Mage's Path 2 Read online

  Mage’s Path 2

  DB King

  Copyright © 2022 by DB King

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

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  Contents

  Series by DB King

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

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  About the Author

  Series by DB King

  Apocalypse Knights

  Dragon Magus

  Dungeon of Evolution

  Kensei

  The Last Magus

  Mage’s Path

  Shinobi Rising

  The Last Magus

  War Wizard

  Chapter 1

  “You look good, Jack,” Melinda said to Jack as he emerged, fully dressed and smiling, from the door of the infirmary.

  Jack smiled at Melinda. She looked good too, he thought. She was his fellow student at the Shadow Tower, under the tutelage of the Warlock Lachlan Woe. Melinda was about Jack’s age and, like him, she was a mage with a unique and powerful suite of abilities.

  That, however, was where the similarity ended.

  Jack was brown-haired and dark-eyed, with skin and hands roughened from his humble upbringing in the mountains under the care of his blacksmith stepfather. Melinda, on the other hand, had golden hair that gleamed in the sunlight. Her eyes were the bright green of summer grass and her fair, unblemished skin spoke of her sheltered, aristocratic upbringing in her father’s keep on the sprawling estate of Wardlake.

  But here in the Shadow Tower, Jack and Melinda were equals, allies, and firm friends. For a time, Jack had wondered if they might end up being more than friends, but he had decided to let that develop naturally if anything was going to happen. The most important thing was that they were both here to learn magic at the hands of the strangest magical tutor either of them could ever have imagined, Lachlan Woe.

  Lachlan had recruited Jack as an apprentice after Jack’s encounter with a freshly awakened dungeon core. Jack had absorbed the core. It had taken them some time and experimentation to be sure, but at last Lachlan had been certain. It was unheard of, and it opened up exciting and unprecedented opportunities: the dungeon core’s powers had flowed into Jack.

  Jack was a living, breathing dungeon in human form.

  Of course, this raised as many questions as it answered. Jack was an anomaly of magic, a kind of being that neither Lachlan nor anybody else had ever encountered before. Dungeons, as everyone knows, generally remain static, absorbing magical energy, creating monsters, and dropping loot for adventurers. There was no ‘how to’ manual that Jack could seek out to learn how to be a dungeon in human form.

  The potential was endless, and so mastering his magic was Jack’s number one priority.

  “Thanks,” Jack said in reply to Melinda’s compliment. He held out his arms and turned from side to side so Melinda could admire him. “I feel pretty good too.”

  “How’s the rib?” she asked, trying to sound casual but not quite managing to mask the tense concern in her voice.

  Jack considered for a moment, holding his hand to his right side. “It’s a bit stiff, but not too bad. My ankle and my right wrist seem to have healed completely. Overall, I feel like I got off pretty lightly. Come on, let’s walk. I feel lazy after days in bed resting. I want to have a look at the tower.”

  Melinda fell in beside Jack as they walked down the narrow corridor that led from the infirmary toward the kitchens, the dining room, and the garden. Like the rest of the tower, this corridor was decorated in an opulent style. There were rich hangings on the walls and thick carpets under their feet. Though the walls and floor were stone, there was no suggestion of damp. The place had a clean, well-kept smell with a homely undertone of spices and cooking.

  “What about you?” Jack asked, glancing at Melinda. “You look well. Have you recovered from the fight?”

  Everyone had been very concerned about Jack, but he was aware that his friends had also sustained injuries in the recent battle. It had been a near thing, and they were all lucky to have gotten out alive.

  Melinda shrugged. “I’m fine, actually. A bit stiff and sore, but I feel quite good. I was in my monstrous form for the whole battle, and it would seem that even stone trolls and armored skeletons have a tough time getting through my hide when I’m in battle mode.”

  Jack chuckled. “I can believe it,” he said. “You’re ferocious when you’re in your fighting form, that’s for sure.”

  Melinda was an internal mage. That meant that her magic did not escape the confines of her own body. She could not blast fireballs across a room or influence the minds of others with a subtle trickle of mana. Instead, her immense magical power was focused on enhancing her own strength and physical form. She could transform herself into a mighty hulk of a creature with razor-sharp extendable talons, cloaked in fire, immensely strong and—as they had recently found out—nearly indestructible in battle.

  For Jack, magic took a different form. As a dungeon, he was able to absorb elements into his mana pool. After something had been absorbed once, he could use mana from his mana pool to recreate it out of pure magic. A blast of fire, a sheet of water, or a shower of falling boulders—these were all spells that Jack had recently learned on the job and put to effective use.

  But his magic was not limited to elemental forces. His dungeon powers also allowed him to create monsters from magic and have them do his bidding. This, however, was not something he had even begun to master yet. Creating monsters was not something he had done… except once.

