189 — Book 4, Chapter 33 — The Grand Design, Pt 3

The second they appeared within the labyrinth, Leo cast [Asterion's Gaze]. Before his parents could get their bearings, he rapidly rearranged the structure of the labyrinth, splitting up their two groups so that the two Red Hunters would be forced to navigate it to find them.

"Leo?" Damien asked. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Leo gave Damien a tight smile—it was just like him to worry about his friends first and foremost. "This has been a long time coming."

"You're telling me," Flia muttered, but she seemed concerned, too. "Although if you want us to handle this..."

"It should be me," Leo said firmly. "And they're still archmages. We can't underestimate them. I think I can keep us separated for a while, but it won't be long enough for us to set up the ritual."

"What are you thinking of doing, then?" Syphus asked.

"We're going to need something more to deal with that relic," Leo said, shooting Syphus an appreciative look. He could always trust it to cut straight to the heart of the matter. He was pretty sure it would still sit him down and let him talk about his feelings if he insisted he needed it, but as long as he didn't say that, it assumed he could handle it. "Cale mentioned before that there's something in this labyrinth I can use to upgrade my mana core with a secondary aspect."

"You want to do that now?" Damien asked incredulously, and Leo nodded firmly.

"We could wait for Akkau to catch up with us," he said. "He got alerted by the wards, so he's probably on his way already. But I don't want to count on that. For one thing, there might be other Red Hunters in Brightscale that he's dealing with, and for another..."

He took a deep breath. "They're my parents," he said, this time more quietly. "So they're my problem to deal with. I think I need to, if I want to take the next step as a palewater mage. One way or another, I need to be the one to settle this."

It was surprising, really, how clear his head was. Damien and Flia were both right to worry about him, but for once, Leo knew exactly where he stood on this matter.

He was going to face Eli and Mia not as their son, but as the mage he had become.

The first step had been getting them here and then separating them. All minotaurs had an instinct for navigating labyrinths, passed down from the Minotaur—the Named that had created them. The Impetus of Asterion also caused those unlucky minotaurs that found themselves within a labyrinth to slowly inherit some portion of his madness.

All except for Leo, whose natural affinity for labyrinth mana made him immune to that curse. That was what he was taking advantage of now. Both Eli and Mia would be disoriented and confused, and while Leo no longer believed those lies about how severely they were affected by the curse, they would struggle to orient themselves here. They would be forced to fight against their instincts every step of the way.

With his [Asterion's Gaze], Leo could exacerbate that problem. Constantly rearranging the labyrinth around them would confuse their senses, making it harder to rely on the instincts that would otherwise allow them to navigate their way out. In that sense, his goal was twofold: he needed to make sure they were not so close that their magic could reach him or his friends, yet keep them close enough that they would give chase instead of simply trying to leave.

"This way," Leo said, pressing on a brick on a nearby wall and watching as a hidden passage revealed itself. He stepped through without hesitation, his friends following close behind.

Farther back, he could sense Eli going on a rampage, smashing the walls around him in an incoherent rage. The amount of magic needed to do that was astonishing. This labyrinth had been carved out of the Karmian Well, and Cale had told them before about how the walls of the Karmian Well were nigh unbreakable. Labyrinth magic was the only thing that could manipulate them, and even then only because the Labyrinth Plague had twisted its walls and imbued them with its own magic.

That Eli was smashing through them instead of navigating through the few twists and turns needed... Well, it was proof, Leo supposed, that the relic he had used really had elevated him to the level of an artificial wyldfire. He glanced behind him just long enough to slam layers of stone shut between them and his parents.

"Where are we going?" Flia prompted. She didn't seem nervous, though Leo was certain they could all feel the sheer amount of magical energy Eli was throwing off; it made the fur on the back of his neck prickle.

"We're looking for the rain Cale was talking about," Leo answered distractedly. He'd sensed it once or twice in passing now, but he'd never felt ready to confront it. He didn't even know what he wanted to have as a secondary mana aspect, and the idea of confronting a magical storm and taking some of its power into himself felt almost too fantastical for him.

