163. Shadows, Souls, and Strategy (Patreon)

Lukas’s biggest concern was food and water supply. There was enough in the fortress to feed them for approximately a week. They were under siege. Hunkering down wasn’t an option. He would lose the battle of attrition. 

The Spellweavers were racing to complete the Dome of Life. The intended design involved making a section of the room a growing space for alchemical ingredients. They had repurposed it for food production, but the room was far from complete. Once the Spellweaver bound all the necessary spellforms to the room, it would take several days before the space began feeding Lukas and Mira. By his estimates, they needed another couple of weeks.

I have no other choice but to send out clones.

Eternal Tapestry proved an invaluable decision. The Spellweavers were already progressing much faster than Lukas or Merlin predicted. Their newest ability made binding spellforms to the fortress a breeze, reducing the time necessary for the process by half. The clones wove together the necessary spellform, using circle magic to fuel them, and they snapped in place, anchoring themselves to the Shadowsteel Fortress.

In the soulspace, the arcane and physical realm seemed to come together, becoming one. Lukas and the clones’ will and intent seemed to carry more weight than outside the Confluence. Thanks to the Spirit Glass produced using Mira’s silver dragonfire, the Spell Garden’s magic drain had dropped. Merlin’s projections suggested that once they had installed all the panes and attached spellforms to them, the room would be energy neutral, or as close to it as possible.

Lukas and the clones hadn’t worked with Spirit Glass before. All the literature they had covered regarding the topic suggested that it naturally didn’t have the ability to generate magic. It was good for storage and channeling. It also helped slow the flow of magic and reduce energy loss during the attunement conversion process. Merlin theorized that Mira’s dragonfire granted them unique properties.

After adapting to the curved sheets that housed them, the spells seemed to impart their attunement to the Spirit Glass and then generate magic of said attunement. At first, the unexpected development only fuelled the spell within, but then they began also feeding the nearby structures—Merlin had sorted all the glass panes and structures by attunement. Then, they also started feeding foundational magic that supported the Spell Garden.

A redesign of the Dome of Life followed in the hopes its arcane costs would similarly drop. It initially consisted of a massive dome with another within so it sat on the Spell Garden and the bucky-ball-shaped core room. A large circle of the roof was left open for a spirit glass skylight, which Merlin intended to imbue with a Life spell that emitted sunlight for the plants.

After some discussion, Lukas had the roof closed, turning it into a massive Shadowsteel dome, interlaced with Quicksilver. The wards and enchantments became a method of absorbing, amplifying, and gradually emitting Life Magic that encouraged growth and regeneration. Meanwhile, the inner dome that sat atop the bucky ball was replaced with a half Shadowsteel wall and Spirit Glass. The spellwork on it focused on converting storm energy into Life and Reinforcement magic.

The redesign also required changes to the core room. Lukas and Merlin had designed it as a buckyball so the individual hexagonal surfaces could easily be replaced for better materials. They envisioned of eventually making most of them of Dracosteel. The surfaces under the Dome of Life’s inner dome needed ot also become Spirit Glass. The light that flowed through would filter through the Spirit Glass surfaces, illuminating the space.

The greatest limitation to progress was currently Mira. Using magic seemed to assist with her recovery, but it also took a lot out of her, requiring long breaks between Spirit Glass, making sessions. There was a minor setback when Nibbler tried to help, breathing dragonfire for the first time. Unfortunately, he exhaled black instead of silver, ruining several hours of work.

Merlin came up with a solution that involved using three different spells to capture, contain, and then keep a mote of silver fire alive. They then channeled magic through it to convert the energy into more flames. It was far from efficient, but they didn’t have much time and speed was of the essence.

While the clones worked on the central sphere, Lukas turned his attention to the outer structures. Now that his Mind Pillar and Spellweaver were at tier three, he had no trouble wrestling shadows into his control and erecting two towers. They emerged from the seam where the Spell Garden met the Dome of Life. Now that the latter’s roof was a solid surface, he had no trouble erecting the upside-down, radish-shaped ritual room on top.

The necessary spellwork for him was beyond Lukas, and he moved on to studying the witch’s tome Weaver had given him.  It was like having to learn a whole new language. Soul magic didn't just target the soul, but also used it as a medium, and in a few alarming cases, fuel. The possibility of what a witch or coven could do to him alarmed Lukas. 

A section of it gave him pause. Soul Suppression’s function sounded awfully similar to what Silverspine's agent had done to Merlin. The alien magic had ensured that all magic and shard abilities within the room would cease to function. However, the projected Arcane Mind and Merlin's connection to it haven't suffered. 

If this is the same thing, that would mean the bastard's ability is similar or his mastery of it isn't potent yet. What if it's a new shard that he received specifically to fight me? Silverspine could've spent all of this time figuring out how Shadow Clone functions and creating contingencies in case I turned against her. Maybe all of her agents are designed to counter me or each other. 

Lukas didn't remember specifics of his jobs under her, but was sure a decent fraction involved taking down her former servants. The dragon always claimed that they had betrayed her or stolen from the hoard. As a good henchman, he never questioned her. Now that Lukas thought about it, he wasn't sure if the old him wanted to know the truth. Ignorance was easier. It was likely that Lady Silverspine simply wished to silence former employees. She was the kind of employer who preferred her people die in her service.

It was foolish of me to think that she'd just let me go and didn't have contingencies in place. 

Fracture was amongst the largest of the known inhabited worlds across all realms. It made Earth look like a dwarf planet. Magic and ambient energies and Fracture’s unique laws bent the rules of physics, ensuring gravity didn't crush all inhabitants. Civilization existed, spread across continental pockets. It wouldn't surprise Lukas if Lady Silverspine had interests spread across all of them. It would be impossible for one person to cover all of them in a lifetime. The continent alone was too much for him to handle alone, not that he had given the quests much attention or priority. 

