Marcus opened the door to find Elly already seated at their usual breakfast table, head in her hands and not moving. He shook his own head, walking up and filling a cup of water for her. "Drink."
"Uggaban," she murmured, waving her hand vaguely. "Bisnnish."
"An excellent point. Counter argument, being hungover is solved by drinking water and eating breakfast."
Elly shook her head, flinching, and spoke after she'd downed the water. "S'am not supposed to get hungover."
"Demon wine," Marcus supplied, shrugging. "I guess even your metabolism needs time."
Her hand shot out to grasp his arm, which he jerked out of the way of by instinct more than malice, and she groaned. "Fix me. Do magic and make skull not angry."
"And what's in it for me?" he asked, letting the grin liberally seep into his tone. "You're an independent woman who needs no man, right? You were very convinced of this fact last night."
She shook her head, eyes focusing slowly. "'idn't mean that. Need man to fix pain."
"A bastion of women's rights everywhere," he replied dryly. "What's the magic word?"
"Saladin uk Bnostnic."
"That's not a real language."
"Please."
He snorted, placated, and put his hand on her shoulder. The four tier healing matrix all but attacked her body with healing energy, which was mostly going to waste. But not completely, and he didn't feel like focusing so soon after fixing his own hangover.
Elly jerked upwards, gasping as if he'd dumped ice water on her. Which was accurate enough, really, and her gasp turned into a low hiss of contentment. Marcus shook his head. "You know why I'm being a dick about this, right?"
"Cause I forced you to give me a head massage," Elly replied, rolling her shoulders. "Which was excellent, by the way. But yeah, that was a bit shitty. You didn't protest that much, though."
Marcus shrugged. "It was, and I did. You threatened me with physical violence. But I'm a mage, which means I'm good with my fingers, so that placated you at the time."
She turned, grinning at him, and he cleared his throat. Stopped the healing, which earned him a pout but nothing more, and he turned away until he could clear his embarrassment. He could insist that wasn't what he meant, but not like that would do any good.
"I did not threaten you with violence," she insisted, still grinning. "I only reminded you that I was very strong and you were within grabbing distance. Besides, I don't hit people I like. Too well trained for that. Literally, actually. Life Enhancement warriors train self-control extensively because our strength is so great, even without actively drawing on the energy of the world."
He rolled his eyes. "Oh yes, much better. Still, I guess it counts for something."
"Also, you had your shield up."
"Is that accusation I hear? You were wielding that goblet like a weapon, and Vess kept throwing cheese at me."
"Only after you magically interfered with her clothing and wrapped her into a giant winter coat."
Had he? Oh, yeah. Well, fair enough. It turned out Vess' clothing was magically sustained, just like her body, which was something he'd known but never internalized. It also turned out he could mess with it since he was her summoner.
Marcus cleared his throat. "Þú hfðir eki átt að gera gín að tungumálakunnáttu inni."
"Þú hefðir ekki átt að gera grín að tungumálakunnáttu minni," Elly corrected, rolling her eyes. "And I'll mock your attempts at speaking my language as much as I please, thank you very much. I still think it's stupid you're wasting time learning it. I speak your language, and I'm a polyglot. Sticking to your strengths is a real thing that people are recommended to do."
He grunted. "I'll do as I please. And I still think it's bullshit you speak six languages. Who even studies ancient Elvish?"
"I do. Now eat. We have to scoop out your eyes and implant new ones, then we're sparring. I want to see this 'double-step' of yours in action. And that mace you were bragging about."
He had not been bragging. Just informed them what he'd learned, but pointing that out was pointless. Again. So he ate, not really caring about the food but knowing his body needed something solid in his stomach, and soon enough they were walking towards Margaret's office. Well, towards the Academy in general, but he avoided looking at it too much.
That was for later, and he could almost drown in all the change he was keen to investigate.
A trio of young Scribes bowed as Marcus pushed open the door into the secondary hall, resuming their excited chatter about some new ink, and Elly rolled her eyes. He didn't, because people had all sorts of hobbies and the Scribes attracted a certain kind of person, but he did silently agree.
Ink was ink, no matter that it was now apparently made of soot combined with linseed oil. Though that would stick particularly well to paper, actually, and avoided parchment corrosion, and would even stick to metal. Something to keep an eye on.