He was just a minotaur, after all. His magic was unusual, but that was the only thing special about him. How would he be able to contain the power of a storm?

Except from what he'd seen—from what he now understood about Asterion, who stood alone in the endless Labyrinth, fighting to keep the Realms safe from the Nothing—there was no such thing as just a minotaur.

They were descended from one of the Named. That Named was said to have cursed and abandoned them, but Leo knew for a fact that he had not. Perhaps, then, that madness they felt within a labyrinth was simply an echo of what Asterion himself was feeling. Perhaps it was his way of crying out for help.

There was a deep, abiding loneliness within Asterion. When Leo had felt it last, he had been uncertain if he could forgive the Named for what he had done—no matter his purpose, he had caused so much suffering among them. Leo himself had been a victim of it, and he had spent years rejected and ostracized as a result.

Facing Eli and Mia now was a stark reminder that everyone who had rejected him had chosen to do so. Perhaps they had been lied to, perhaps not, but he found himself unwilling now to blame Asterion for their choices.

That, it seemed, was the final piece of the puzzle. Leo no longer felt like he stood behind the others, the lone mortal unable to hold their levels of power. He was still descended from one of the Named, and even if he wasn't—

Leo glanced back just long enough to see Eli blasting through the rock, an expression of pure rage on his face. An enhanced [Explosive Charge], it looked like. Even as a wyldfire mage, Eli was sticking to the same old tricks. Over his shoulder, a dozen smaller [Infernal Chains] were hovering, readied spells that shot out toward them the moment he broke through the stone.

"Syphus," Leo said. The boulder construct rolled forward to deal with the lances, even as Leo raised a hand; as he did, the floor of the labyrinth rose to slope up.

"Do you know the problem with spells like [Explosive Charge]?" Leo asked conversationally. "I do. I'm a very good student, you know. My mentor thinks I don't know it, but he's started keeping track of all the points he's going to give me, and I have a lot of them.

"First of all, [Explosive Charge] can't be interrupted, including by its own caster. Second, it gives you a lot of explosive power. Enough to, say, break through the unbreakable stone of a foreign dungeon. But it slows you down quite a lot, which is why I have the time to talk to you like this." Leo smiled, though there was no real humor in his eyes. "Neat, isn't it?"

Eli roared something unintelligible at him. He strained to reach for him, but Leo stepped out of the way, his hands folded behind his back.

"Third, it's a channeled spell, which means you can't cast anything else until its full duration is over," Leo continued. "I'm sure that's why you prepared those [Infernal Chains], which theoretically can't be blocked even by a counterspell, because you're a wyldfire mage now. You really didn't need wyldfire for that, by the way. We're all palewater mages. We wouldn't have been able to block it even if you were still at darkwood."

Syphus had, of course, already dealt with the chains; infernal magic was under the domain of its new eye, and while it couldn't simply block the spell, it could redirect the chains onto itself. Every one of those chains had now wrapped themselves around Syphus's boulder, which didn't affect it in the slightest.

Taken from NovelPhoenix, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"I am on fire now," Syphus said helpfully.

"You sure are." Leo gave Syphus a thumbs up. "Anyway, fourth—and this is the most important bit, really—[Explosive Charge] sucks. It's just an awful spell in a dozen different ways. It looks powerful, but it's slow, it moves you forward against your will, and it keeps you five centimeters above the ground at all times. That's why it comes with a warning to only use it to break a wall when you know what's behind it, and to never overcharge the spell, or you're just going to keep going until you're halfway inside a mountain."

Leo only knew that last part because Cale had shared a story about it. Apparently, one poor mage had poured so much mana into the spell he had become a fixture in the land for a period of about a month, until he eventually struck a mountain and buried himself in it. Rescue had eventually arrived to dig him back out, though it had taken a while before they realized he was not, in fact, about to emerge from the other side.

In all honesty, Leo was a little suspicious that the mage in the story was just Cale. He claimed he couldn't remember when he was last able to cast a spell, but surely there was a period of time when he could. That seemed like exactly the sort of thing he would do.

