Chapter 6: Fusion

    The main hallways of the university were almost deserted now.  The last session of classes for the day had ended nearly half an hour ago, so most of the students and professors had already left for the day.  Professor Deklos walked these halls now, and the sound of his footsteps against the stone floors filled the hallways of the university.

    Deklos walked the hallways, heading toward the southeast wing of the university, the place where the magic labs could be found.  He had requested the use of one of the magic labs three weeks ago, just a few days after he had worked out the details of his experiment with Tierth.  Both of them had wanted to keep interest in this experiment to a minimum due to the possibility of something going wrong, but the danger of the experiment was the very thing that attracted the interest of almost the entire campus.  Somehow, news that Professor Deklos had specifically reserved the most highly shielded magic lab had gotten out, and for the past three weeks he had put up with the most outrageous of questions and comments.

    Quite a few students had gotten the idea that the magic lab was reserved for an artificing class, so all of the students in Deklos' artificing classes panicked.  They thought that he was going to hold a "special class" where all the students would create volatile artifacts as a way to weed out the untalented students by bringing about their untimely deaths.  For a solid week, students had come to his office with requests to drop his class or opt out of class for the month.  It wasn't until the tenth student came by that he managed to get an answer to his question of why they were dropping his classes.

    One of the other rumors was almost as comical.  One of the other professors in the applied magic department heard that Deklos had been studying lost spells, and started a rumor that Deklos was actually going to perform an experiment in demon summoning.  This one could not have been further from the truth, but it too caused a new influx of students begging him to give up the experiment.  One student even went so far as to order Deklos to "end his evil ways and cease his trafficking with the forces of evil."  Needless to say, this student much preferred drama to spell casting.

    Even though Deklos outright denied these two rumors, that didn't start the students from starting several of their own.  In the end, the archwizard decided that it wasn't worth the effort to discourage these rumors, and left them alone completely.  This, of course, only served to encourage the rumor-mongering among the student body.  As a result, he expected quite a few students to show up to watch his experiment.  On top of that, Tierth decided that this experiment would be a wonderful teaching opportunity for one of his advanced magic-theory classes, so he would be bringing quite a few of his students along.  In the end, it looked like Deklos' little experiment with antipodal elemental fusion was turning into one of the biggest events at the university this year.

    Deklos looked up, and found himself at the southeast wing already.  The door to this wing was made of solid metal, with several shielding artifacts attached to it.  The entire southwest wing was heavily shielded against magic at all times due to the dangerous nature of many of the experiments that took place here.  The first and second floors had the least shielding, as the magic labs on these floors were used mainly for the lower-level magic courses.  The upper floors were much more heavily shielded, as these floors tended to be used by the upper level students and professors.  However, the heaviest shielding was to be found in the basement of the wing.  The basement floor contained labs that were intended for the most dangerous of experiments.  It was these labs that spells such as the Midnight Flux and the Ring of Dawn were developed.  It was to one of these labs that Deklos was headed.

    All the floors of the southeast wing were barely furnished at all.  All of the hallways were built from solid stone and concrete with no carpeting or tile to make the place seem more inviting.  The labs themselves contained only shielding artifacts and target dummies.  In fact, the only furnished areas in the entire wing were the observation rooms that looked down on the various labs.  In these rooms, long stone benches could be found adorning the hard stone floor.

    Deklos ignored the total lack of furnishing, though, and walked straight from the main entrance to this wing to the stairs heading down.  The stairs matched the rest of the building quite well as they were constructed from poured concrete.  Deklos descended the stairs, the light dimming as he continued downward.  Even though there was no natural light in the Dark Lands, the basements were always the least lit places in the towns.  The inhabitants of the Dark Lands place less light sources in the basements because very few people tend to visit the basement floors of buildings, and most of the ones who do are capable of casting a simple light spell to offset the dimness.

