Majinn

The majinn girl screeched, and an enormous spell circle appeared beneath her feet. She thrust out her hand and Daromir caught sight of a design on her palm a fraction of a second before that design appeared in the air in front of her.

Interesting. She seems to have drawn the glyphs onto her own palm. I’ll admire her grit if nothing else. Using one’s own flesh as a conduit for shaping magical power is incredibly painful. The metals used to shape the magic energy take on heat and scald the skin. That being said…

Daromir passed his mana through his casting rod to the spellstone carved with a shielding spell. The spellstone converted his mana into magic energy that immediately took the shape of the carvings in the spellstone, automatically forming the spell. The majinn’s spell activated and crashed into his shield. The magic energy of the spell diffused and blasted holes into the walls and ceiling in front of them.

Tch. It seems we’ll be rebuilding the tributary wing of the palace once again. I need to end this quickly before the damage worsens.

Her spell lasted two more seconds before it stopped. The girl lowered her hands to the side, hands clenched into claws as she charged cast another spell.

Daromir struck first.

He pointed his rod at her and stopped feeding mana to the central spellstone. As soon as magic energy was cut from the small spell circle hovering over the central spellstone, the circle disappeared and the rest of the spell was triggered. The four spell circles that had disappeared with the weighted chains reappeared in an instant along with the chains they’d banished. The spell launched the weighted chain like a ballista shooting off a bolt.

The chain caught the majinn girl around the midriff and yanked her off her feet. Her developing spell fizzled out as she flew several feet through the air and landed on her back with the chains wrapped firmly around her arms and belly. She shrieked and tensed her arms like she had when she’d prepared her other spells, but it was useless. The special metal of the pitch-dark chains pushed all nearby mana away from them—and thus away from the spellstones within her.

“It’s useless to resist,” Daromir said. “Those chains are made of pure maha-velum. Your spellstones can’t absorb mana anymore, so your magical energy supply is effectively cut off.”

“What?!” the girl roared in a distorted voice.

“Ah, so you can talk,” Daromir said. “No matter. You heard correctly. The time for answers will come, but for now, it’s time for you to sleep.”

He fed mana into one of his other prefabricated spellstones. The spell set into it appeared, and its power washed over her and put her into a deep sleep. Her muscles relaxed and her head hit the ground.

“This is going to give the ladies a headache,” Basil said with a sigh.

He isn’t wrong, Daromir thought. Many of the suitors coming here are hoping to earn the hand of this girl. They’ll be expecting a human, not a majinn. They’ll need to post notices in towns on the way to Gran Basileus and apologize to the bachelors as well as any inns that have cancelled reservations. They’ll have to rearrange schedules and notify vendors… It’ll be a mess, but it’s no different than the sort of things Basil and I have to handle on a regular basis.

“I’m sure they’ll survive,” Daromir said. “You shouldn’t write them off on account of being women.”

“I never thought to do so,” Basil responded.

As though summoned by the talk about them, Nythana burst into the room followed closely by the ever-emotionless Gerenda. Both had their casting implements drawn and ready for combat.

“Nythana,” Basil said. “I didn’t think you’d be home so early.”

He calls this her home so naturally. They haven’t even wed yet.

“What hap—” Nythana paused as she got a better look at the girl on the ground.

Her eyes narrowed.

“Majinn,” she growled.

She’s got that horrifying look in her eyes again, Daromir thought. Like she’s looking at a roach and deciding whether it’s worth dirtying her boots by stomping it.

“The situation is under control,” he said aloud.

“An assassin?” Nythana asked.

“Probably,” Basil said.

“I see…”

Nythana pointed her wand at the girl, and crimson compound spell circle appeared at the tip of it. Daromir’s body tensed.

“Shall I dispose of it, my king?” Nythana asked with an icy tone that triggered a shudder down Daromir’s spine.

“What?” Basil asked. “No, don’t kill her.”

Genuine surprise washed over Nythana’s face.

“Huh? Why?”

The confusion on Nythana’s face about why it was wrong to kill someone that was asleep was scary enough, but what he had just seen her do was even scarier.

Basil and Gerenda immediately set about trying to explain the ethical dilemma surrounding the killing of unconscious people, but Daromir thought about the spell she’d conjured at the end of her wand.

No matter how many times I replay it in my mind, it’s the same, he thought. That spell circle was created with dark magic and sustained with mana-based magic energy.

All his life, Daromir had been taught that prefabricating a spell meant using the differences in conductivity between materials to shape magic energy into a pre-made spell field. Magic energy could then be held in the shape of the spell without the caster having to struggle to control an energy that resisted any sort of bending or shaping. Staves and rods could have multiple spells prepared in them, but wands lacked the surface area to have more than a single spell carved into them.

And yet… Daromir swallowed hard. That was a multi-layered compound spell that she created out of nothing. She can use her wand alone to cast spells that require a rod, stave, or external prefabrications. She’s a beast. A prodigious monster standing at the peak of magic.

He shuddered and looked at her.

I’ve been convinced that my suspicion towards her was warranted, he thought. But if I think about it, my suspicions have been based on the assumption that she wasn’t already in a position to accomplish nefarious goals. That’s where my logic is wrong. If she wanted to destroy the kingdom, she wouldn’t need to infiltrate. She’s already strong enough to annihilate me and the rest of the palace staff and take Basil as her personal supply of energy.

She’s more like a natural disaster than a person at this point in time.

“Mm, I don’t get it,” Nythana was saying. “Is killing an assassin that was incapacitated while attempting to murder someone really wrong? They wouldn’t hesitate if the roles were reversed.”

“That’s a fair point,” Basil admitted. “But if you think about it, this one came for a fair fight, didn’t she? She didn’t sneak up on me and try to kill me while I couldn’t fight back, right? If she intended to attack head-on, how is it alright to kill her while she’s asleep?”

Nythana considered his words for several seconds.

“You have a fair point,” she conceded. “I shouldn’t treat a majinn the way I would treat a dark mage until I at least hear their story. It’s possible this was an accident.”

Nythana stowed her wand in her robes. Basil sighed in relief while Gerenda let out her held breath in a gust.

Daromir watched Nythana turn her gaze to the chain around the tribute’s waist.

“Do you make it a habit to carry maha-velum chains with you?” she asked.

“You can tell it’s maha-velum?” Daromir asked.

Nythana nodded. “The flow of mana around it is unique enough to be recognized after a single encounter.”

I should’ve known the Witch of the Northern Wastes would be able to identify it at a glance, Daromir thought.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much of it in one place,” Nythana said.

“The north-eastern mountains are rich with it,” Basil said.

“Is that so?” Nythana asked. “This country is full of surprises.”

I don’t think this woman of all people has the right to talk about surprising, Daromir thought.

“To answer your question,” Basil said. “We have a spell prefabrication that lets us store the chains in a pocket of space and launch them out when magic energy stops being supplied.”

Nythana dashed over to Basil and took his hands in her own.

“Please show it to me!” she said, eyes alight with excitement.

“Certainly,” Basil said, taking her excited outburst in stride.

Daromir sighed tiredly and looked at the damage to the walls and ceiling. He repressed the urge to heave a second, heavier sigh. The repairs would add considerably to their workload. If there was one positive side to the situation, it was that they would be able to send the majinn to the deepest levels of the mines where maha-velum was so abundant that mana didn’t flow. She would be little more than a deformed human with rocks in her gut down there.

Assuming that her body can function well enough without magic energy for her to survive in a mana-free environment, he added to himself.