They kept walking, and thankfully Elly had been too busy glancing at a pair of sparring stone elementals to notice his brief slip into ink-obsession. Margaret's office was another four hallways over, and as they moved along he realized the Academy was nearly taking a fourth of the castle these days.
He'd have to do something about that. Using the castle's defenses to protect the Academy had seemed logical, but they hardly needed outside protection anymore. Not if those classes of warmages he'd walked past were half as skilled as they looked.
Margaret, when they found her, was busy. Being the most skilled healer in the Kingdom came with plenty of work, and the Academy had more accidents than most. Teaching former farmers, stable hands and soldiers to wield arcane forces that would, and did, go out of control at the slightest mistake tended to create injuries. A lot of injuries, and injuries of a very varied nature.
The older woman was also positively crowded by apprentices, those mages showing an aptitude for healing being sent her way for experience. Four dozen beds were monitored closely by them, and as Marcus slowed to a halt he saw half of them were filled.
Mostly warmages, by the looks of them. Which made perfect sense, really, though he also saw what he felt was a druid and a woman who smelled like Life Enhancement and was missing a hand.
And the sun had only just about risen.
The students paused as Marcus walked up to Margaret, who was explaining how to reattach severed nerves in a clipped tone. The healer snapped her fingers, which caused her pupils to flinch back to pay attention, and Marcus watched in fascination as she reattached a finger. Reattached it without so much as a drop of wasted power, at that.
"Fron, Yandere, attach his other digits," Margaret ordered, turning his way. She bowed lightly, seeming far too stressed to care much about decorum. "Your Grace. I have your eyes in my office. Please follow me."
He shrugged, Elly abandoning him to talk to the Life Enhanced woman with the missing hand. Interrogating her, apparently, and Marcus almost felt bad for the woman as Elly ordered her to meditate. A missing hand was not a debilitating injury for masters of Life Enhancement, apparently.
The office door shut, and Marcus returned his attention to his best healer. Who, apparently wishing to get this over with, had already pulled out four small jars filled with floating eyeballs.
"Choose carefully," she said, washing her hands as he inspected them. "That Imperial healer is coming soon, so they'll probably be your permanent ones. Unless you lose them again, of course."
Marcus hummed. "I hope not. But just in case, I arranged for you to be in the room as the man isolates my eyes from my immune system 'properly'. Maybe he'll explain, maybe he won't, but either way I hope you'll be paying attention. Plenty of blind people to practise on afterwards, if you'll forgive me for being crude. Blue and green, I think."
"Excellent," Margaret replied, either for being allowed in the room during the operation or for his choice. Maybe both. "Please remove your eyes."
He grunted, suppressing a moment of hesitation. It didn't hurt, necessarily, not after he suppressed the nerves in his face, but it was wrong. A mental block that existed for a damn good reason, made irrelevant by innovation and magic.
Marcus exhaled, carefully numbed his face, detached the optic nerve—and doing that had taken a lot of practice—then scooped out his right eye.
He suppressed a hiss, decided he didn't actually care, and hissed anyway. Well, that still sucked as much as it had the first time. Good to know.
Now for the other one.
REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK p^o^q REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK
"Such pretty eyes," Elly cooed, tone sickeningly sweet. She leaned out of the way of a branch, not even pausing in her mockery. "And different eye colours, too. How brave. How daring. If I didn't know better I'd say you got heterochromia on purpose."
"Xathar, please bite Elly's horse."
Xathar hesitated, clearly torn between his burning desire to eat horses and potentially pissing off Elly. The demon made a half-hearted attempt after a long few seconds, which just made Elly cackle. "Even Xathar thinks it's cute. Don't you, Xathar?"
"Don't make my horse choose between us," Marcus admonished. "It damages his young, impressionable mind."
"The only impressionable thing about Xathar's mind is finding new, exciting species to eat. Now come, I wish to race."
Marcus raised an eyebrow, eyes widening as Elly took off. Fast. Way faster than her horse should be able to go. Xathar kicked into gear, galloping after her in a mad dash of burning competition, and Marcus focused his senses. Elly was, as usual, burning with Life energy, but when he pushed past it, some tendrils snaked down into her horse.
That utter hag.
Xathar increased his speed further, Marcus straining to open a small tear between him and Elly. Xathar ran through the spatial distortion without a second thought, skipping forwards without so much as the lightest stumble, and the demon's speed was ever so slowly overtaking Elly's own mount.
