Master mage ordained mag.., p.1
Master Mage: Ordained Magic: Book Three, page 1
Master Mage
Ordained Magic: Book Three
Author: D. L. Harrison
Copyright 2024. This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Afterword:
About the Author
Other books by D. L. Harrison:
Book Description
Chapter One
The morning sky was bright, but not very warming in January. It’d been six months since we’d taken down the last mage performing human sacrifice. Not all that much had happened since then, at least, not that I’d had to deal with personally and take a responsibility in fixing, but there are a few things I should mention to catch up anyone reading this account.
The total collapse into city states I’d feared never happened, at least not on the magicless side. Parts of our large infrastructure had broken down without the central government there to ride herd, but only to the point a few luxury items that were easily available back then were a lot harder to get. The central government was gone, but none of the governors closed their borders to other states, and as far as I could tell they got along well enough.
However, on the magicless side, Texas did consider itself an independent country now. I thought the governor, now president of Texas, was doing a good job.
On an amusing note, I’d have thought the surrounding states would’ve wanted to absorb D.C., but D.C. was a city state on the magicless side. Neither the governors of Maryland nor Northern Virginia wanted it. So the mage council there ruled it.
On the mage side, we were almost all city states, save a matter of mutual defense in Texas. Not just in America but around the world. The city mage councils or mage societies had control of the mages in their city and that was all. Even that arrogant asshat Julian had bought into a limited mutual defense alliance, if any mage group tried to invade Texas and take over a city, then we’d all respond to kick them out. That was the limit of our alliance, though we were friendly enough none of us would dare act with authority outside of our city.
The reason for that is almost two months ago, what I’d feared on the mage side would happen, started to happen. Mage groups from one city would conquer another for the right to rule and guide the mages in more than one city. The mage wars, or battles really, were often short and brutal, and usually ended in the annihilation of one of the groups involved.
It was inevitable probably, given human nature, but none of them were brave enough to go for our cities yet. Not yet, at some point some of those aggressive mage groups would lead a cabal of cities large enough to challenge us all joined together, but not yet. Once they did, I was afraid Texas would be a tempting target instead of one to be avoided, since they’d take over the whole state in one go and likely be doubling their area of control. If they won, of course, which I’d have something to say about.
The only other thing going on worth mentioning was the last six months had seen a lot of progress in master spell creation. It got to the point I was dripping in so much enchanted jewelry I’d created a master spell called Master Spell Holding. Now I only had one amulet around my neck. The spell combined the concepts of Endless Wardrobe and Remote Charging, so all the master spells I might need were in an extradimensional space in my necklace, but I could still feel them all and cast them without recalling them from the amulet first.
In the last account we’d covered Endless Wardrobe, Portal which was long finished, teleport, an enhanced protection spell, and remote enchantment charging. There were now several others, both minor and profound.
The major ones I shared with others was house builder, garden builder just add seeds, and building restoration, which all did exactly what it sounded like they did. House builder would also generate electricity and water.
There were a lot of minor ones, and I’ll only mention a few. Master spells to aid in cooking, that could easily be accomplished by casting five or six glyphs in succession, like washing, pealing, and slicing or dicing vegetables, putting them in bowls, and then cooking them evenly and perfectly in a split second. I’d even created a master healing spell, which combined heal, remove poison, and cure disease into one spell. It included all the things and exceptions that could cause trouble. Remove poison was excellent for removing the toxins generated by a technological society, but as I’d mentioned before, birth control pills were not natural, and chemicals could be considered a foreign toxin so had to be excluded from the spell, which I’d integrated into the master spell among others. The last minor spell I’ll mention was one to maintain my husband’s vehicle. It not only regenerated gasoline to keep the tank full, but kept the oil pristine, and it restored the vehicle to its original condition. So, there’d be no need for gas fill ups, oil changes, or preventive maintenance. He wouldn’t even have to rotate the tires or take it to the car wash.
In addition to the protection spell in my private master spell book, I’d kept the major master spell spaceship builder to myself and Rosa as well. It was a lot more complicated than we’d imagined it’d be when speaking off the cuff six months ago. Especially navigation tied to detection spells. I mean, generating and maintaining atmosphere was easy, but I’d incorporated that too. From building the ship, to all the ships systems, in one master spell over four hundred glyphs long.
The hardest part was detection spells that reached light hours, far enough to get a good three-dimensional picture of an entire solar system. Magic operated faster than light, so on the good side the results would be immediate and in real time regardless of the distance.
A mage could cast a detection spell with a single glyph to find something anywhere on Earth. But when starting to talk about billions of miles it was an entirely different story. That part of the spell needed a major magic power upgrade, which meant a lot more glyphs dedicated to providing that magic. The same magical power source would be responsible for opening up portals to gulf the vast distances involved between stars. Interstellar navigation was difficult as well, since the stars weren’t really where they appeared to be. Fortunately, my understanding of the universe was up to that task as well.