    Finally, Deklos arrived at the basement floor.  Before him stood a single metal door with an incredible number of shielding artifacts attached to it.  A simple sign that read, "DANGER!" was securely attached to the door.  He pushed on the door with all his strength, and with a creak it slowly began to open.  The archwizard didn't bother to open it all the way, but instead entered the basement once the door was just open enough for him to walk through.  Since students would almost certainly be coming along later, he didn't bother to close it just yet.  On the other side of the doorway was a very empty hallway.  It formed a T-intersection with another hallway about 25 meters from the main doorway to the basement.  Deklos walked down the hallway, and took a left at the intersection.  He continued down the hall until he found another metal doorway with even more shielding than the first.  A sign on this door read simply, "LAB."  Deklos opened this door as well, and entered the magic lab.

      The magic lab was much more spartan than Deklos expected.  Most of the other magic labs that the university had at least contained few cabinets with caster's equipment and additional shielding artifacts.  In here, however, there were neither cabinets nor any other kind of furniture.  Instead, the room was a stone box of mammoth proportions that had shielding artifacts attached to the walls every three feet.  At the moment, they were all deactivated.  In one of the far corners of the room, Deklos saw some larger artifacts of a sort that he had never seen before.  He walked closer, and found that it was not a collection of large artifacts, but rather an pile of extra shielding artifacts next to the artifact that alters the elemental field of the room.  He took a moment to take inventory of what kind of shielding was available while he remembered his discussion with Tierth Valen earlier in the week.

* * *  
    "What do you mean the shielding will be insufficient?" Deklos asked his new friend, "That's the best lab the university has to offer!"

    "That's true," Valen replied, "But still, antipodal fusion magic will create a much larger discharge than any other magic we've experimented with before.  And unlike most other magic experiments, if you lose control of the spell, the damage output will be much higher.  Even if you don't lose control of the spell, the power of the spell will be much higher than, say, the Midnight Flux.  And I might add that during the  experiments of the Midnight Flux, they managed to almost destroy the basement floor because the shielding artifacts failed."

    "So how would we go adding more shielding?" Deklos said, "Extra shielding artifacts probably won't cut it if the power of the spell I'm going to try out is that high, but I can't just ask some friends to come over and manually maintain a massive number of barrier spells."

    "Think, Deklos! Think!  The normal barriers in that lab are tuned to ward against all magic.  If you were to set up a fair number of artifacts tuned to strongly resist only the elements of the spell you'd be casting, a small number of extra artifacts should be sufficient."

    With a doubtful look on his face, Deklos responded, "If you say so..."

* * *
    The archwizard picked up a few of the shielding artifacts and examined them.  Since he'd be using fire and water element in this fusion spell, he looked specifically for shielding units that guarded against those specific spells.  To his surprise, however, all of the shielding artifacts were generalized.

    'Hmm...this won't do,' the professor thought to himself, "But what if I..."

    Deklos picked up one of the shielding artifacts, and gathered some water element.  After he had gathered enough to cast a simple spell, he focused it into a barrier of sorts, and then impressed the spell on the artifact.  For a few seconds, nothing happened other than Deklos getting a slight headache from holding a spell for an extended period of time rather than releasing it.  Then the spell he had formed began to dissipate into the artifact. A few seconds later, the artifact had completely absorbed his spell.

    "Just like I thought..." Deklos muttered under his breath.

    The archwizard repeated the process with the other shielding artifacts in the heap at his feet.  Half of them he made to guard against water spells, and the other half he infused with a barrier that warded off fire magic.  He picked up a few of these artifacts, and placed them around the perimeter of the room at equal intervals.  He didn't just drop one artifact at each spot, though.  Instead, he dropped a fire-based artifact and a water-based artifact each point.  When he had finished scattering these extra shields, he activated them.  For now, the shields were quite low-powered due to the relative lack of water and fire element in the room at the moment.  This state of affairs brought to mind the next thing that Deklos had to set up: the element mixture in the room.

    Returning to the corner, Deklos began to examine the artifact that controlled the elemental mixture in the room.  It appeared to be a cylinder of iron with a piece of quartz on top and six colored jewels embedded on its side.  While he looked at the artifact, Deklos tried desperately to remember what Tierth and he had discussed regarding the room's element mixture.

* * *
    "I think half light element and half dark element should work well enough," Tierth said to Deklos.

    "That's not a very good idea," Deklos replied with a hint of fear in his voice.

    Professor Valen merely raised an eyebrow at this and asked, "Personal experience?"

