Magus Reborn 382. Ignivar

As it turned out, Kai was able to speed up the work on the symbols and formations.

While doing that, though, he was also thinking about the spirits watching them.

There were three bird spirits in total. They kept shifting between different trees around the clearing, never staying in one place for too long, and every so often one of them would fly up into the sky and vanish, only to return about an hour later. It did not take much thought to understand what that ant. They were carrying information back and forth.

Killing them would have been easy.

That was not the problem.

The problem was what would co after. The birds changed position every couple of hours, and if they suddenly stopped returning with whatever they had seen, then the spirit king would know at once that its spying had been discovered. Sotis it was better to let an enemy believe they were the one ahead. That had always been useful in war, and even if what Kai was preparing here was not truly a war, the principle still held.

So instead of trying to hide everything, Kai started thinking in a different direction. And once he had turned it over enough, he quietly brought Veridia into it.

While still carving symbols, he began explaining the idea to her in pieces. She caught on quickly, and by the ti he finished, she gave a short nod that told him she understood exactly what he wanted.

Four hours later, their work in the clearing was finally complete.

By then, Kai had Killian move through the nearby area pretending to search for berries and herbs, giving the bird spirits sothing else to focus on. It worked well enough. Their attention shifted toward the Knight, and more than once they changed position to keep him in sight.

That was when Veridia acted.

While the spirits’ eyes were elsewhere, she cast her spell over the clearing. A mont later, three illusions appeared in place—copies of Kai, Veridia, and Elder Caelith, all crouched low and moving as if they were still hard at work on the symbols.

It was enough.

The birds would keep watching the clearing, believing they were still here, while the real work moved elsewhere. An illusion to hold their attention while the next parts of the plan were put into place.

The next second, Veridia cast another spell, thinning their presence until it was difficult to notice at all.

As soon as it settled over them, the three of them slipped into the thicker part of the trees, leaving the clearing behind. Killian would follow a little later. Kai did not think the bird spirits would be able to tell the difference between the illusions and the real bodies they were ant to copy, but even so, he knew the trick would not last forever. At best, it bought them around three hours before the illusions began to break apart.

That was enough. It had to be.

The mont they put enough distance between themselves and the watching birds, he increased their pace sharply. Wind mana wrapped around all three of them at once, lightening their movent and carrying them faster through the forest toward the camp. The speed with which they crossed the distance left little room for conversation. By the ti they arrived, Elias and Claire were there waiting.

Elias opened his mouth at once, clearly about to ask sothing, but Kai spoke before the question could co.

“We don’t have much ti,” he said. “The spirit king has spies on us. I’m building the return ritual now.”

As he spoke, hands of wind ford behind his back, shaping themselves with quick movents. Kai moved through the camp imdiately, using them to clear the space around the logs and make room to work. Pieces of wood were shifted aside, the ground opened, and within monts he had enough space.

Then he began.

Mana ran through the fingers of the wind-ford hands, and line by line the return ritual started taking shape on the earth. Behind him, the others whispered among themselves, but Kai paid no attention. His whole focus narrowed onto the ritual. Everything else fell away.

The one ant to return them ho was not especially difficult, at least not compared to so of the other things he had worked through recently. More importantly, he already had practice. The sa principles that had been used to bring them here now guided the structure that would take them back.

That made the work smoother.

Every second, more lines appeared beneath his control. He would draw a section, stop, study it, then spend another stretch of ti refining it until the shape matched exactly what he wanted. He moved that way across the ground without pause, building the pattern piece by piece while making sure nothing in it drifted from the form it needed.

He could not afford even the smallest mistake now.

So he kept his attention locked on the ritual as ti slipped past, drawing more and more of it across the ground while the others adjusted around him. Veridia shifted heavier stones out of the way whenever they blocked a section he needed, and Elias smoothed the earth afterward, filling the ground back in where necessary so Kai would have a clean surface to work on. The whole camp had fallen into the rhythm of it without anyone needing to say much.

Even while hurrying, Kai never let himself beco careless.

Every symbol had to be right. Every line had to sit exactly where it belonged. A single flaw in sothing like this could send them into another realm entirely, or worse, leave them stranded sowhere in the space between planes.

That was not a risk he intended to take. Still, the work did move faster than it once would have.

His Mana brain had advanced alongside the other organs, and the difference was clear now. He could divide his focus more easily than before, hold several moving parts of the ritual in his mind at once, and adjust one section without losing the thread of another. What once would have demanded more ti and concentration now flowed together with a steadier rhythm.

And eventually, the return ritual was finished.

Kai rose into the air and looked down at it from above, going over the shape of the whole thing one last ti. After checking through it carefully and finding nothing out of place, he lowered himself again and turned toward the others.

“I think everything’s set,” he said. “Now we just have to begin.” Then he looked at Veridia. “How long do we have?”

She was seated off to one side and seed to think for a mont before answering. “Half an hour till the illusions break,” she said. “You finished faster than I expected.”

Killian, who had returned two hours earlier, looked directly at Kai. “Are we starting right away, Lord Arzan?”

