Mad Toffad's Keep Read online

  Argon was ‘porting back to my side when I spotted the hidden mage throwing a shining bright spear pulsing with magic toward me. Argon materialized right into its path. I shoved her to the side, taking the full brunt of the object with my chest. As it sliced through my armor like a hot knife through butter, my last conscious thought was about its strange shape.

  That was all I could remember until I woke up this morning in Alba’s care. About four days later.

  Alba would have kept me in a medical coma at the hospital for at least another day if I hadn't promised to take it easy and to heal myself every hour.

  Alba was worried any significant strain could rupture one of my major blood vessels. The spear ripped out so many blood vessels in my chest wall, she thought there was a significant chance they missed damage to one of the arteries or veins left in place.

  With a large enough rupture, my chest could fill with blood before anyone knew I was in trouble.

  Healing magic was rare, and Alba was a very talented healer. I was incredibly lucky to reach Alba in time. No one said, but I knew in my gut without Alba’s help I’d have died for real this time.

  Argon and I both have significant healing magic, but neither of us had much training in using it. We discovered our flesh magic following our mind meld. Argon suspected I brought the flesh magic to the meld since she tested negative for it in her youth. Battlemages usually did not have any healing magic. Healers were so valuable they were seldom allowed near a battlefield.

  This morning Argon and Alba refused to tell me anything about the mage who tried to kill me, Augun, the freed slaves, or the campaign to rid the Augun countryside of the raiding slavers. All information about Augun was embargoed until Alba gave me a clean bill of health.

  As part of my plea deal to leave the hospital, I promised to heal myself diligently, expecting to be ready for action by morning. Argon and I have enough flesh magic, so this was no idle declaration. They gave the green light for me to be briefed on our business enterprise. If I made sufficient progress healing throughout the day, we planned to have dinner with our business partners Tobron and Inoa for a full update.

  I decided I was on the floor long enough and used some force magic to get settled on the couch. I intended to read the flesh magic text, which started the embarrassment. Allo was still lying low somewhere in the apartment. While I appreciated being awakened from the nightmare, biting me on the chin seemed excessive. I suspected Allo would remain in hiding until Argon returned.

  In Jaloa while mages make up only a small fraction of the population, they have had a massive deterrent effect on innovation within the non-mage society. If something can be done with magic, mundanes seldom seek another way to accomplish it. Even if they can’t afford to buy the magical object.

  Jaloans are just as clever as Earth humans. I suspect if there had been no magic, you’d see steam engines, water wheels and possibly even electricity. Jaloans have such a deep connection with animals and plants they would never permit the pollution Earth experienced during the industrial revolution. But I believe they would have developed greener options.

  This is why one sees animal carts, wood fires, candles, chamber pots, and no running water in most mundane villages. In contrast, mages enjoyed sophisticated shower/toilet units, running water, magical fires, and lights. While mundanes could buy the same magical gear, the routine cost of maintaining the magical charge was steep. This stagnation hasn’t been helped by the obsession most mages have with secrecy.

  Each country’s mage guild provided basic magical schooling for younglings. Most of the magic books available are only basic texts for the guild schools.

  A mage’s only option to learn advanced magic spells came from family, through apprenticing with an experienced master, by experimentation, or through a rare advanced text.

  Whenever Argon found higher-level magic books, she snapped them up. We had an ever-expanding library of magical tomes. She said even the writers of those texts kept a lot of their techniques secret.

  Argon was a master mage in force, mind, air, and water magics. She was born with them and had capped their magical potential years before I came to Jaloa. She was eager to share what she knew with me. At first, because she was Shala’s acolyte and later because Argon and I became life mates.

  We discovered while battling banders we blended well together during combat. Our combat bond was so special we both yearned to be closer. This ultimately led to our mind-meld which cemented us as a mated pair.

  Mage mind-melds merged two souls, boosting all magic the pair had. The stronger the meld, the greater the boosts to each partner. When Argon and I tied the knot both of our magical palettes exploded and commingled. The whole mating thing is an arcane process that no one understands, but all mates undergo.

  From the binding, I gained a storage boost in all my original magics and received a bonding gift of magic from Argon. Argon went through the same process. After the magical energies had settled, I gained new access to air and water magics from Argon; she gained access to fire, earth, and flesh magics from me. Gaining more magical storage was the least important aspect of our mating meld. We now shared a mind space, communicating instantly across any distance.

  She was my copilot, and I was her rock. It was impossible to quarrel with someone who was comfortable inside your head. I loved her unconditionally. She loved me the same.

  Did I mention the sex was mind-blowing? Tobron told me it would settle down in a year or so. He even assured me it would get better with age, implying what we were experiencing now was just okay.

