Fallen Mage Regressor

It was as he was diving headfirst toward the thick green foliage of the treeline that Mal realized that this was possibly the worst idea that he’d had in his entire life.

He’d heard someone scream when he’d jumped. There’d been a set of rapid footsteps and someone had tried to grab him. Their fingers had brushed his sleeve, but Mal was already gone.

The foliage wasn’t far now. Only a few seconds of falling remaining. He channeled his internal mana into the Airgrass Boots and asked for their help.

And the boots responded. A blast of wind, almost as strong as a tornado, ripped out of the soles and shot him forward horizontally. He hit the foliage and ripped through dozens of branches in the span of a single moment. Bit by bit, his vertical speed decreased until his fall seemed not quite so lethal.

Although every part of his body was bruised, he was certain.

And then he cleared the foliage and prepared for the thud of the ground.

But it didn’t come.

And he was still falling.

Mal snapped his eyes open and tilted his head as best he could toward the ground.

It was far away. Dizzyingly far. The foliage had been a trick. The trees were absurdly tall.

Dozens of curse words exploded inside of Mal’s mind before he quickly suppressed the aberrant thoughts. It was completely unfair.

He hadn’t realized that they were that deep into elf territory. He’d been banking on the fact that they were probably still close to the east, where there were normal trees that didn’t extend ludicrously high into the sky, nearly at the point of where clouds formed.

And it was then that Mal noticed that he was still going forward and right toward a tree trunk.

In a panic, he tried to call on his Airgrass Boots, but they didn’t respond. Every last shred of stored up wind had been used in that move from earlier.

The trunk of the tree hit his side and he spun out wildly. Pain even worse than the before bloomed across his ribs and arm.

Focus! Mal thought. Shut the pain out, you need to survive!

If he had access to his old magic, there was no limit to what he’d be able to do. But right now, all he had was that bracelet, his boots, and a really nice anti-demon knife.

A very real fear gripped Mal’s throat.

He didn’t want to die.

Not because he was scared of death, but because he still had so much left he needed to finish. He needed to ensure Lusia’s training went well. He needed to stop the cult. He needed, he needed—

Help.

A hysterical idea gripped him.

Cassandra had told him that everything was alive, that there was some sort of pseudo-consciousness in the plants.

So why not try to appeal to them?

"Help me!”

He flared his internal mana out in every direction, channeling with it his intent.

“Damn it, please, give me a hand, I don’t want to die, not yet, not until I finished everything that needs to be finished!”

The Bramblevine bracelet shifted.

The grass and ferns and vines on the ground exploded into growth. They entangled and wrapped around themselves and the trunks of the trees, creating a patchwork blanket made of greenery.

Mal fell into it and his heart lodged in his throat. The blanket bent and he snapped clean through, then into another layer. His speed diminished with each layer he went through until he finally dropped to the ground.

There was a sound like distant giggles and windswept fields. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that the grass next to him was waving from side to side in a manner not dissimilar to a laughing person.

Mal wasn’t sure how long he laid there. But eventually, he managed to get himself off the ground. He rubbed his head and his side, then winced. Miraculous save or not, he’d still collided with that tree and probably broken a bone or two, if the pain was any indication.

He looked up at the trees. They were impossibly tall. A rare variant that only grew in elven lands, close to a leyline.

While all leylines were dangerous to some degree or another—with the exception of neutral and unaligned mana leylines—there were some that... less dangerous. One of them was plant-type leylines. Mal suspected they weren’t incredibly close to the main source, probably just a splinter or branch.

Mal knew this because he would have already been found by the elves or seen the capital, given that it was located near the source. Besides that, he could see only a handful of green aligned mana floating in the air, not nearly as intense as it was at Exodi.

Plant-type mana. It was still dangerous in extremely high concentrations. Mutant trees that consumed men. Bushes with poison strong enough to paralyze someone for life, with no potential for a cure—those were the wonders of plant-type mana. Luckily, the elves did a good job of keeping the worst creatures under control, especially near the city.

He looked around himself at the remains of the greenery trampoline that he’d somehow made at the last second.

That he’d made.

Even though he knew full well that his Bramblevine bracelet was incapable of such raw power.

There were multiple layers of the greenery patchwork blanket. Each layer had absorbed his momentum until he’d coasted to a stop at the bottom. It had to have been him, because the idea of the forest being intelligent enough to not only try to help him, but also perfectly figure out a way to protect his vital organs was deeply distressing.

