quick peek.

It was moments later, as I flipped through her magical tome that doubled as a journal in an empty hut, that a bird song reminded me of what I should be doing. The hut itself was rather plain of magical supplies. A few potions. Two or three books on a shelf beside a crystal ball and other assorted nick-nacks. The rest of the hut was a small bed of furs and a small table with a single chair.

Still, the spellcraft in her tome seemed to be an assortment of curses and hexes, with the odd cantrip here and there. Much of it seemed to be puzzled out over time, indicating she was self-taught. I saw no indication of a longevity spell, other than a simple life-drain ritual that was too crude to work correctly. Eating the beating hearts of animals? My tastes are much too refined for that nonsense, even if it did work.

With mild disappointment, I left her hut and called out a greeting to the woods. When nothing answered, I ordered the wind elementals to lift me away and head for the western mountains. As much as I had idealized the opportunity, I had more important tasks at the moment. I would stop by again on my return trip, but if she wasn’t there that time, I would dismiss my whimsical dreams.

The western mountain range spanned the whole continent from north to south. The peaks remained snowcapped year-round and contained all manner of beast and monster. Traveling by air made the trip easy enough, even if I had to fend off the occasional harpy or mountain drake. I was careful about my travel as well, keeping myself and the gargoyles hidden within an invisibility spell and an illusion of us that traveled twenty yards ahead. It helped distract most monsters but not all.

I did once need to circle around a flock of wyverns that nested at the very top of one particular mountain. They frightened me much more than any of the harpies, yetis, or ice wisps. But hundreds of tier four monsters should frighten anyone with reasonable sense.

When I finally emerged from the range, it fell off leaving sheer cliffs on the entire other side. Below me, hundreds and hundreds of feet, I witnessed the horror in person. Oh, I’d sent an air elemental a year ago to verify Baron Froom’s tale of pestilence. It wasn’t that I doubted him, but rather that I needed to see for myself what he meant by an ocean. With that elemental, I had seen enough to confirm his words. In fact, the word ocean seemed to be too small a description.

For as far as I could see, the ground was covered with the squirming bodies of the Pestilence. From this far in the air, they looked nothing more than an ocean of squirming snakes. I could see them digging in and out of the earth, gnawing on the trunks or roots of fallen trees, moving over and under and around each other. Whatever other life that had once existed in these lands was dead and gone.

The Pestilence weren’t all like the one I had originally fought, either. There were Armored Greater Hydra here, but there were also Greater Hydra, normal Hydra, and Lesser as well. Some even had elemental descriptors, like the Poison Hydra or the Earth Hydra. I couldn’t get a full accounting of them from this far up, not that any closer would give me any better perspective with the way they constantly moved about.

I stopped the illusions of myself before I flew out over the ocean of monsters. I flew until I could see the cliffs no more. There above the horde, I stopped. With nothing in sight but the monsters beneath me, it was enough to make me feel very insignificant. The creatures had devastated everything in their sight. Not even small grass or shrubs had been safe from their onslaught. The kingdoms as I knew them would have no defense against this.

That didn’t mean that I intended to give up or surrender to what might be the inevitable. I was here to test several ideas I had worked on over the past two years. The first, and simplest was a charm spell. I had redesigned it into two different types. One would target every being in an area. The second allowed me to designate multiple targets, up to twenty. Granted, this wouldn’t be that useful against a monster like I had first battled, one with hundreds of heads and a significant resistance to magic in general.

So, with little needed preparation, I cast the area charm on a small number of hydra directly beneath me. From this far in the air, I didn’t have a tome prepared to record the effect, so I watched carefully. It seemed to have worked wonderfully on the lesser hydra, but only marginally on the normal ones. The greater hydra and the ones with descriptors showed no effect.

That was unfortunate. I watched as the charmed hydra attacked the others mercilessly, only for the general area to devolve into a squirming ball of snake-like monstrosities. A handful of minutes later, nothing remained of the charmed hydra. I tsked and shook my head. A failure then. Even if cast hundreds or thousands of times, it would only weed out the lesser versions and leave the greater ones intact and well-fed.

Next, I wanted to try the variable charm spell. I didn’t expect better results, but I couldn’t just not test it after I developed it. I wanted to ensure it worked, even if the outcome was the same. Finding one from amongst the ball seemed as if it would take some time, so I switched to another spell that I had developed. A mass sleep spell geared towards snakes. Mass Sleep and Grand Sleep were already established spells, and I had spent some time testing variations on my snake pits to see if I could specialize it further.

Upon casting it on the twisting ball of hydra beneath me, I was surprised at how well it worked. Only the Greater Hydra within the ball remained awake, and even those had half their heads affected. That was much better than I had hoped. Still not enough to make a difference in the grand scheme of things, but if used in conjunction with a carefully laid trap it could prove wildly successful. It was also one of the types of spells I would be willing to share among the magical community.