  Since we had no time for apprenticeships, most of the time we made up our combat spells as we went along. For Argon the meld boosted the amount of magic she could store in her four core magics. She was now far more powerful than her former teachers. Spells once beyond her abilities now were within grasp if she could just figure them out.

  We lucked out with our new partners and friends. Despite a cultural bias of secrecy, they freely shared higher-level spells in mind, force, flesh, and earth magics, which had literally saved our lives.

  Being from a different world, I brought unconventional expectations to my magic. I tried and frequently succeeded in using magic in ways unknown on Jaloa to replace tools or effects provided by technology in my former life. While this supplied some unconventional techniques and weapons, it had also blinded me to some of the unique opportunities my body provided.

  This was one of the reasons Argon kept nudging me to read magic books.

  As part of my deal for home release, we agreed to return to the hospital in the morning so Alba could determine whether I was ready to resume normal activities. They had also conceded I could have dinner with our enterprise partners Inoa and Tobron if I continued to heal without complications.

  Tobron nearly completed our new business headquarters in downtown Klee during the past week. Argon met him there this morning to handle a variety of issues that stacked up due to my injury.

  Tobron was preparing our dinner tonight. While Tobron was a great friend, a talented mage, and a super business partner, Argon doubted his cooking acumen.

  Tobron's daughter-in-law, Alba, my healer and now one of our closest friends, warned Argon we should eat a snack before going over.

  Tobron was cooking because Inoa worked around the clock to take down an assassination attempt directed at Klee King Ruton. Inoa was our partner. She also had a top-level position working for the Klee king. Argon and I stumbled across this potential Klee coup while thwarting the Augun plot. I was hoping for good news on the Klee coup because Inoa was free for dinner tonight.

  I had plenty of incentive to get healing. It was too bad flooding my body with healing magic was less effective than the targeted healing Alba recommended. Targeting healing required significantly more mental involvement.

  The body sheds unneeded healing magic at the cellular level. Generalized healing magic saturated the cells and boosted the health of all cells. This type of boost r
educed fatigue and increased alertness, but without something to repair, it dissipated quickly.

  Healing magic directed at a specific injury remained there until the healing completed, the magic was used up, or it dissipated.

  All cells, including injured ones, absorb only a small amount of magic at any time. Excess magic drained off and was wasted. Optimum healing occurred when the amount of healing magic pushed into the cells matched what the injured cells could use.

  So far, I wasn’t even close to optimum healing. My main tactic was heavy overkill, same as my combat magic.

  While looking within the body wasn't required to heal, I found it helped me to look at what I was healing. Jaloan anatomy was still new to me. Using magic to examine inside the body was like having a real-time MRI video that could zoom in to the cellular level. I tried refining my healing magic by targeting specific injured areas whenever possible.

  I could see some improvement inside my chest wall since this morning's final healing session at the hospital. Despite the internal improvement, nearly all the lower priority areas were still raw.

  I needed my shoulder back. The pain from my earlier fall out of the chair had ebbed. To that end, I concentrated a sustained feed of healing magic into the shoulder bones, tendons, muscles, and ligaments broken and torn by the spear. Alba and her team had reassembled my shoulder, but it was still very weak. I knew and endorsed why it wasn't an earlier priority. But, I couldn't return to normal duty without the use of my dominant hand and arm.

  Restoring the severed and ruptured muscles on my chest and back had also been a lower priority at the hospital, but it was time to boost their recovery. I'd notice their weakness as I regained the use of my arm.

  The regrown parts of my ribcage were strengthening nicely. Alba said the ribs were already stronger than the original bone. Once the new bone finished curing it would be much stronger than the bone it replaced. Places the new bone attached to the existing bone were reinforced. I wondered how hard it would be to replace all my existing bone with the improved variety. Definitely, something to consider for my to-do list.

  My lung-like organ was still pink and shriveled. A large damaged area had been removed. Alba told me I would need to continue healing it until it returned to its original size. She warned I would have shortness of breath until the organ rejuvenated.

  I only had sufficient healing skill to boost the natural healing of my internal organs. It took an extraordinary amount of training to repair an organ, but even flesh magic novices could encourage an organ to fix itself.

  Several other organs, most involved in digestion, had sustained some damage. The Jaloan body tucked a few more things within the protective ribcage than my Earth body had.

  I applied health boosts to each of the injured organs. Alba told me to continue these boosts, even after the organs looked healthy.

  My right breast had been obliterated. Alba rescued some of the breast tissue driven from my chest cavity where the spear had driven it. She hoped there was enough salvaged the breast could function normally. I gave it a boost, just in case. On Earth, this wouldn't have been a concern, but Jaloan males and females both suckle their babies. Jaloans always gave birth to twins and having both parents able to feed the young was considered an evolutionary benefit.