I’ll end the list on that spell, both since it was the last major spell I’d made, and since it was pertinent and a good place to start this account. The first human interstellar spaceship and voyage, compliments of magic, not technology based on science fiction.
Oh, one last thing before I get started. Over the last six months most of the Mage Society members were now master mages, and everyone in my inner circle was a master mage now with access to the shared spells. I no longer gave classes, and we were all looking for apprentices.
My sister Rosa showed up outside the city where I was waiting out in the middle of nowhere, along with her BFF Gabriella. Gabriella and I were close too and got along famously, but we related mostly in official mage business, and on our ambition in magic, sharing information, and planning out master spells. Her and Rosa were a lot closer, as I’d expected them to be, being in the same generation with similar ambition in magic. The only thing Gabriella had to hold back was the training we’d received from the gods and the building of spells. In case anyone forgot, Gabriella was one of the leaders on the mage council in Austin, and she preferred Gabby.
Rosa asked, “Where’s the ship?”
I laughed, “And lose my chance to show off?”
Gabriella giggled, “How big will it be?”
I winked and answered with the spell, as if to say wait and see for yourself. I focused on the enchantment with intent and fed it some magic, then it took on a life of its own as my magic powered it a glyph at a time. Casting it manually would’ve taken a long time, but working off enchantment it moved at the speed of magic. Magic was fast, and all four hundred glyphs cast separate or not, took less than a second. Far less than a second.
When it finished the spell formation, it activated.
The ship built itself right in front of us, over a couple of minutes, including all the magical systems.
Gabriella frowned, “Isn’t that kind of small?”
It was about two thousand square feet in dimension, and about as tall as a house. The shape was sleek with no pointed corners at all, it was all shallow and steep curves, and a silver color. Like a bubble stretched out, but the bottom was a little flatter, and the front a little thinner than the back, to give visual clues to its correct orientation. It would also make it more aerodynamic when entering and leaving atmosphere.
It was perfectly smooth and seamless. No physical drives, or emitters and antennas on the hull to mar its perfection, everything was done with magic.
“Well, there’s no engine room, or life support equipment. No need to store water, waste, or oxygen either. Food storage is an extra dimensional space in the kitchen area that utilizes stasis to keep the food from spoiling. So, it’s all empty space in there for living, enough living quarters for six along with a shared kitchen, recreation area, and a spacious bridge slash living room.
“That said, the ship will grow if the controller, the caster of the spell, desires it. This is the core ship, more rooms or cargo bays can be added to make it the size of a colony ship, or a science vessel, or an explorer with a large crew. This is the family and core version. Or a space yacht, if you will.”
Rosa said, “It looks cool, and that sounds good, but I think you forgot something.”
I frowned, “What?”
Rosa giggled, “A door. Or airlock.”
I waved a hand and snorted, and the hull of the ship seemed to melt and separate into a doorway.
“There are three entrances, one on each side about a third down the ship, like this one, and one large one in the back for a cargo entrance. Which in the base configuration is about the size of a garage door, and the cargo bay about the size of a two-car garage. The airlocks are semi-intelligent, so they can match up and bond with a space station or another ship, no matter how odd the shape is.”
She frowned as she walked in. The corridor extended to the other side of the ship, and other doorway, while the center of the ship had a T-junction. There were only two corridors. The bridge up front, the cargo bay in the back, and doors along the corridors for the six bedrooms, kitchen, and recreation area.
Rosa said, “No airlocks, I assume the protections will stop the air from blowing out into space.”
I grinned, “I think that was included in the spell, yes.”
Rosa glared.
I chuckled, “Of course, forget science and science fiction, we don’t need airlocks with two doors and safety interlocks when we have magic.”
She giggled, and we took a short tour of the ship. The kitchen was little more than a six-person table and chairs, and a set of cabinets with serving dishes, plates, and silverware for all occasions. Everything from preparation to cooking would be accomplished with magic. No oven, toaster, or even a can opener. It could be argued it looked more like a dining room than a kitchen, save the counter space and cabinets.
The furniture in the recreation room and bedrooms were basic in nature, but more than comfortable enough. Earth magic could duplicate any physical matter, save life, and there were minute samples of all the materials used in the creation of the ship embedded in the enchantment via an extradimensional space.
There were physical games in the recreation room, board games such as monopoly, chess, checkers, and Othello, but there were also illusion spells. We could watch television or movies for instance, but only by streaming it onto our phones, which the magic would project onto the wall by the intent of the occupants.