"Anyway," Leo said. "You're new to wyldfire, which means you definitely put too much mana into that spell. I don't think it's going to last for a month, unfortunately. That would make things a lot easier for me. Judging by the mana in that spell construct, I'd say you have... three minutes? A little less? You should use that time to think about what you're doing."

Eli let out another unintelligible snarl. Unfortunately for him, Leo was right: he was entirely unable to move from his slow drift up the slope Leo had crafted.

"No?" Leo said. "How about telling us what that relic did to Mom, then? She's just following you quietly. Seems very unlike her."

This time, a flicker of something passed through Eli's face. Leo wasn't sure if it was fear or regret, but he pressed his lips in a grim line and refused to answer.

"Be like that, then," Leo said with a shrug. "We'll find the answers we need ourselves. Not like we haven't had to do that this whole time already."

With that, he called for the labyrinth to rearrange itself once more. A hole in the ceiling opened up for Eli and Mia, then closed back behind them; several dozen walls moved and shifted into place, rearranging the path that would lead to them.

And last but not least... he had a spell he'd been meaning to test. He cast it, then turned to his friends. "Alright, let's go."

There was a brief silence. Leo realized both Damien and Flia were staring at him.

"...was that a little much?" he asked, suddenly feeling awkward. At that, Flia laughed and shook her head.

"Not at all," she said. "You just reminded me a lot of Cale back there."

"Please," Leo said, scoffing. "Cale would've just blasted them."

"No, he definitely would've monologued," Damien said, which meant Leo had to concede the point, because if Damien said Cale would have done something a certain way, he was definitely right. "Also, um... that look on your dad's face at the end there."

"I couldn't tell what he was thinking," Leo admitted.

"I could," Damien said, fidgeting. "I don't think he knew it was going to do that to her. I bet the Grand Magus bound them both to the relic somehow. It's probably another one of its costs."

"Fucker," Flia cursed, then shrugged when the other three looked at her. "What? Tarbloom doesn't like cussing, but they don't mind it when it's about people like the Grand Magus. Also, I'm not going to stop cursing entirely, thank you very much. I'm just doing it to be polite around them."

"We didn't say anything," Damien said after exchanging glances with Leo and Syphus. "Leo, you know where we're headed?"

"Yup." Leo could feel it more strongly now—it felt almost like his instincts were guiding him toward the storm.

That was strange, in and of itself. He'd been able to feel that storm on the periphery of his senses before, but not with this much clarity, and certainly not like he had the path toward it lit up in his mind. It was like there was a force guiding him, pushing him toward the crackling power of the storm.

Normally, he would have been rather suspicious of that. Cale had been very specific about the dangers of following the guidance of mysterious forces that offered power. But Leo had a theory about it this time. [Asterion's Gaze] was active, after all, and the impulse he felt...

It felt very much like Asterion was guiding him.

The thought would have disturbed him before. Now, though, he found a strange sort of comfort in it.

"Also, um," Damien began. "Um, what was that spell you cast at the end there?"

"That?" Leo grinned. "[Layer Swap]. It's a very specific spell for multi-layer labyrinths, but it can, say, send people down two layers. Dad thinks he's up one floor from us, but our instincts have some trouble differentiating between different floors, so if he doesn't think to check carefully... Well, he's going to have a hard time finding us again."

The storm in the Karmian Well was nothing like Leo expected.

Cale had called them distortion storms, if he remembered correctly. The Well had started erupting with them shortly after its formation as a result of the sheer amount of magic the Well contained. They were torrential downpours that would occasionally emerge from its depths, full of the raw power of transmutation.

The cramped space of the labyrinth made it quite unlike the grand spectacle that Leo had imagined. Rather than a massive storm, he and his friends were greeted by a turbulent corridor of labyrinth stone. Thick clouds gathered above them, completely obscuring the ceiling, and from those clouds poured thick curtains of—

—Leo would probably have thought it was just water if not for its effects, or if he'd been unable to feel the raw magical power pouring off the distortion storm. Nothing about the liquid seemed magical. It didn't glow, sparkle, shimmer, or crackle with lightning as he had imagined.