Kai did not reply right away. He lifted his eyes briefly toward the sky, as if asuring sothing, then said, “Yes. I don’t think we should waste any more ti. The spirit king is already watching us, and if we wait too long, it may send stronger spirits after us. Getting everything else ready will take another ten minutes, but I’ll handle that while the rest of you move into position.”

After that, his gaze shifted to Elias and Veridia. “I’ll be counting on the two of you.”

Both of them imdiately nodded.

Even so, Kai could see the strain on them plainly enough. Their faces had gone slightly pale, and both held their hands too tightly, fists clenched in a way that made it obvious neither of them was as calm as they wanted to appear. For all their experience as Magus, what they were about to do sat far beyond the edge of anything they had likely ever been part of before.

Killian also did not look much better.

He didn't say anything, but he wore the sort of expression that suggested he needed another few monts simply to steady himself. Claire and Elder Caelith, at least, would be in the safest position out of all of them. They were staying behind at the ritual site to make sure nothing interfered with it. Hopefully, their spirits would be enough to guard it if anything ca too close.

Kai gave each of them one last look. Then he took a breath.

Fire-aspected mana surged around his legs, and in the next instant he drove himself upward, wind and fla working together to launch him through the air. He rose fast, climbing higher than the forest canopy, higher even than the tops of the largest trees below, until the whole stretch of woodland seed to sink beneath him.

From there, he turned his gaze toward the area where the other circle could be seen.

Using [Hawk Eyes], he saw it clearly enough. The clearing was still there, and within it the illusions continued their false work, bent over the formations as though nothing had changed.

Kai moved toward it at once until he was hovering directly above the clearing.

For the briefest mont, he let his eyes drift toward the distant shape of Spirit King Vaelthoros’s castle. He could see all of it from here, and he reminded himself that once this began, there would be no stepping back from it.

Taking one large breath, Kai thrust one hand downward.

In the very next second, a torrent of mana exploded from him and crashed straight into the circle below. It hit with the force of a descending missile, slamming into the formation so violently that the air itself seed to buckle around the impact. The bird spirits watching from the trees let out shrill, panicked cries as the sudden flood of power tore through the clearing, throwing them off balance and ripping apart the illusions in the sa instant.

The false figures shattered like mist caught in a storm. But that was only the beginning.

The circle below flared to life all at once, light racing through every line and symbol as the whole formation awakened beneath the pressure of Kai’s mana. It grew brighter and brighter, the glow thickening until it was painful to look at directly, and then the power gathered into itself and burst upward in a massive beam of light that speared straight into the sky.

A heartbeat later, a scream rolled across the entire earth plane.

***

Ignivar felt hunger and anger twist together inside it the mont the call from another plane reached it.

The sensation was strange enough that, for a second, even it went still.

One mont it had been lying within the lava, letting its heat roll over it while it idly fed its frustration into the creatures unfortunate enough to be near it. The next, sothing beyond its own world was calling for it—pulling at it, inviting it toward violence in a way that made the anger already living inside it stir harder.

That anger had always been there.

It had never truly left it, not since the beginning of its existence, and no matter how much power it gained or how many spirits it killed, it never quieted for long. At best, it only found new things to pour it into. Lately, even that had stopped being satisfying. It had grown tired of the lava seas. Tired of the creatures that lived within them. There was nothing there stronger than it, nothing there that could force anything new out of it.

So when another world reached out and called for it—when that pull seed to promise movent, violence, destruction—Ignivar did not hesitate.

It accepted.

The next instant, the force of the summons caught it fully and yanked hard enough to make its body jolt. Light swallowed it at once, wrapping around it so completely that even Ignivar let out a roar, not out of fear exactly, but because for a brief stretch of ti it did not know what was happening to it.

Then it ended. A heavy wave of energy struck it and the scent of lava vanished.

When Ignivar opened its eyes, it was no longer in the fire plane.

It stood in a sea of green. For a mont, it simply looked.

There were no forests in its ho plane. No broad stretches of living earth crowded with trees, no damp air thick with growth. Its world was fla, ash, molten stone, and heat. This was sothing entirely different. Everywhere it looked there was life, dense and soft and vulnerable in ways that felt almost offensive.

It let out a low sound of surprise, and then it noticed sothing else.

Wherever the fire around it reached, the world blackened and burned. Leaves shriveled, grass curled inward, branches cracked and flad as if the very nature of its existence was hostile to this place. As if it had not rely arrived in this world, but had been made to oppose it.

Ignivar liked that imdiately.

It made it feel powerful in a clean, satisfying way, and the instinct for destruction already coiled inside it only sharpened further.

Then it turned its head and saw movent. Creatures were fleeing from it.

Small things, weak things, panicked enough that they were already trying to run from its presence before it had even decided what to do with them.

That was enough—Ignivar moved. It strode toward them at once.

Each step sent a shudder through the trees. Wherever its legs brushed against a trunk, bark split and blackened, and flas climbed upward as if the forest itself had been waiting to catch. The birds that had tried to flee scattered wildly through the branches, but Ignivar was faster. It lashed out with one hand and closed its claws around them mid-flight.