It still took nearly two minutes to overtake her fully.
Elly glared as he passed her, barking something foul and insisting that he'd cheated, but Marcus ignored her baseless accusations. Xathar slowed when they came to a particularly wide clearing in the forest, their sparring place.
"You left our guards behind," Elly chastened. "And then you cheated with magic, don't think I didn't feel that. What will the Kingdom do with such a foul soul as King?"
"You trained your horse to accept Life energy, kept it from me, startedthe race, and all in an attempt to prove your own superiority. You are a shallow, vain creature."
She shrugged. "Meh. And I'll have you know that training a horse to not freak the fuck out when I enhance them is hard. Still, I needed something to make up for you having a demon horse."
"Could have just asked for one of your own."
"Well, yes. But then I would be dependent on you, or another mage, for my transportation needs, and I like to be self-sufficient. No offence. Now let's test out that mace of yours, hmmn?"
Marcus shrugged, dismounting as he heard his guard coming closer and patting Xathar on his flank. A little annoying, that, and Helios would probably lecture him about proper decorum, but it had felt good to indulge a little. To just act without considering how it would reflect on his position as King and Archmage.
Xathar moved close so Marcus could remove the mace, tied securely and hidden away with cloth. Inert, and it would only activate when used by him. A feature he'd found yesterday, before all the drinking. He'd attuned to it some hours ago after making sure it was just that, an inert bonding matrix.
Fascinating, in a way. Definitely something he was going to reverse engineer and teach to his own enchanters. But for now he grasped his fingers around the handle, and felt his magic seep into the mace.
Enchantments were, by and far, self-sufficient. Sustaining themselves on ambient magic in the air, the very same ambient magic mages themselves recharged with. He would have been fine with the mace using his own magic to power it, considering the power needed, which made sense considering he already had to grasp the weapon to use it anyway.
But no, it had its own reservoir of power. He could feed it himself, if the need ever came, but he suspected only very intense use would ever exhaust it.
Vistus didn't do his gift-giving by halves, that was for sure.
Marcus let the rush of power flow through him, like a lesser perspective of his own spatial dreams, and turned towards a tree. Now, it was his tree, technically, and it was good lumber, but the mace needed to be tested, and there were no convenient boulders nearby.
He shifted his stance, feet apart, breathing calm, brought the mace back and forwards, twisted with the motion, then made sure every inch of physical might flowed into the weapon's point of contact. It was rarely that smooth in a fight, where speed often mattered more than perfect form, but this was just a test.
He twisted his hips, his torso, and the mace keened through the air. The weapon didn't surge with magic, didn't hunger or howl or shift, but the moment the metal met bark, there was force.
Wood burst as the mace buried itself into the tree, the force fourfold of what it should have been. Bark and splinters detonated on impact, showering the surrounding area in debris, but his shield protected him from the projectiles. His arm shook with feedback, bone and muscle shaking, but no more than if he'd swung an ordinary mace.
A fist-sized hole was left behind, the living oak more able to absorb the force than even steel. Or maybe not. Either way, Elly whistled, stalking closer to inspect the damage. "Yeah, we're not using that while sparring. Or against anything you don't want very dead, really. I don't see any un-enhanced armor holding up against that, and even if it could you'd break bones with ease. Fuck me, the Empire didn't have anything a tenth as dangerous as that for their mages."
"I get the feeling this is on the higher end of weapons," Marcus said, shaking his hand. It was fine, nothing he wasn't used to, but some part of his brain insisted damage like that had to have hurt him too. "Well, that thing makes me a significantly more dangerous melee fighter, at least."
Elly hummed. "Maybe enough to make up for your mediocre skill. Maybe. Almost. Now come here and hit me."
"You have such a way with words," Marcus replied, tone as dry as he could make it. "Really, if the court heard you speaking like that, they'd assume all kinds of horrible things about u-"
He leaned out of the way as she threw a dagger, shrinking his shield to ensure it didn't impact that either. Elly was a very efficient terror, it should be noted, and trying to outlast her usually ended with him panting for breath and her standing over him with a smug grin.
Marcus focused, weaving a spatial matrix together. Only a two tier spell, in the end, and one focused on using as little power as possible. Simple, too, which had been a pain to ensure. But it was meant for a close-quarters advantage, and he couldn't exactly focus for a whole second while Elly tried to stab him.