Finding a Greater Hydra with a few awakened heads amongst the sleeping ones made it an easy target for my variable target Charm spell. Though even after casting it a few times, it didn’t work on the monster. After the failure of the mass charm spell, that was expected.

My next spell test involved a variable target Dominate spell. The Dominate spell was illegal in all Kingdoms but Mirktal for a reason—it made magical slaves. It was the basis for their slave collar enchantments, and very, very few people wanted to even consider the type of magic as possible. Regardless, as one of the few wizards and enchanters tasked with overcoming the collars used by that kingdom in the last war, I had more than a little familiarity with it.

I chose the same Greater Hydra I had been testing the Charm spells on, a six-headed brown-scaled creature that was covered in mud. The monster seemed to know where I was, even though I was hidden within an invisibility spell and my wind elementals would have hidden any scent. I wasn’t entirely certain how, but I imagined that whatever organ gave it resistance to magic also gave it an awareness of a sort. If I could trap a few to experiment on, it would be interesting to narrow down the organ and see if I could replicate it somehow.

When I cast Dominate on all six heads, five of them took—which had very interesting results. The five heads immediately attacked the sixth only for it to regrow as two more. Then they attacked those two. Which became four. The four heads ate one of the five before being devoured themselves. Those four grew back as eight, and the fifth head that was eaten grew back as two as well. None of the ten new heads were under the effects of the Dominate spell. By the time it was done attacking itself, the thing had eighteen heads instead of the original six.

Still, I cast the spell four more times on different Hydra to verify the results. Also, because I wanted to see what would happen if a Hydra had all heads completely dominated. Unsurprisingly, a completely Dominated Greater Hydra was immediately attacked by any others nearby, and the event turned into another twisting knot of squirming giant snakes.

Next, I tested a few more spells. An Advanced Fire Blade, which still wasn’t enough to shear through a Greater Armored Hydra, was one. A water spell for Variable Suffocate was overcome by their magic resistance. An earth spell Giant Stone Hand had dismal results. The earth spell Giant Earth Spike Field spell was surprisingly well suited for Hydra, as the spikes killed the heads in a manner that didn’t allow them to regrow and severely damaged their main bodies, often fatally. Though few mages would have the mana for that, and even a hundred casts of it wouldn’t make a difference in the volume of monsters.

One of the best results I had was a simple illusion spell. That of a giant rabbit that hopped along a Hydra’s body that attracted attacks from the other monsters around it. This broke whatever held that monster back from attacking its kin, and the outcome was once again an enormous ball of squirming hydra all trying to eat each other. Given that the illusion was formless, I had the illusionary rabbit hop about repeating the results at least twenty times before the spell ran out of mana.

I carried on with these tests and others for four days, pausing only to eat the travel rations I packed. Once I was satisfied that the minor tests were complete, I began flying further westwards. While I did plan to release the parasitic mushrooms and watch how quickly they spread, I wanted that to occur as far away from human lands as possible. I also needed a large mass of stone for my final test, and wanted to be standing atop a cliff far outside of these monsters’ reach should I run out of mana.

As I traveled, I realized that I was closer to the other side than I imagined. The land invaded by the hydra turned out to be a massively wide canyon, as if some great power had shorn through the center of a mountain range to level it. I had been testing the spells at perhaps three-fourths the way across to the cliffs on the opposite side. I hadn’t been certain that was the case and had prepared myself to find a single tall mountain to experiment from.

I also discovered that there was a flat grassy plateau near this side that would be perfect to test from. Unfortunately, it was currently occupied by some kind of goblin-human hybrid. A large muscular people who slung stones from the mountaintop and laughed a little too hard.

As I approached, still under the veil of invisibility, I found them to be closer to human than goblin in form. The skin was green and they had small tusks jutting from their lower jaw, which lent them a savage look. Though their clothing and mannerisms were little different than humans I was familiar with. Most humans lack sufficient discipline and propriety, so the standard they met wasn’t high.

I watched them for a moment, first because they were a race of people I wasn’t familiar with, and then to see if they had any spellcraft that was unique to them I could learn from. Unfortunately, the only spellcraft I saw was a blend of shamanism and druidism related to adjusting their physical bodies to incorporate aspects of animals. Nothing I hadn’t seen in the jungles of Tervan already.

I did confirm they weren’t monsters or a monsterized people though, as a quick analysis of a few displayed that they held classes. While these people were interesting in the way they decided to increase their levels and tiers by dropping stones from a cliff onto monsters, I moved further south on the plateau away from them to conduct my experiments.