    "Yes.  Let's just say that I nearly killed myself quite a few times while studying here as a student."

    "What would you suggest, then?"

    "Well..." Deklos began, "Since a half and half mixture of opposite elements is rather...volatile...I think that making some other element compose ten percent of the mixture should stabilize things.  That or use twenty-five percent water element to seventy-five percent fire element."

    "I think the ten percent other element method sounds best," Tierth said, "But it's your call.  You're the expert on mixing elements in artifacts, after all."

* * *
    "Alright, let's see here," Deklos said to no one in particular, "Let's go with ten percent light element, and split the rest of the mix between water and fire..."

    The archwizard found a white crystal, which was commonly used for light element controls, and concentrated for a few seconds.  As he did so, the quartz crystal on top began to acquire milky strands of white.  He then found the red jewel on the artifact as well as the greenish-blue one.  He put a hand on each, and focused on them for a long time, causing the crystal on the top of the artifact to become a swirl of blue and red with a thread of white here and there that stabilized things.  The archwizard opened his eyes every once in a while to see how the mixture was going.  After he was certain that the element mixture was correct, he stood up and walked to the center of the room.

    'All done...' Deklos thought, looking up at the window connecting the lab with the observation room, 'Hmm...Tierth isn't here yet.  May as well warm up for the main event while I wait for him.'

    Deklos walked to the side of the room, and picked up one of the practice dummies that had been carelessly dropped there.  It was a simple stone setup that looked somewhat human with a circle of crystals around the crown of it's "head."  Each crystal had a different color, and they seemed to each emit a barrier against a different element.  The professor took this practice dummy and placed it firmly in the center of the room.  Then he stepped back and began to cast some spells at it.

   
* * *
    The professor known as Tierth Valen walked into the observation room for the underground magic lab.  As he expected, there were a few rows of benches in the back of the room and empty floor everywhere else.  Tierth merely shook his head at this before turning around to talk to his students.

    "Alright everyone, come on in.  There's plenty of sitting room."

    Tierth stepped away from the door, and a trickle of students began to walk in.  Within half a minute, though, this trickle turned into a veritable flood of humanity, and soon enough there was no more sitting room.  The few students remaining grumbled about the insufficient seating, but they leaned back against the walls soon enough anyway.  Professor Valen looked over the students gathered here.  Many of them were still working on acquiring the title of wizard by completing their general studies here at the university.  Many more, however, were full fledged wizards already and working on attaining the title of archwizard in their chosen field.  The only archwizard present, however, was Tierth Valen himself.

    They all looked down at Deklos for the longest time, watching him warm up by casting relatively mundane spells.  After about ten minutes, though, the archwizard in the room below looked up and took notice of them.  Tierth waved at him from behind the window, signaling to Deklos that it was time to start.  After he waved back in acknowledgment, Deklos turned around to begin the final preparations for the experiment.  Professor Valen sent one of the students out to close up the doors while they all waited.  When the student returned to the observation room, Professor Deklos was just beginning the experiment in the room below.

    Deklos took his place near one of the walls of the room, with his back facing the entrance to the lab. He withdrew from his pockets a pair of casters gloves and put them on. He held his hands up in front of him, palms facing away from him. Then, he began to focus on his spell. He concentrated completely on the runes on the gloves in order to focus his mind rather than using a chant or elaborate gestures. The audience in the observation room watched this procedure closely, eager to discover what sort of magical experiment the archwizard was going to perform. As Deklos focused, two tiny globes of energy began to form, a yellowish-red colored one hovering in front of his right palm, and a greenish-blue one in front of his left palm. A few students realized what he was doing, and gasped with astonishment.

    Tierth spoke up to explain things to the students that didn't quite get it, "As you can see, Deklos is using a standard casting procedure to gather fire and water element.  Now, since these are opposite elements, any resulting spell will be quite volatile.  As a few of you have guessed, this experiment is an attempt to harness the volatility of such a spell, and direct it in a meaningful way.  The result we hope for is a focused offensive spell with incredible destructive potential."