The lights in the ship were all generated by illusion. The light quality was natural, like the sun, and it worked on a twenty-four-hour schedule, dimmer at night, bright during the day. The only lights that could be turned off manually were in the ship’s quarters, for sleeping.
I could control everything on the ship and all its systems with my mind and a little focus on what I wanted, but the bridge had integrated control boards and chairs, as well as a holographic display for status, location, and what was around us, so it could be controlled that way as well by a crew. We all knew there were no windows, but from inside the ship anyone would swear that there were, as the illusions rendered the outside of the ship perfectly.
No doubt there would be shortfalls, but no deadly ones, of that I was sure. I was sure there’d be things to add or modify to the master spell after the trip and I got feedback from Rosa and Gabriella, on the creature comforts and convenience end of things. The core ship systems were solid though.
We ended up in the bridge last. There was a main three-D display in the front of the room, which showed the ship and its surroundings on a large scale. It showed the location on Earth in the bottom left corner, but it displayed the entire solar system and a pinpoint blue dot in the main area, which could be zoomed in for greater detail in the localized area of the ship.
There were also controls and displays at the seats with integrated touch controls. The control setup was intuitive since it tailored itself to the person sitting there, which would lead to a very short learning curve. There was a station for command, pilot, and navigator, the latter of which also handled portal travel. There were three other observer seats.
There was no need for an operations post, since the ship worked on magic there was nothing to maintain or run diagnostics on. The only technology on the ship was our cell phones and Rosa’s Apple Watch. There was also no communications station, for the same reason. We could use a commune spell or use our phones. That might be a shortfall, if we ran into chatty aliens, but I wasn’t holding my breath on that one. There was no tactical post either since the ship had no armaments and the defense was static and always on.
On the off chance we did meet aggressive aliens, the protections on the ship could likely handle any kind of defense needed, at least long enough to open a portal and leave.
Rosa said, “This is awesome, Maya. Can we go?”
I grinned, “Let’s take a look around.”
The ship rose toward space at Rosa’s urging. It used what I’d dubbed an inertia-less drive system. It didn’t feel like we were moving at all unless you looked out the illusory window where we were racing for orbit. The shields of earth magic protected us from atmospheric effects, while the fire in the shields would protect us from solar wind radiation when we left the Earth’s EM field.
Small micrometeorites would be deflected, and larger objects would be steered around automatically while keeping us on course. The pilot literally just had to pick a direction and go, but it was impossible to crash the ship into something. In short, I’d made it idiot proof, so even a green newbie couldn’t screw it up.
The view of Earth was breathtaking but didn’t last all that long as we headed to do a flyby of the moon. The inertia-less drive meant accelerating or decelerating at unreasonable speeds, without worrying about G-forces at all. So, it didn’t take long before we blew by the moon. Just to test it, we also set a course for Mars and did a flyby, which took about thirty minutes. The red planet was barren but still an impressive sight from near orbit.
I couldn’t explain to you how the drive worked scientifically, it was magic, and I created it based on the feel of universal law and my gut level understanding of it. Sadly, that’s about the best I could do on an explanation. It wasn’t just moving the ship, it was like moving the universe around the ship, sort of. Perhaps a better way to say it was it took advantage of the movement of the universe to accelerate.
I suggested, “We can try a few stars, see if they have any living planets. I have a list of hopefuls.”
The portal worked well, including the navigation, putting us in different star systems. It was exciting, at least at first, but when we’d hit our sixth star and there were no living worlds, just a whole lot of resources, it quickly lost its shine. It was cool though, the first three humans to go interstellar, and build a ship capable of it with magic.
Still, in science fiction all those dead systems would be awesome to plunder. The road to riches, but for a mage that could conjure anything, well it was the hard way to get rich. Mining and processing took time and effort, after all. Still, I was sure the scientists back on Earth would be in heaven. No, the real riches would be a living world, so humanity could expand to the stars and not have all their survival eggs in one basket.
That’s what we were looking for, and what we were hoping to find. I believe that imperative was built into our DNA, survival instincts on a species level. Now that we had interstellar travel, the pressure I felt to find a living world was huge.
Even close enough would do, since I bet that I could create a terraforming spell to tweak things to favorable conditions to support humans. It would be a major spell in power, requiring a lot of glyphs, but simple in concept and operation.
It was the seventh try that was the charm, and where we hit paydirt.
We’d just portal travelled to Cassiopeia, and when the main three-D display updated, we all stared at it for a long time without speaking. The star didn’t have just one living world, it had two living worlds, and five dead worlds for seven in total. The two closest to the sun were huge barren rocks, the other three further out was a gas giant, a super gas giant, and lastly another dead rock similar to Uranus. Extremely large.