But it screamed against his mana sense, a turbulent expression of change and mutability, adaptation and truth. Every drop that struck the stone beneath transformed it on contact. It was a dizzying, hypnotic sight. Leo caught glimpses of a ripple of marble spreading amongst the stone, a ripple of gold spreading through the marble, then a ripple of some third, inscrutable material that looked uncomfortably organic.

It happened with every individual drop in the downpour, creating a splotchy patchwork corridor composed of perhaps a thousand different materials rippling through one another. The sight of it was mesmerizing.

...Dangerous beyond belief, though. Leo didn't specialize in transmutation or magical materials, but he was pretty sure some of the ones he caught sight of were fatal to touch. He caught sight of what looked like voidstone, more than once. Voidstone! And then there were the stones and ores he was certain ought to have reacted explosively with one another.

Why didn't they, now that he thought about it? The storm itself had to have some ability to protect against that sort of thing, or the labyrinth would have disintegrated long ago.

"I wonder if it absorbs its own power," Leo remarked thoughtfully. "This corridor should definitely be exploding, but it's not. Maybe it uses the mana released from its transmutations to fuel itself?"

"That sounds... possible?" Damien wrinkled his nose in confusion. "Wouldn't it still be producing more energy than it uses, though?"

"Well, yeah, but it's magic." Leo shrugged. "There's lots of books on the energy efficiency of transmutation if you want to check them out. Scholars have been studying it for a long time."

Damien nodded thoughtfully. Leo was busy trying to figure out how he was supposed to absorb the power of this thing. He had a few ideas, but all of them were at least a little dangerous. Perhaps a little risk was necessary? Or perhaps...

"I kind of want to drink it," Syphus said thoughtfully. Damien immediately grabbed on to one of its arms.

"No," Damien said sternly. "Don't drink the magic rain. What if it turned you into wood?"

"Can it do that?" Syphus looked horrified. "I didn't think of that."

Leo chuckled at their antics, then focused inward. That feeling he'd had, the one guiding him toward the storm—he suspected it was Asterion. If Asterion had noticed what he was doing, if Asterion was paying attention, then he had to have some stake in this, too. Could he use that? Ask the Named to guide him?

Was he willing to? He had hated Asterion only a month ago. How much had changed, now that he understood more of himself and of the position Asterion was in?

Enough, he thought, and he was surprised how easily the answer came to him.

Something seemed to change in [Asterion's Gaze]. Leo felt a strange impulse to clear his mind, to step forward into the storm.

First things first. He closed his eyes, sensing for the presence of both Eli and Mia. Eli was raging through the labyrinth toward them, but even now he was still far enough away.

More importantly, it seemed he hadn't figured out he was on the wrong floor yet. That was good.

The next question was whether there was enough time. He needed to disable the Red Relic before it ate away at his parents' lives completely, and he needed to be able to activate the ritual after that, to connect their realm to that of the Black Vault. How long would it take to absorb the power of this storm?

Enough, Asterion seemed to say, mimicking his thoughts earlier, and Leo smiled. Good enough for him. Perhaps he should have been nervous about stepping into it, but he felt strangely confident, instead.

He knew who and what he was. No storm could change that.

And so, when the storm struck his fur and skin—when its power sank into his body—it did not transform him, for there was nothing that he wanted changed. Instead, it sank through his flesh and into his mana channels.

It felt like he was an empty vessel, soaking in every drop of power he could. The clouds above him thundered, then swirled, gathering above him; the rain of the distortion storm seemed to shiver for a moment, and then it started falling toward him, as if he were their only source of gravity.

Leo saw none of it. He was focused entirely on his soul, on the power coursing through his channels. The raw power of it was still too intense for him to let it grow unchecked, but he knew by instinct what he needed to do.

Dilute it with his palewater. Control the way it moved through his mana channels, no matter how much it wanted to lash out and drift. He had to grit his teeth against the pain, for every lash of the storm's power against his control hurt, but he had already imagined this a thousand times, a thousand different ways. He had thought and thought about what he wanted from this moment, and he finally, finally knew.

So he clamped his will down around the power of the storm, guiding it to nestle in the center of his soul, where that crackling magic would form the seed of a second core.