  I scrutinized at each blood vessel in my chest wall. While each seemed sound to me, I appreciated Alba's caution on this issue. I spotted a few loose bits of bone missed during the initial healing operation and banished them.

  The skin on my chest was still an unpleasant shiny pink. I nudged it and the similar area on my back to promote healing.

  After the targeted attention I added a general health boost to encourage my whole body to return to normal. It might waste a little magic, but I had plenty to spare. Despite nearly an hour of concentrated healing, my flesh magic supply had barely dropped.

  I wasn't healed yet, but I was firmly on track to get back into action very soon. I had to remind myself the last time I was wounded-in-action it took six months and some extensive physical therapy to come back.

  I needed to learn more about flesh magic, maybe there was a way to use it in advance to reduce my chance of dying from the next sneak attack. Another item to add to the to-do list.

  This provided the incentive I needed to crack open the flesh magic book and begin reading it carefully.

  “I’m ready to ‘port back. Is there anything you need me to bring?” asked Argon.

  “Alba was very critical of Tobron’s cooking, do we have something for a snack?” I asked.

  “We have enough at home for lunch, so we should be good.”

  On the heels of her message, Argon teleported in, and Allo bounded into her arms. Why Allo needed cuddling when she was the one who bit me wasn’t entirely clear.

  Allo is a fla. She was Argon’s familiar long before I came on the scene. She had the personality of a raging lion stuffed into the size of a bobcat. Her stubby tail continued the bobcat analogy, but her soft bluish fur was all fla. She was armed with razor-sharp fangs and claws. Her eyes were golden yellow with dark flecks. Allo also had plenty of mind magic. She used it to monitor us, although so far she only spoke with Argon.

  She studiously ignored me as she snuggled against Argon.

  “You are going to have to make peace,” Argon sent.

  “But, I was the one injured,” I sent back, sounding petulant even to my own ears.

  “Children, be nice to each other,” Argon said out loud while depositing Allo on the floor. Allo began grooming; I studiously ignored her.

  I was wrapping up my second healing session when Argon arrived. She had opposed my early release from the hospital. If the roles were reversed, I would have had the same reaction.

  She now had a mental firewall limiting my normally unrestricted access to what was going on with her. Alba had insisted on it as a necessary step to keep me focused on healing.

  We all knew I could easily break down the firewall. We all knew I would wait until Argon took it down.

  Despite the firewall, our emotional intimacy remained unbounded.

  Argon slid beside me on the couch and into her magical copilot role, monitoring my healing efforts. I slid my good arm around her and finished my healing assignment. At the end, I sent a separate healing boost to my entire circulatory system. While I tried to direct most of the boost towards any weak-walled blood vessel, like much flesh magic, I couldn't tell whether it found something to repair or not.

  Was it childish to be happy I was sitting beside Argon and Allo was on the floor?

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 2

  My medical chaperones had finally decided keeping me in the dark about what was happening in our burgeoning business empire was no longer needed. Argon provided an overview while fixing us a light lunch.

  Despite the distractions, Tobron had nearly finished the first phase of construction on our new business HQ in old town Klee. We now had a small staff at work there. Tobron was hesitant to expand any further until we completed the extensive wards for the building. To complete this phase, Argon, Tobron, Inoa, and I had to cast the warding spells together within the building. We had a series of new wards designed but untested, which we hoped would provide the desired protections. All four of us needed to be present to weave the strongest wards possible.

  This morning Tobron and Argon finished weaving the basic wards, but for the heavy-duty mind shield and subtle mind magic wards, we needed all four original partners.

  Although our new suite in the headquarters was ready for Argon, Allo and me, everyone agreed we should not move in until the final wards were cast.

  In his spare time, Tobron bought three warehouses in Klee. He began filling one with supplies, starting with the shipload of leather and cloth from Augun aboard the ship Malan.

  The Malan pulled into Klee while I was in a coma. Captain Malek, the Malan's mage skipper, agreed to a charter and left immediately for Losan, the nation to Klee's south, to pick up a
supply of food. Tobron found a cargo to ship from Klee to Losan, so the Malan didn't make that leg empty. We didn't make much profit on the brokered cargo, but it reduced our operating costs.

  Tobron felt our efforts to date were too impulsive. He believed with some solid planning and new personnel, our new shipping enterprise had the potential to solve a lot of our long-term logistics problems. Accumulating sufficient supplies for a large group to thrive during the first years of an apocalypse remained a major challenge.

  Tobron wanted to recruit Captain Malek and make him a full business partner. He felt sure Malek would be amenable to head up our nascent shipping fleet. Even if Malek agreed, we still needed someone to lead the dockside aspect of the business. So far Tobron hadn't found any local ship brokers he could recommend to fill that position.