[Laughter!]

Mal gripped his skull.

A telepath? Where had that come from?

When there was no response, he forced his feet onward. Thankfully, the giant smokestack in the distance was a strong indicator of where he needed to go.

Mal’s every footstep was agony.

At the start, with adrenaline pounding through his veins, he’d been able to ignore the pain. But now, 15 minutes into his trek toward the airship, it was getting harder and harder not to notice. He’d severely underestimated just how much ground a falling airship could cover, especially with how early he’d jumped off. It felt like the smokestack hadn’t come forward by a bit.

It would be hours of walking. Maybe even days.

[Worry…]

Mal jumped half a foot into the air. He looked around himself in confusion before his heart finally settled.

“I must have hit my head on the ground harder than I thought,” he muttered.

A set of footsteps. Mal furrowed his eyebrows.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”

Mal slowly turned around.

Pirates. Three.

And they look like they’re in better condition than me, Mal thought. Seriously? How did they even get down?!

“Looks like it’s an academy boy,” the one in front said. She grinned maliciously. “You’re a long way from home.”

“Should we be messing with him?” one of the other ones said. “Aren’t Exodi students dangerous?”

The woman scoffed. “We managed to get access to the manifest. They’re only first years. If there had been any seriously dangerous mages on board, we would have never taken the job.”

Wait, manifest?

It was then that Mal recalled the way that small group on the airship had stalked toward him. It was strange—why would so many be so worried about two random young adults, as opposed to the captain, a highly proficient spellsword?

“I was your target, wasn’t I?” Mal said.

“Yup," she said. "I don’t know who you pissed off, but they’ve got deep pockets, and they’ve started feeling out groups to see if somebody can take care of you. Of course, everybody’s a little hesitant. Nobody wants Puck on their ass. But if we sold it as an accident, the entire airship going down—”

“You’re not very good at your jobs, are you?”

She paused. “What did you say?”

“I mean, you were completely outmatched, and that was against a significantly outnumbered crew and four students. You didn’t even pose that much of a threat.”

The woman’s left eye twitched. “You’ve got a hell of a mouth, considering the circumstances.” She gestured at the two behind her. “Don’t you realize you’re outnumbered three to one?”

A simple tilt of his head.

“Whether you bring three or three-hundred,” he said. “In this place, the outcome would be the same.”

The Bramblevine bracelet twisted. The grass snapped up and around each of them. Vines and flowers alike wrapped between their arms, their necks, their mouths and eyes. One of them let out a scream and the grass took the opportunity to grow down into the man’s throat.

Within seconds, they’d been forced to the ground. Three mounds of greenery poked out from the forest floor, barely discernible.

Huh.

Mal had been intending to kill them, but not like that. His abilities were unusually responsive.

“Maybe that knock to my head somehow increased my witchcraft affinity?”

As night began to fall, Mal realized that he would have to set up camp. He’d managed to find a riverside, which seemed like a good location. Loath as he was to drink directly from the stream and risk disease, he didn’t have his old wizardry spells to create clean water. Well, he did—but the amount of water he’d get would be outweighed by the amount of sweat he’d lose from exertion. Boiling the water was out of the question, as he had no metal pot on hand.

So he cupped his hands, kneeled, and took a sip.

To his annoyance, the water was surprisingly pleasant. The taste was fresh, with a slight mineral flavoring that wasn’t overly obnoxious.

As he drank, he thought back to what the pirates had said. The only people that he could think of who would want him dead was either the cult or enemies of his father.

But Mal couldn't even imagine who would have a grudge against his old man. Not because his father was a sort of peacemaker or anything—no, it was because their family was so weak and useless that it didn't really make sense to have them as enemies. What was the worst that they'd be able to do? Mal couldn't even think of an example. That was how incapable his family was.

The Patoal family's days of splendor had long since passed. They were a shambling corpse in the shape of a great house at this point.

Then that only left the cult. But that answer had issues too. Why would the cult send somebody else to do their dirty work? They had the people for it. They could have—and should have—taken care of Mal himself. Especially in light of Mal's confirmed demon kill.

But then again... they most likely thought it was a fluke.

Defeating Nima? I had the help of Lusia, and they know that I have an F-grade core. It might've been reasonable to assume incompetence on Nima's end.

So maybe the cult wasn't completely out of the running yet.