The matrix weaved together and was fed power, and Marcus took a step forwards. Space twisted and he took another without ever moving, covering twice the distance in the same timespan. Elly didn't stand still to be properly shocked, which was rude of her, but her eyes did widen. Only slightly, but they did.
Then she punched him in the face, and Marcus detonated a wind matrix under her feet as his shield strained.
Matters escalated from there. Their combined guards arrived, keeping a very healthy distance and generally making sure no one else was spying on them, but he paid them no mind. Sparring was, in a way, simple. Just movement and split-second judgements, mistakes mocked but not taken advantage of with lethal force.
Just movement and acting, without time to overthink or question himself. He saw why Elly liked it, he really did, though by the increasingly manic grin on her face, he was pretty sure he didn't like it that much.
Spatial magic was employed, flowing more naturally with every spar they had, but most of it was too dangerous to use. Arcs could slice her in two without issue should she be a hair too slow, tearing her apart from the inside had gotten him mocked but was nonetheless something she couldn't really defend against. Not without killing him, anyway.
His double-step was the first proper spatial working he could use, and it was good. Better than he'd assumed, and he had assumed much. More efficient than telekinetic arms, less predictable than throwing himself aside, and as he kept practising, he felt chaining the spells together was doable. Not without more practice, but possible.
Two hours, by his reckoning. Two hours before Elly was satisfied, which was just ridiculous. Four wins to her three, though only because his double step let him reap some early victories. She was already adapting, the wretch, but at least she had the decency to complain.
Marcus handed her a cloth as he conjured water, first to wash and then to give to the horses. Well, horse. Xathar had standards, apparently.
"You were stronger than two weeks ago," he noted, pulling on a fresh shirt. A cloud of smoke was giving them privacy, both from one another and from the guards. "Maybe a few percent?"
Elly huffed. "Don't infect my pure Life Enhancement with math. But yes, I suppose I was. While I can't develop new tricks by snapping my fingers, I can grow stronger. It's called a breakthrough. Had one during the war against the dead, and the invasion seemed to have sparked another one. Not sure when I'll break through—get it? I'm hilarious—but until then I get to enjoy slow growth."
"So you'll get faster," Marcus noted, sighing. "And stronger, and your reflexes will sharpen, an-"
"I'm sorry, is mister Archmage-that-dreams-of-impossible-things complaining about powers that grow?"
Marcus paused. "We have that farm to visit. Shouldn't be late."
She snorted, whistling for her horse. Xathar came when Marcus tugged on their connection, no whistling needed, and he banished the smoke with a wave of his hand. Nice new trick, that.
Just because he was a spatial Archmage didn't mean he'd stopped learning about magic in general.
"We still have the Empress' meeting to prepare for," he said after some minutes of peaceful riding, aching muscles soothed by magical healing. "We can't keep putting off the rehearsing."
Elly's tone turned into a fake whine, which she knew he hated. "But that's four months from now. Hells, maybe the Dungeon will break before then and we can skip it. Surely sparring and visiting cozy farms is a far better use of our time?"
"Appearances matter," he retorted, rolling his eyes. "I can't keep not showing my face, or sooner rather than later people will come here instead. And as much as it isn't clear cut, I do technically answer to the Empress now. We both do."
"Bah. This is why I like Soema, she understands that Mirrania needs to grow strong so the Empire can't meaningfully punish us for perceived disobedience."
He let the matter drop, knowing she already knew the importance of politics. She just hated it, which was fair enough, but they really did need to prepare to meet the Empress. The meeting had been set, after all. Oh well, might as well enjoy nature.
Marcus did enjoy the countryside as the forest retreated behind them, eyes roving over particularly ripe apples as they came to the orchard. The farmer and his family were standing near the edge of their land, clearly nervous and probably having been waiting for a while, but if anything he and Elly were early.
He dug his heel into Xathar's side in warning when the demon eyed up their youngest child, smiled at the farmer and his wife as they bowed, and dismounted to inspect the fruits of his druid-empowered farming initiative.
Literally fruits, in this case. Hah. And Elly had dared to call his humor weak. Still, he'd calculated an estimated ten percent increase in crop yield, the same in decreased sickness, and had increased the farmers' taxes by fifteen to compensate.
By the looks of things, a fifteen percent increase in taxes had been generous.