The Final Redemption by Michael Manning (little red riding hood ebook free .txt) 📕

It rebounded harmlessly from theshield enchantment carved into the ground around me.

“You waste your time with thosescribbling’s,” he complained, sending a more powerful surge at myposition.

This time his magic was in the form ofa spellweave, which gave it far more potency. The air crackledaround my shield as it burned into it, but my enchantment continuedto hold.

“My scribbling’s too much for you?” Iasked dryly.

His answering smile was almost feral,“I’m just warming up. We wouldn’t want this to end too quickly.”Another blast struck suddenly, without warning or any sign ofbuildup. It wasn’t a spellweave, but the sheer force of itshattered my shield instantly.

I laughed at him from a differentvantage point, standing now in a different circle sixty yards tohis right. A new shield surrounded me now. “There isn’t much riskof that happening, I think, unless you manage to get smarter in thenext few minutes,” I taunted.

To his credit he didn’t lash outimmediately. Instead he watched me with careful eyes, wondering atmy ruse. The landscape was covered with arcane runes, lines, andcircles. I was betting my opponent hadn’t a clue what any of themmeant—or more importantly, which ones were puregibberish.

“You realize these games won’t lastforever,” he informed me.

“You said you didn’t want it to endtoo quickly,” I retorted.

“That’s right,” he agreed, “so I did.”As he spoke, I began noticing a strange red mist rising from theground. Mist was too simple a description though; it was a complexweave of She’Har magic, breathtaking in its dual complexity andsimplicity. It covered the ground in every direction for almost amile, and while I couldn’t be sure of its purpose I had a fewguesses.

He’s testing, trying tofigure out what’s real and what isn’t. Themist flowed smoothly, covering everything except some of mycircles. Roughly half of them had shields around them which keptthe mist out, while the others did not.

“It appears you didn’t have time tofinish your work,” he commented.

In point of fact, I hadn’t finished,but it wasn’t the shields that were left undone. “Chel’strathektook longer than I might have wished,” I lied. I had actuallygotten lucky. If his lieutenant hadn’t been such a fool, I wouldhave still been fighting him when Mal’goroth arrived.

Another swift strike destroyed theshielded circle I had been talking to him from, but I wasn’t thereany longer, and as the aythar destroyed my circle, some of thepower was drawn away, caught in the lines that traced back andforth across the scenery. I wasted no time in claimingit.

“Teleportation circles or illusion?”wondered Mal’goroth openly.

“You’re getting warmer,” Iteased.

I could imagine his mind working now.He had already discovered that many of the circles were merely forshow, unshielded as they were. The others appeared empty, but allof those boasted a shield that blocked aythar, preventing him fromactually sensing whether I was inside.

Since meeting WalterPrathion, I had learned a lot about invisibility and illusion. Inparticular what invisibility was not good for. “Invisibility is wonderful when no one suspects, but if theyknow you’re there already, it’s much less useful,”he had told me.

“What do you mean?”I had asked.

“If they suspect yourpresence, there are many ways to ruin invisibility. In those casesit is often better to give them something to see, rather thantrying to hide completely.”

Watching him work, I had come tounderstand his lesson, and since I couldn’t create the type ofinvisibility that came instinctively to him, I focused on what Icould do. In a situation like this, that was almost as good. Hidingfrom a god was tricky, especially if you possessed the immenseaythar that I currently had. It was like trying to hide a blazingtorch in a dark room, impossible. Unless you covered it withsomething else.

The shields disguise mylocation, and the illusion gives him something to focus on,I thought silently.

A line of flickering power, aspellweave this time, cut through the air like a whip, but myshield disappeared before it made contact. My body vanished andreappeared in a different circle.

The differences between spellweavingand enchanting were many, but superficial. The theory behind themwas the same, only the execution differed, well that, and thesymbology. During the course of my experiences with Thillmarius,the She’Har, and several of the Dark Gods, I had discovered a fewthings. While they believed in the superiority of theirspellweaving ability, and they were very fast, they weren’tinstantaneous.

Enchanting was the same, except thatit took a lot longer to prepare. Once finished though, both typesof magic had similar properties. The extra formality involved intheir structure and creation isolated the magic along the fourthdimension, time, preventing them from dissipating or wastingaythar. Although I couldn’t prove it, I was pretty certain thateverything that could be done with one, could, with some time andeffort, be done with the other. They were like differentlanguages.

Except they can producetheirs in seconds, while it can take me minutes or even hourssometimes to prepare mine, I thoughtruefully. Preparation had its advantages, though. Since they couldproduce complex, permanent, and frankly, fantastic magicalconstructs almost on a whim, they rarely bothered building thingsin advance.

A human enchanter has to think aboutwhat he does. He plans and prepares.

I might not be an archmage anymore, oreven human for that matter. But I was the best damn enchanter whohad ever lived.

Or the mostarrogant, suggested my innerself.

“Somebody told me that once,” Ireplied defensively.

Mal’goroth was watching mesuspiciously. “Are you talking to yourself?” he askedsuddenly.

I made a face, “Perhaps.”

“You were poorly made then. Your mindis starting to unravel, though I suppose that should be expected ofanything of human origin,” he announced. Another spellwoven whipstruck, and again my shield vanished a split second before it couldmake contact. I reappeared in another circle.

I smiled, “I’ve been called worse.”This time his reaction was a blinding strike of pure aythar, rawand unformed. It happened almost instantaneously and with enoughbrute force to make up for what it lacked in finesse. The shieldaround my apparent position never had a chance, nor did theillusion of me that stood within it. The extra aythar from hisattack bled away through the lines I had scribed on the earth,moving in every direction.

I quietly absorbed the aythar fromwhere I watched.

“I can see what you’re trying to do.”Mal’goroth turned in a slow circle, unsure which