    Professor Valen turned around to check Deklos' progress before continuing, "As you can see, the amount of element he has gathered is much smaller than what you would usually use for an offensive spell.  As you should know, the standard amount of element to gather for an offensive spell is an amount approximately equal to the size of your fist.  Deklos', however, is not even half that."

    Element ceased to gather in front of Deklos, and the two spheres merely hovered in front of him as he concentrated.  Continuing his spell, Deklos now began focusing the separate energies to take the desired shape.  The spheres of energy twisted and turned on themselves, though this was barely noticeable to the crowd of students watching him.  He then began to slowly push the balls of element together, slowly merging them into a single spell.  As Deklos continued to focus on this merging procedure, Tierth explained the proceedings in the room above.

    "You probably didn't see exactly what just happened, but Deklos is employing a very different method of creating spells in order to keep this spell relatively stable.  First, he focused each element separately, and focused them into an indirect spell in order to minimize the destructive potential while he works with it.  Right now, he's combining the already-focused element.  Look!  He's sufficiently merged the element together so that he can control it as a single spell.  Now he can begin forming it into a more destructive state while he casts it toward his target.  Once it arrives at the target, he should have it fully compressed.  At that point, the spell should begin to expand.  At that stage, Deklos should redirect the expansion upon itself, allowing the energy to build up to a critical stage where it will become a localized explosion."

    The barely attached globs of energy flew across the room toward the target, all the while continuing to compress into a single sphere of energy.  By the time the spheres had completely merged with each other, the spell had arrived at the target. At first, nothing happened except for a shield suddenly becoming visible around the target. Then, the spell began to expand as the opposing elements repelled each other.  At first, the expansion was rather slow, but it soon picked up in speed until the caster had to completely focus on preventing the spell from going out of control and engulfing the entire room.  Deklos' face was contorted with pain as he tried to maintain the spell. It was no use, however, and he collapsed into an unconscious heap on the floor.

    The spell, now free of the control that Deklos had imposed upon it, began to rapidly expand until all that could be seen in the room was a swirling red and blue mass. The spell pummeled the shields around the room, and the watchers in the observation room panicked. Several of those closest to the window jumped up and ran to the back of the room.  Others decided to escape while they still could.  These students pried at the heavy door and fled from the room as soon as it was open enough for them to squeeze through.  After a few more seconds, though, the spell began to slowly fade away, easing the panic of all those still present and conscious.

    At last, the spell completely dissipated. The target had no shield around it now, and the actual body of the target was mostly torn away. Most of the shields around the room were beginning to fail as well. Deklos lay on the floor, still unconscious. His robes were singed, and his exposed skin was burned in places.  Several of the onlookers rushed into the lab to help him.

    Tierth Valen was the first to arrive.  Deklos wasn't hurt as badly as he could have been since he was wearing an artifact that created a very powerful anti-magic barrier around his body.  Tierth first tore the artifact off of Deklos so that he could work, and then focused all of his energy into maintaining a healing spell.  Since he understood the basic theory behind healing spells better than most, the archwizard managed to create a massive healing aura around Deklos by using the abundance of water element present in the room.

    "You three!" Tierth yelled at some of the students present that held the title of wizard, "Help me maintain this healing spell.  Everyone else, get the medics from the hospital!"

    The archwizard and his three students focused completely on keeping the aura of the healing spell from fading.  The spell began to fade as the three of them tired from keeping such a powerful spell in effect for such a long time.  However, soon enough help arrived.  When the medics arrived on the scene, they found Deklos still unconscious, but his wounds had healed somewhat due to all the healing magic being cast on him. His condition was still serious, though, and he showed no signs of waking up any time soon. The medics took Deklos to the city hospital, where he could be given better treatment than healing spells could provide.

* * *
    A few days after the experiment, the doctors at the hospital had managed to heal many of Deklos' wounds, but he still was unconscious. They decided that the experimental spell had put an undue amount of strain on his mind, and he likely pushed himself to control the spell far longer than he should have. As a result, he was most likely in a sort of coma. His mind was somewhat aware, as he was seen to mumble as though he were talking in his sleep. However, a portion of his mind was greatly damaged, and was keeping him unconscious while it repaired itself. And so, Deklos slept for weeks on end, and the weeks turned into months and the months began to fly by.