Their screams were brief.

By the ti it opened its grip, their scorched bodies were already falling. They hit the ground in a loose, broken heap, and Ignivar stepped straight over them, pressing down hard enough to make sure none of them would rise again.

Then it threw back its head and roared.

The sound rolled through the plane like a warning to everything living nearby that it had arrived and that this land now had sothing new to fear. Ignivar wanted the residents of this plane to hear it. It wanted them to know that sothing stronger had co.

Its gaze swept over the forest.

Its head rose well above the treeline, giving it a view far beyond the nearest stretch of burning woods, and even from there it could tell this world was rich with life. Rich with prey. Sowhere in all of it, there had to be powerful spirits—strong enough to be worth crushing.

Then its eyes landed on sothing in the distance.

A massive structure of stone had been built into the side of a mountain.

Ignivar had seen things like that before. Places like that were always nests—hos of creatures that believed themselves powerful enough to claim territory and rule over lesser beings.

That was enough for it.

Without hesitation, Ignivar turned and began moving toward the mountain.

It did not move quietly.

Waves of fire poured from its mouth as it advanced, rolling out in great bursts that burned through trees, brush, and anything else unfortunate enough to stand in its path. The ground shook beneath its steps. Trunks split and toppled. Flas raced outward behind it, leaving ruin in its wake.

From ti to ti, it felt small impacts strike its legs.

So creature here and there was trying to bring it down—throwing itself at it, clawing, biting, or striking with whatever little strength they had—but Ignivar did not even bother looking. It kept moving, certain its flas would deal with anything beneath its notice.

As it drew closer to the mountain, the resistance grew.

More creatures ca at it then, bold or foolish enough to attack directly. One of them, a lizard-like beast with wings, launched itself up toward its face with enough speed that it nearly reached its eyes.

Ignivar only glared at it.

When the creature ca close, Ignivar exhaled smoke through its nostrils and struck it aside, the blow sending it reeling. Before it could recover, it caught the creature in one hand. Fire rushed through its grip at once, searing flesh and scale alike, and then it hurled the creature through the air.

It went spinning toward a distant tree.

Its screams echoed for only a few monts before cutting off entirely. Ignivar did not spare it another glance.

It simply kept moving toward the mountain.

With every step, Ignivar brought more destruction down upon the world unlucky enough to receive its wrath.

Trees burst into fla. Smaller spirits were crushed underfoot or caught in the spreading fire, but Ignivar barely registered any of it. There was no satisfaction in killing such weak things. It had long since grown tired of trampling creatures that felt like nothing more than ants beneath it. What it wanted was resistance. Sothing worth burning. Sothing strong enough to make this sudden arrival an sothing.

But no matter where its gaze moved, it found nothing of the sort.

Then, all at once, that changed.

A great surge of mana rose from the mountain it had been heading toward.

Ignivar stopped mid-step, its eyes narrowing as it fixed on the source. The mana was not small. It ca in a heavy rush, sharp enough to cut through the haze of destruction around it and make it focus imdiately. Instinctively, it opened its mouth, flas already gathering in its throat as it prepared to drown the whole mountain in fire.

But before the blaze left it, a voice rang out.

“You dare burn my ho, intruder!”

The next instant, sothing shot out from the castle.

Roots and vines surged upward beneath it, lifting it high into the air and carrying it straight into the path of Ignivar’s flas. The torrent struck it head-on, fire swallowing its figure whole for a brief mont, yet the spirit did not retreat. Instead, it raised one arm, and from it erupted a dense wall of twisting vines that spread outward like a living shield.

The flas crashed against them.

Ignivar felt surprise for the first ti since arriving in this plane, but it did not stop. It pushed more fire forward, feeding the torrent, trying to burn through by sheer force. The blaze thickened, roaring as it poured from its jaws, yet the shield held. The vines blackened and writhed, but more of them replaced the ones that were scorched away, until every wave of fire was swallowed or turned aside.

Only when Ignivar finally cut the flas did it get a proper look at the one opposing it.

The spirit stood in the shape of one of the upright, tool-using races Ignivar had seen in other worlds, but everything about it was made from bark, root, and living wood. Its limbs were long and powerful, its body wrapped in layers of dark timber and pale roots, as though a tree had chosen to rise from the ground and walk like a king. Green light shone through the seams in its wooden fra, and its eyes burned with fury that imdiately set it apart from every lesser spirit Ignivar had crushed so far.

That look alone told Ignivar enough. At last, it had found sothing worth fighting.

Sothing that might survive more than ten minutes.

Before Ignivar could move again, the spirit spoke.

“I do not know how you got here, or who you are,” it said, its voice carrying across the burning air, “but for trying to destroy my world, I will make sure your body becos the bed from which the trees you burned will grow again.”

Then it moved.

The spirit rushed forward without another word, its form swelling larger as it ca, roots thickening, bark stretching, its whole body expanding with the force of its power. A mont later, it slamd into Ignivar with a strike strong enough to shake the mountain behind it.

***

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