“She's going to send people after us out of spite even after we sever her link to the journal,” Lukas said when taking a break from his studies. “Taking out this lot won't be enough.”

“We'll probably have to spend the rest of our lives looking out for them.” Merlin sighed. “But if they can't track us and we make the fortress our primary base of operations, there is little for us to worry about.”

“True. Once Shadow Gate is complete, we could spread them across cities and move around as we please. There is no need to have a home outside the fortress. But that doesn't mean we should ignore this issue.” A section of the Spell Garden had become their temporary office and brainstorming area. They used the Shadowsteel floor as a work surface and Eins’ marking chalk as a writing implement. “There are three bits of intel that we need.”

Lukas wrote them down as he spoke. “First of all, how many people Silverspine’s agent brought. It might just be the three we saw. There might be more. I don’t want to be optimistic. Next, how big is her cult, how far is their reach, and are they new and have been working from the shadows or reasonably new.”

“It might have been one of the lesser cults full of extreme devotees and then enjoyed a resurgence once the agents got here,” Merlin said.

“I want confirmation, not a hypothesis,” Lukas replied, before moving on to the final point. “Finally, how many agents are there in this network or within the continent. That also comes with sub-questions like when they got here, their primary ability, and whatnot. Just because they’re not currently pursuing me doesn’t mean they won’t in the future.”

“So, you want to capture this guy and interrogate him?”

“Not at all. He seems pretty talkative, but that also might be his way of buying time while he works his soul magic.” Lukas wrote out the phrase ‘Soul Cage’. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was weaving a spell to trap you or your soul fragment. I want the Amazon in the armor or the silverfire sorcerer. Both have more secrets I want to unlock.”

“The Dreamfire Shamin gave us a shard. We might get one from the sorcerer too. Specialized clone or a big boost for Mira.”

“We have our priorities.” Lukas set the witch’s tome aside and yawned, stretching. He hadn’t slept since his ascension. The untidy scribbles within were challenging to decipher and left him with a headache. Merlin had already copied its contents into his mental library. While Lukas explored general content, the clone prioritized the sections they needed. “How is your research going?”

“Good,” Merlin answered. “The ritual is well within our capabilities. Three Spellweavers and I can pull it off together with you in the center. Dragonbone. A couple of essences. Blood sacrifice. And a couple of other things. We will need to go into the city for them but we can manage it. Mira will need to channel her blackfire through the ritual room during it. It shouldn’t be a problem with Nibbler helping out.”

“What about the Soul Anchor?”

“Good news and better news.” Merlin took the tome and flipped to the section dedicated to it. “It will take us a bit to figure this out and a fair bit of practice, but Soul Anchor combined with Shadow Magic will help us achieve a good deal of the things you want. Now that our arcane projection has improved, Shadowsteel projectiles will fly farther. Now, if we can turn those into soul anchors, locking on and Shadow Stepping to them will be easy, increasing our range.”

“The anchoring. Can we extend it to Shadowsteel constructs for more permanent structures?”

“I was working my way towards it.” Merlin smiled. “But yes.”

“Will we need to add our soul to it?”

“Not quite. However, creating permanent Shadow Gate installations outside of the fortress might require a small sacrifice. A chicken or a beast will do. It seems the bigger the Shadowsteel structure, the more or higher quality souls we’ll need.” Merlin flipped to a later section of the book. “But if we get good with soul magic, we could tap into the living essence of Fracture and bypass the sacrifice altogether. The best bit? We might be able to pull off a version of the clone swap thing you want.”

“Really?” Lukas excitedly took the journal, closely studying the section Merlin had highlighted. The writing was so untidy that trying to decipher it left him with a dull throbbing headache. 

“The beginning stages will be more akin to possession. It won’t let you reach across continents, but you should be able to project your will through one of us and directly take control. Swapping positions with them should be possible, but I think that’s the least of the benefits.” Merlin drew rough spellforms using runic language that was beyond Lukas. Despite the Soul Pillar’s ascension, he struggled to keep up with the memorization and processing power of Arcane Chronicling. “You could become functionally immortal.

“I’m talking about swapping consciousness with us clones. Death would be meaningless. As long as one of us lives, so do you. If the primary body died, your consciousness would snap to the closest existing soul fragment. There would be some recovery time, of course; you’d need to regrow and repair your soul, but I’d say that’s a skill issue.”

“We need a soul magic clone,” Lukas said. “I bet those shards are impossible to find.”

“You could agree to work for the Union and ask them for one,” Merlin suggested.

“But I get the feeling that such a request would raise countless questions.” Lukas flicked through the tome’s pages. “Most of the stuff in here is meant to do some nasty stuff. I think we’d be better off hunting a coven. Their treasures are bound to have something of the sort. After we create decent soul defenses, of course.”

The journal vibrated. They had messages from Morph.

“We can’t delay things any longer,” Merlin said. “It’s time to bring him into the fortress. Should we send clones into the mountains? The cult might already be upon him.”

“On the contrary, I think he’s safer amongst the Jotun right now. If they haven’t already gone after him, the warband’s presence is keeping the cult away, or their arcane presence is masking his. We need to contact Penelope, Weaver, the council and the guilds. They need to know we’re alive and what’s going on.”

“What’s the general tale? Why are we under attack?”

“Our activities in Iskander disrupted the cult’s attempts at awakening a silver wyrm,” Lukas answered. “They’re here to make us pay.”

“I’ll put together plans and scripts,” Merlin replied, making notes on the floor. “We might need to dedicate a couple of clones to resource gathering too. Food supplies are low, and the temperature isn’t best for preservation.”

“Good call.” Lukas sighed. “We desperately need numbers. Eight clones aren’t nearly enough.”