By the next morning, the temple was buzzing with activity.
Runners darted through cloisters carrying wicker baskets and sloshing jugs; scribes hunched over slates, quills scribbling so rapidly they squeaked; bells rang at consistent intervals, and everyone silently shifted their focus to attend to something else.
The place was a lively mess, and Orion would have enjoyed it more if the smoke from the dozens of cauldrons currently being brewed hadn’t filled the air so thickly.
“Careful with the straining cloth; don’t wring it, fold and press,” he said as a younger initiate, who had yet to get her proper class, almost ruined a strength potion.
“You heard him,” a gray-bunned witch said as she passed by, eyes crinkling. “Fold and press!”
He’d been forced to volunteer after breakfast, and before he even knew what was happening, a ladle had been thrust into his hand, and he was directed toward a line of copper pots. After the third batch, he stopped making excuses and took over the process, and the older witches began oohing and aahing as he directed the younger generation.
He couldn’t deny that he enjoyed doing something he was skilled at, even if it had been a while since he brewed this much.
Following the correct sequence and timing for rinsing glassware, Orion steeped willow bark at the exact temperature until its bitterness mellowed into medicine, then cooled a volatile decoction with a gust of wind instead of surrounding the cauldron with cool water, as would have been the standard procedure.
When a novice ruined a batch, he rescued it without berating them, figuring out which ingredient was needed to restore the balance thanks to [Hypotheticism].
“Who was your teacher in potions?” asked the gray-bun witch, hovering just above his shoulder.
“My mother,” he said, and she hummed as if that explained everything. Which, here, it did.
In the courtyard, apprentices stretched strips of linen blessed under moonlight and stitched sigils into the edges of field-tents, enchanting them with heat retention here, water shedding there, and a very delicate sound-dampening so sleep could be achieved without completely isolating the person inside.
“They’ve crossed the outer posts,” a runner gasped, clutching her chest as if she’d run all the way to tell them. “They’re ten miles out.”
The noise in the halls increased as cauldrons were sealed, labeled, and pushed aside. Boxes were snapped shut, and children hurried to sweep away soot and dust to make the temple presentable.
Orion had only just finished the latest batch of healing brews, which had required coordinating the pull of light mana from the field to avoid tainting another potion and weakening the entire batch, when the news that everyone had been waiting for arrived. “They’re at the gates!”
He found himself carried along by the rush of excited witches. His stone foot kept pace easily now, as the rune translators pulled his mana and provided a smooth experience, though he’d still prefer his own foot, especially when he suspected he’d have to stand for quite a bit longer, and no matter how much stone could be enchanted, it was still stone.
They arrived at the main street a few minutes later, just as the gates were being opened.
The witches did not come like a typical army, with flying banners and gleaming armor, as other factions, such as the Radiant Vigil, would have.
Thirty figures flew down from the sky in a spearpoint V formation on brooms, and behind them, loose squadrons formed the edges of a defensive line, three hundred strong, thinning only near the tail where the lookouts ranged farther.
They flew low enough to kiss the top of the wall in a bit of showmanship that made people cheer wildly.
Orion’s glasses displayed numbers across his vision as he checked the front line, and he was unsurprised to find that all of them were Magistrae, with their levels starting in the low hundreds and a couple of outliers reaching into the one hundred and forty range.
The rear flights were not bad either, composed of Tier Two witches with clearly battle-oriented traits and relatively high Attunement stats.
Overall, they were a formidable force that could have easily rivaled any army, and their presence did much to reassure the locals that they weren’t being abandoned.
Asteria stood in the middle of the avenue, hands behind her back as she waited for the reinforcements to present themselves before her.
The spearpoint dispersed in the final hundred feet as the formation moved into a hover, and the leading witch drifted down.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Is that? Yes, yes, it is. I can’t believe it, but it is her.
Elder Candra was a small, hunched woman, more known for her rants against dwarves than any battle skills. Hell, she was considered the Veil Priestess closest to retirement, given that she was talked about as a doddering has-been.
There was nothing doddering about her now. Her aura was a crown of pearled light that rippled through the dissipating morning mist, and she dismounted well before touching down, flying the last part on her own willpower.
She and Asteria held each other’s eyes for a brief moment before stepping forward together, embracing, as the crowd cheered even louder.
“Elder Candra,” Asteria said, smiling in a way that told Orion she wasn’t as surprised as he was.
“Dear Asteria,” Candra said, and her voice was warm and raspy. “I heard you decided to grow up.”
“I see you decided to stop pretending to be infirm.”
Candra’s laugh shook her frame, but she lifted her chin, and her voice rang out clearly without any magic. “People of Last Thaw! Today marks the end of the nightmare and its beginning for our enemies!”
The crowd cheered wildly, and Orion nearly expected fireworks to go off, such was the excitement.
By the afternoon, the chaos of preparation had given way to a different kind of noise, as the newcomers were welcomed, space was set aside for them to camp temporarily, and supplies began to be distributed.
There was a moment when Orion worried he’d be pulled into helping again, but luckily, everyone seemed to have forgotten about him, so he slipped away.
