How many spells could I multicast at once?

  The thought slipped in sideways while I stared at a forest of stone killers lining the cavern walls.

  Forty-four statues

  I had never tried to hold that many constructs in parallel. Ten, sure. Fifteen if I pushed. Beyond that it would be too much; that was a realm of mastery I didn’t yet reach.

  But I wasn’t here alone, and we had time to deal with this problem. If Alya moved fast enough, she could smash three or four quickly enough before they came to life, probably, and if they came to life. But I won’t take any risks; the eldir were already fast as they were, with levels between 25 and the upper 30s, so this was supposed to be stronger. While I knew my worth, I didn’t like my chances while being outlevelled, outnumbered and surrounded, without taking the boss into consideration…

  I glanced at Rhea. She stood a little apart, eyes unfocused, lips moving silently as her finger traced shapes in the air only she could see.

  “Can you help in some way?” I asked.

  She blinked, looked at me, then at the statues, then back at me. “I was thinking about a solution already; give me a minute…” Her pacing started, tight little steps; I could practically see the wheels turning in her brain.

  “Got it!”

  She spun toward me, grinning like she had just won the lottery.

  “My rituals are stable. So I can prepare a lot of them and trigger them at the same time. And because of the achievement I got, I can’t void the materials for these ones… they are not even real rituals; they are more like fragments of a greater whole, but I can probably adapt them to hold onto the spells… yes…”

  Suddenly she came really close to me; she was practically vibrating, and her eyes were large and full of excitement. “Elias, I don't have the raw power to destroy all these statues… but you do.”

  Ok… I knew that. “Go on… I’m not really understanding what you are implying.” I gestured with my hand.

  She pointed at me, then at the statues, then made a dramatic scooping motion.

  “I can create a kind of stasis ritual. For spells. So, you cast your spell, we store it, then repeat. Again and again, for each statue, when we’re done, I trigger the rituals, and every spell launches at the same time. All the statues get hit together, and the whole ritual falls apart without starting a chain reaction. It is a kind of brute force method to deal with something like this; if I had more time, I could probably study a way of neutralising it somehow, but this is much faster! Genius, right?”

  She looked incredibly pleased with herself.

  “Are you sure you can make that work?”

  “Yes,” she said instantly. “It’s a sub-component of a bigger ritual I studied in my book. This part is simple, I swear.”

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  That was incredible.

  “You are incredible, Rhea. I don’t know how you do it, but please never stop.” I told her, in my mind I didn’t know how certain the whole thing was, but she looked confident, and she hadn’t failed me until now, so praise was due.

  She blushed furiously at that, then turned around to stare intently at the nearest statue. Ok, that wasn’t my intention, but at least she wasn’t upset.

  I’ll trust her to do her part, because my only alternative was manually multicasting a mountain of darts and praying my brain did not leak out of my ears.

  “Let’s start from the entrance,” I said.

  Rhea nodded, still not looking at me, then proceeded to walk back to the first statue on the right.

  I saw Quinn handing the mace to Alya, who tested the weight with a focused expression while Rhea lifted her hand and began to draw.

  Lines of light formed in mid-air, thin at first, then thickening as she layered circles, sigils, and connecting paths. It looked like she was sketching a glowing machine in two dimensions. The shapes rotated slowly, humming.

  In less than a minute, the structure stabilised, floating at chest height.

  “Yes,” she breathed. “It’s stable. Place your spell in the inner circle. The small one.”

  I stepped up and sighted down the ritual framework at the nearest statue. I aimed at the neck; I didn’t need to destroy it whole; just separating the head from the body would be enough.

  I created the dart with my new will-infusing method, then added a little Arcane Blast effect on the tip. No, wait, I could do better. I dissipated it, then I multicasted the dart and blast, taking two strands of mana and infusing them with the idea of becoming the deadliest dart and the greater explosion each. Then I cast the spells. I tried to make it as powerful as I could without expending too much mana; there were a lot of statues here…

  I guided the new spell into the inner ring.

  The ritual flared a bright red, then settled, my dart suspended there like an arrow nocked in a bow.

  “YES!” Rhea bounced on her toes. “It works!”

  The way she said it made me suspect she had been at least thirty per cent unsure.

  She ran to the next statue and drew another ritual circle much faster than before, her finger moving faster now that the pattern was set. I followed, building another dart and slotting it in.

  Again. And again.

  Soon we moved down the wall in rhythm. Rhea traced; her finger was becoming a blur after the first dozen rituals. I cast after her, my spells forming faster too after some practice. Light circles bloomed along the cavern edge, each holding a coiled projectile aimed at a stone throat.

  My mana ticked downward steadily; I could feel that I was approaching halfway through my reserves.

  But the effect was impressive; the air hummed with restrained violence.

  By the time we reached the last dozen statues, a faint tremor had started behind my eyes. I checked my reserves. Just under half.

  Manageable.

  “Where is Mary?” Quinn asked.

  The question stops us dead in our tracks.

  I turned toward him, then toward the entrance.

  She was not there.

  A flicker of unease slid down my spine while I scanned the cavern. In my focusing on the spells, I let down my barrier and scans.

  The altar.

  She was halfway up the stairs.

  She had already passed the giant kneeling guardian, walking with slow, deliberate steps.

  “Mary?” Alya called.

  She did not answer.

  She reached the top, bent over the altar, and picked something up that I could not see from down here.

  Then she turned.

  “Finally…” she said.

  The voice did not fit her; it wasn’t her own.

  It was layered. And I heard it before; it was similar to the one the people the dodder controlled.

  “…after all this time.”

  She raised what she was holding.

  A mask.

  An eldir one, but not the same. It looked grown rather than carved, made of vines. Patterns crawled across it, spirals and branching lines that echoed the door and the statues. The horns weren’t the same as the others either; they were antlers, sweeping back, elegant and terrible.

  Three eye sockets burnt with golden-green light.

  As she raised the mask over her head, she spoke.

  “Awaken, my children,” she said, her voice coming from everywhere across the cavern. “As it was promised to you, today is the day we rise again.”

  20 chapters ahead!