Mal finished his drink and stepped away from the river. He adjusted his Bramblevine bracelet and then activated it. The grass and the flowers wrapped together into something approaching a mattress, and he lay down on it with a sigh.

A part of Mal noted that it was unusually easy to do fine control with the plants there. The other part of him that was extraordinarily sleepy ignored the first part and told it to shut up and go to bed.

The latter part won out. Mal found himself drifting off to bed.

He woke up to the sound of his stomach gurgling.

"I need food."

It was a simple requirement. It was also one that he'd never bothered to think much about. Food was one of those things that you tended to take for granted when you lived as privileged a lifestyle as Mal. In the middle of the wilderness, however, your options were severely limited.

Even when I was on the run, Mal thought. I was still able to stop in at towns and build up supplies, and there was always a way to make enough money to feed myself.

Mal looked over the plants and tried to remember if any of them were edible.

He didn't recognize a single one of them. Cassandra's classes had covered the plants native to Chama and the regions surrounding it. There was no reason to go in depth on the plants of the Far West.

I'm going to need to chew Cassandra out about her curriculum when I get back, Mal thought.

Maybe he could go hunting? Boil some meat?

But Mal hadn't seen so much as a trace of animal life.

It's unnatural, he thought.

Mal had been to elven forests before. They had grazing animals, the same as any other land. Why would it be different here?

Could nearby elves have hunted the animals here into near extinction? Possible, but unlikely. Although the East loved to depict elves as savages, Mal doubted they were such poor stewards that they would completely eliminate the local wildlife. It just didn't seem likely.

An odd, creeping feeling crawled down Mal's spine. He ignored it and shoved it to the side. There were bigger issues.

He chewed his lips. He was going to have to eat something. He hadn't seen any fish, so that was out of the question too.

With no options left, he sighed and picked out a leafy plant that looked similar to something he knew was edible in the East—

[Danger!]

Mal's left eye twitched. He picked another one of the plants—

[DANGER!]

Mal dropped the leaves to the ground and growled. "Fine, I'll pick another one!"

He grabbed another leafy green with a funny purple shimmer. This time, there was no foreign voice.

"When I find out who's doing this to me," Mal said. "I'm going to break their knees."

To Mal's annoyance, the mysterious voice had turned out to be right. Probably. At the very least, his makeshift salad hadn't killed him, so that was good.

He resumed his journey to the airship, one foot in front of the other. At this point, he'd seen the trail of destruction that the airship had created. Multiple bent and injured trees marked the path the airship had gone down, starting at the top with the foliage and slowly working its way toward the ground.

And the whole time, Mal had yet to hear a single animal. Not a cricket chirping, not a frog, nothing.

Mal was beginning to wonder if they'd had the bad luck to fall in one of those mysterious enchanted forests that always popped up in fairy tales.

The voice would fade away for a few hours, impart some feeling into him out of nowhere—usually amusement—then vanish. Mal had briefly considered that he was legitimately going insane. That was beginning to seem like a strong possibility.

As the sun rose higher into the air, a sweltering heat built up around him. He was forced to take off his robes and shirt, wrapping them around his waist. It was incredibly humid. He felt like he was breathing in water from how much liquid was in the air.

He trudged on, intent on ignoring the discomfort. The marks of damage left by the airship came closer and closer down, until he spotted a trench, clearly dug by a huge object carving through the ground.

He sped up his steps and saw it.

The airship, smashed in half by the trunk of a tree. Mal circled around the edges, looking for any survivors, or even signs of survivors. Nothing.

"Hello?" he asked. "Is anybody there?"

No response.

There weren’t even any bodies. What had happened to the pirates who’d gotten killed? Had they all fallen off? If that were the case, then wouldn’t Mal have seen them while he was following the path of the airship?

That same creeping feeling from earlier came back.

He went into the airship. Just as empty as the outside. He clambered out and sighed. So now he was trapped in the middle of a possibly enchanted forest with voices in his head, and his friends were missing. Not only that, but come to think of it, the captain, Aston, had probably been their best chance of navigating out of here. And he was gone too.

"Crap," Mal muttered.

He paused.

There was a smell in the air. Rust?

No, blood.

He took off in the direction of the smell, feet pounding against the grass as he jogged forward. He stopped.

There was nothing obvious. He looked down at the ground and pushed aside the grass.

A human foot.

No body attached.

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