  “Spark!” Jack cried happily when he saw Spark the lizard, the first and so far the only result of his monster-creation talents. The lizard was the size of a small dog. It had a hard, cannonball-shaped head, with a short face, a big mouth full of fearsome teeth, and a thick neck surrounded by a ruff of flame-red leathery mane. Long black claws skittered on the warm flagstones of the dining room as Spark lumbered over to greet Jack.

  They had emerged into the dining room and stood illuminated in a blaze of fall sunlight that poured through the high windows lining the far wall. In the center of the room was a long table of po
lished wood surrounded by eight comfortable dining chairs. Around the walls of the room and in the deep bays between the windows were massive earthenware pots containing healthy-looking flowering shrubs.

  “He’s pleased to see you,” Melinda said, crouching next to Jack and scratching Spark’s head. Spark could be a ferocious enemy in battle, but at ease in the tower he was as playful and friendly as a family dog.

  “Where’s Max, lad?” Jack asked Spark. The lizard fixed him with one black eye and transmitted his reply directly to Jack’s mind across the psychic connection that joined them.

  “Outside in the grounds,” the lizard said seriously. “We’ve been catching dragonflies.”

  Jack saw a brief, bright image of Spark and Max chasing dragonflies around the wilder parts of the tower’s extensive grounds. He smiled. From what he could see, catching was a bit of an exaggeration. Chasing and failing to catch dragonflies might have been a more accurate description.

  “Go on then,” Jack said to Spark. “Go back and join Max. I’ll call you when I need you.”

  Spark bumped his head into Jack’s hand in acknowledgement and lumbered off, back out into the grounds.

  “I’m glad Max is with him,” Melinda said when Jack had relayed Spark’s message to her. “It’s good they’ve become such firm friends.”

  Max the stone beetle was Melinda’s familiar. He was another of Jack’s creations, though unlike Spark, Jack had not created him out of pure magic. Instead, the beetle had been a result of an experiment with the enchanting table in the workshop. Jack, excited by having learned how to work the arcane device, had enchanted the beetle and combined the essences of granite and sandstone to create a powerful, monstrous giant beetle about the same size as Spark.

  The beetle needed a master, and Jack had been able to magically join it to Melinda. Melinda decided that the beetle needed a name, and she called him Max after a character in an old legend. Max and Melinda had become firm allies, as had Max and Spark, in fact.

  Jack walked to one of the huge glass windows that faced out onto the late afternoon. The window started at the floor, doubling as a door out to the small dining room garden. It stood open, allowing the cool air to circulate. Jack leaned out into the garden and inhaled a deep breath of the cool air. Despite the bright sunlight, the air felt cool to him.

  “Feels like the fall is on the way,” he commented.

  Melinda nodded her agreement. “The leaves are starting to turn yellow. You want to go explore the grounds? Get outside for a bit?”

  Jack shook his head. “Let’s go see the workshop. There’s something I want to check out.”

  The room they called the workshop was quite new to them both. It was tucked away behind a hidden door deeper inside the ground floor of the Shadow Tower. Lachlan had gifted it to Jack and Melinda fairly recently, and they had found that their warlock tutor had been reluctant to tell them too much about it, despite their insistent questions. It seemed to make him uncomfortable and remind him of a painful memory. Jack and Melinda had managed to find out that the workshop had once belonged to someone Lachlan had been close to, but that was all he’d been willing to say.

  The workshop was a well-equipped room with an enchanting table, a long workbench, a small smithy and a smelter for ore, and a huge store of magical ingredients and strange tools that Jack had not even managed to explore the half of.

  “There you are!” said a sharp voice from behind them as they turned away from the window, headed for the hall. They stopped. Jack looked around to see Ivan the goblin standing in the doorway that led from the dining room to the kitchens.

  Ivan was a strange-looking character. He was a goblin, and there was no mistaking the fact. He was small, his head not quite reaching Jack’s chest, and he had a sharp nose and chin, pointed ears, and bright yellow eyes. His skin was a vivid green, like the green of rain-washed pond moss.

  The little guy was dressed in his favorite outfit—a butler’s black and white uniform with a tunic, collar, and smart cuffs. Black leather boots gleamed from beneath his perfectly pressed black trousers. Glints of reflected sunlight sparked off the polished gold of his cufflinks, his buttons, and his delicate watch-chain.

  All in all, Ivan looked like an aristocratic butler of a wealthy household, but the effect was somewhat ruined by the presence of a heavy, food-stained apron under one arm and a damp tea-towel slung over his shoulder.

  Clearly, Ivan had been busy in the kitchen.

  He cut an odd figure with his green skin and his smart clothes, and yet he commanded respect. There was no denying that he was very much the man in charge when it came to the kitchens and maintenance of the Shadow Tower.