The first experiment was rather simple to begin, but I doubted I would see immediate results unless something went horribly wrong. After removing some of the protections on the sealed stone container that held the variant parasitic mushroom, I had my wind elementals take it half a mile into the canyon and crush it so the spores spread amongst the Pestilence. I ordered them not to return until they ensured they were clean of spores, just to be certain.

While that was taking place, I used [Earth Manipulation] to pull forth a giant piece of stone and shape it into a boulder nearly as big as a Greater Hydra. When I finished, it stood taller even than my tower. Then I removed the fifteen large emeralds from my other gargoyle and used [Earth Manipulation] to begin combining them. It took nearly half a day to do, as the larger crystals needed careful and exact manipulation to ensure they melded correctly. It wasn’t as if I could just melt them together.

When I had finished, I took time to eat and nap, before reviewing my work on the grand-sized emerald I made. The crystal was nearly my height, and larger in diameter than most tree trunks. Sending my will into the crystal was easy, but my contact with the master of that plane was surprisingly antagonistic.

Mortal, why seek my kin?

Unlike the lords of the fire and water plane, I couldn’t identify a gender to this one. Its thoughts echoed around in my mind like the ice cracking.

I sent back an image of the boulder and imagined it rolling around and crushing the Hydra beneath it, over and over again.

I felt more than heard a rumble in my head. I couldn’t tell if it was an angry growl or laughter, but my head hurt as if I had beat it against a wall.

Why?

This was the first time any of the elemental lords had seemed reticent to lend me an elemental. Moreover, it was the most contact I ever had from a being this powerful. I was so surprised that I didn’t give an immediate answer. That didn’t seem to bother the elemental lord at all, though, as it waited for me with the patience of a… rock. Ah, such humor made my headache a little lighter.

I thought about everything I knew of the earth elementals. They were slow, steady. They didn’t think or feel much. Even the fourth-tier ones in my owls seemed satisfied to sit on the roof of my tower. Perhaps, it was the tier of elemental I was calling, or perhaps it was the act of moving. I wasn’t certain.

I sent back an image of the boulder rolling around in the canyon below and the feeling of happiness, hoping that would sway the elemental. Instead, the connection stopped abruptly. That must have been the wrong decision.

I paced back and forth before the crystal on that plateau, ignoring the return of my wind elementals. The abrupt denial of my request was both new and unusual. It had never happened before, and the last fifth tier elemental I had summoned—the only fifth tier elemental I had summoned—had been one of fire. It was more than happy to come to this plane.

I reached out through the emerald again and sent the image of the boulder and how awed I was at the size and shape. I compared it to myself and how I had to look up at it. The master of that plane didn’t even respond before they ended the connection.

I paced again, not sure if I should keep reaching out. If I annoyed this lord, could it hurt me? I imagined if they could, they would have already invaded this world. So, it was unlikely it could reach me without my connecting to the plane first.

For all the reasons I considered that this experiment could fail, this wasn’t one of them. It bothered me that the rejection was stopping my progress. More than that, it bothered me that I didn’t know if the elemental lord had a way to harm me and I had never known. I cast several spells to protect my mind, and then took a deep breath. I reached out through the emerald again, showing the boulder falling from the cliff and breaking to pieces.

I wasn’t sure if the elemental master would consider that an insult or a threat, but I felt determined to see if it could truly harm me through this connection. This time, the connection remained open but I heard no response back. I began pacing again. It wasn’t as if the master of an entire plane would be scared. It wasn’t as if I could harm it directly without traveling there, and I was not suicidal enough to try that.

I feared that I had erred, though. What if, instead of harming me directly, it interfered with my access to summon elementals from the plane of earth altogether? That would be embarrassing. I’m not certain I could live that down should anyone find out. I would need to put together a geas, or a curse, that activated if anyone realized, one that was related to a silence spell and had several behavioral limitations like—

I received an image back from the lord of the plane, one of the boulder rolling down the cliff and splattering over the hydra in its path. The image had an uncertainty about it as if it were a question. I sent the same image back to it without the uncertainty and soon I felt an elemental flow through the gem into the boulder. A powerful one. One with a willpower more than I had ever felt, a willpower so solid that it couldn’t be swayed.

I didn’t even need to direct the boulder, as it began to shake and rattle before it rolled off the cliffside and tumbled down into the seething mass below. I watched as it landed amid a hill of twisting hydra that gathered beneath it in expectation of a meal, only to be crushed completely. Other hydra around snapped at the remains of their kin only for the boulder to rumble and roll away. Slowly at first, but faster and faster, until it was gone from my range of vision.

I spent the rest of the evening writing down the results of my experiments so far. I so desperately wanted to visit the green-skinned people and learn more about them, but I resolved myself to only record what I had learned so far and try to speak with them another day.