That was, however, not before he got his hands on a wyrm scale from the spoils of his mother’s battle and took it with him to the secluded courtyard he’d been practicing in the last couple of days.
He had gotten permission, but he was unsure how much the witch in charge of that task understood that he wanted to destroy the scale, not admire it.
It seems like everyone is mostly interested in the newcomers, so I should be good training in the back for the next while, he thought as he set the scale against a training dummy and took a couple of steps to observe it.
Up close, the object could have tempted a jeweler with its iridescent layers, each angled differently to catch and reflect light in a multitude of colors.
However, Orion wasn’t interested in its beauty and pushed [Hypotheticism] hard to understand exactly how it lent such protection to its bearer, given that the wyrmlings, despite being the young of their species, had been able to deflect everything he’d thrown at them but [Gamma Ray].
He inhaled and let the trait do its work, as information began to flow into his mind. Strategic spacing within the sections, discontinuity between the mana nodes, and embedded storages of crystalized mana were revealed, all adaptable and, more importantly, extremely resilient to stress, meaning that the wyrms could expel their own mana without worry of undermining their defenses.
“Truly, an unfair biological advantage,” he murmured. But that’s why it’s so important to study them now. Especially since I won’t just face wyrmlings. Grown worms, drakes, and even dragons are on the menu.
He hummed and activated with [Falsifiability Criterion], trying to influence the complex structure now that he could see what it did.
His Knowledge fought against its natural resilience, but eventually, he saw the structure start to crack and stopped before it could break on him.
“So it’s not impossible to break, unless you come at it directly,” he reasoned. It wouldn’t be feasible for him to analyze every drake he encountered, not without having someone much stronger watching his back to prevent them from eating him, but the more he learned now, the better he could refine his next offensive spells.
[Infinite Laser] had reached a limit, that much was obvious. He had adjusted the spell many times, increasing the power consumption and output, but it still possessed the structure of a tier one spell. No matter how much he tinkered with it, it wasn’t [Gamma Ray].
And although he knew he could now use his most powerful spell without risking his own well-being, he still couldn’t cast it repeatedly, which meant he needed another way.
“What has worked so far?” he asked aloud, and the answer was clear. His mother had all the power needed to kill the wyrmlings without changing her own spells, and Pauline had the advantage of a compatible element. Both options were viable, but they would take much more time than he had to develop.
Eire, on the other hand, used a much simpler method that was just as effective.
Her constructs were strengthened by her magic, no doubt, but their offensive power still came from something very simple.
Mass and momentum. The golems were extremely heavy, and when they wielded their mass as a weapon, even the legendary scales of the draconic species couldn’t do much. It was just physics.
Orion crouched down and grabbed a pebble, sensing its weight.
It probably weighed no more than fifty grams and was smooth, with one flat side that let it fit comfortably in his palm. He balanced it on his left fingers before rolling it in his hand.
“Let’s see if I can still learn a lesson from my teacher,” he said, amused.
He wrapped the pebble in a tight gravitational sphere, carefully ensuring only it was affected and that he could retain full control even if it slipped out of his range, using more mana than usual for such a spell.
But that was okay, since prototypes didn’t have to be fully functional on the first attempt.
He drew on the Higgs Field, making the pebble's mass constantly slow, resist, and gain inertia beyond what nature typically permits.
To start writing the equation, he created what he called the Higgs-Coupling Coefficient “alpha_H,” a metaphysical analogue of the weak-field interaction constant that determined how strongly matter interacted with the Mass-Granting Field, and he added a spatial damping factor “beta” to prevent the spell from accidentally influencing nearby objects.
Cocking his arm, Orion exhaled, letting the formula unfurl in his mind and through the CC, which gave it stability and smoothed out the last rough edges.
M_eff(t) = M0 + ΔM(t)
ΔM(t) = α_H * Φ_A^2 * Ψ(t) * exp( ?β r )
Ψ(t) = dχ/dt
χ(t) = γ * sin(ω t) * Ω_M
If χ → 0 :
Ψ(t) → 0
ΔM(t) = constant
? M_eff = M0 If χ → 1 :
Ψ(t) maximized
? ΔM(t) = 500kg ? M0
? M_eff = 500kg
release_key → set χ = 0
? M_eff(t) collapse back to M0
The pebble hummed in his hand before suddenly shooting toward the scale with a loud bang that made him flinch in surprise.
The first thing to give wasn’t the scale but the post behind it. There was a wet crunch as wood splintered, no matter the reinforcement that had been woven into it. Then the scale cracked, and the pebble continued its journey through the post and into the far wall.
There was a loud thump as the stone cracked, but fortunately held, and Orion let out a breath, surprised by how destructive that had been.
A slow clap came from the archway.
Orion spun around, fully prepared to justify using the scales for destructive experiments despite its market value, when he saw who it was.
Elder Candra stood in the doorway, smiling warmly as if he were a favorite grandson who had learned a new trick.
Which, really, wasn’t that far from the truth.
“Not bad, little Orion,” she croaked. “I see you haven’t slacked off that much since leaving the Sanctum. But that doesn’t mean you're quite done yet, does it? That wouldn’t have actually killed anything but the youngest wyrmling.”
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