  And there was more to him than that, of course…

  “Hi, Ivan,” Jack said with a smile as the goblin marched up and unceremoniously began to poke and prod at Jack’s bandaged ribs with his hard fingers.

  “Hmph,” Ivan said. “I’d have preferred you to rest another day or so, but the master won’t have it, as you know.”

  “There’s not the time, is there? Don’t we need to get moving soon?”

  “That’s right, of course, that’s right. Still, I hate to see a job left partially completed, particularly the healing of a patient.”

  “I’ll be fine, Ivan. Honestly, I was just saying as much to Melinda, I feel as good as new.”

  The goblin scowled up at him disapprovingly, then glared at Melinda, as if warning her to keep her opinions on the matter to herself. It was Ivan who had bandaged up Jack’s wounds after the recent fight, and indeed it was Ivan who ran just about all of the practical maintenance that happened in the tower. Ivan cooked and cleaned, gardened and healed, trimmed the hedges, weeded the gardens, did all the laundry, hauled the water, and split the wood for the fires, all without a word of complaint. He never even seemed particularly busy, despite doing the work of at least ten people.

  Jack was convinced the goblin used magic to achieve all he did, and yet he had never actually seen Ivan use magic for these mundane tasks. Not to say that Ivan did not have magic at his disposal—quite the opposite.

  Despite his humble appearance, Jack knew that Ivan was a powerful magical being. Ivan could transform into a massive and powerful green giant version of himself, capable of crushing the head of a stone troll or crumpling up an armored skeleton with a single blow of one meaty fist. Jack and Melinda had seen him do it and had even fought alongside him during their final battle.

  Thinking of that, Jack let his mind wander back to that fight.

  He had penetrated to the heart of the tower and found a huge core crystal there that contained the living consciousness of the tower. To his surprise, Jack had found that the Shadow Tower’s essence was feminine. And not only was she a woman, but she was an impressionable and flighty woman at that. It made Jack wonder exactly what the origin of the tower crystal was. How had this immensely powerful spirit come to occupy this place? How was it that the tower had become a living, breathing entity? What was the story there?

  Whatever the answers to these questions, Jack had found that the tower was a dangerous creature when she was upset. After a misunderstanding between Melinda and their teacher, Lachlan, the tower had been driven mad with fear and had turned on her own allies: Jack, Melinda, Ivan, and Lachlan Woe. Jack had managed to get close enough to the core to connect with the spirit inside the crystal. He was a living dungeon after all, and the tower could relate to him in a closer way than she ever could relate to any other kind of being. They were kin.

  The effort of calming her had taken it out of Jack in a big way. The tower had been spawning legions of aggressive monsters in her panic, and he had been forced to take control of the tower core and absorb all the monsters back into the core to save his friends. The effort had knocked him unconscious, but it had worked.

  “Jack?” Ivan was saying. Jack blinked rapidly as the goblin’s face came back into focus. “Are you all right? You seem dazed. I’m really thinking you ought to be back in be
d…”

  “I’m fine!” Jack said, waving the goblin away. “I was distracted thinking about the fight in the tower, that’s all.”

  “Ah, yes,” Ivan said. “I suppose that’s understandable. Have you been… in touch with the tower since we had our little adventure in the core chamber?”

  Jack knew what Ivan meant.

  In the days before everything had come so close to going so badly wrong, Jack had begun to feel the tower’s presence in his mind, to sense her awareness of him and even to be able to communicate simple feelings with her. On the night of Lachlan and Melinda’s misunderstanding which had caused all the trouble, Jack had merged his awareness with the tower’s senses while he slept.

  He thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “Now you mention it, I haven’t. Not at all.” That was surprising to him, now he came to think of it. He reached out instinctively with his magical awareness, but even with that magical sensory overlay, he could detect nothing from the tower, not even a hint of its conscious presence.

  “Interesting,” Ivan said, “but I suppose it stands to reason. She’ll be as exhausted as we were after such an effort. Well, if I can’t convince you to go back to bed for another week, then I suppose I should tell you that Lachlan’s waiting for you upstairs.”

  “Upstairs?” Melinda said with interest. “What do you mean? On the first floor?”

  Jack and Melinda exchanged a look. The tower had a way of changing the rooms and corridors of the tower’s two upper floors as suited its mood. For a mage who did not know their way around, this could present some dangers, and both Jack and Melinda knew to take care and not wander at random into rooms that were not their own.

  The top floor was where they had their bedrooms. On that floor there was a corridor that changed its appearance regularly, but their bedrooms were stable and fixed. The first floor, on the other hand, was very much Lachlan’s domain. There were studies, libraries, and other strange chambers up there.