The first light of morning fought to break through the smoky sky over Edinburgh. Robert stood at the southern barricade, his staff pressed into the cracked ground. He was trying to come up with a plan. The northern districts stretched toward Leith's coastal edge, where the sea's mist mingled with the Nuckelavee's toxic aura.
The city was quiet, but not in a good way. It felt like something terrible could happen at any moment. Robert looked north at the destroyed part of the city, where the Nuckelavee's evil aura still hung in the air like a shadow.
"Fresh water," he whispered, remembering what Moira had said. "A canal big enough to split the city. Deep enough so that monster won't cross it."
Snow frowned and brushed ash off her sleeves. "You mean like a moat? Like what castles had? That's what you're talking about, isn't it?"
Robert smirked. "Exactly. But this isn't just some medieval trench to keep a monster out. This is magical engineering. We're building something to show people what magic can really do."
Watch me turn this city into the safest fortress it's ever been. Rebuilding isn't just surviving! it's showing we're stronger than this. No one's going to think we ran away.
Hamish shifted his shield, still streaked with grime and blood. "Aye, but a canal that big? That's no' like planting a wee garden. You're askin' the ground itself to move for ye, lad."
Chaucer leaned against a broken wall, flipping one of his throwing stars. "A moat to stop a beast. It's got a nice poetic ring to it. But tell me, Robert, how do you plan to make the earth listen? Or are we just banking on your magic eye and your big ideas?"
Robert laughed quietly and knelt, placing his hands on the cracked dirt. "It's not about asking the earth nicely," he said confidently. "It's about making the impossible look easy. The water will flow because I'll tell it to. The ground will move because it's waiting for someone bold enough to push it. Magic isn't some fragile thing. It's power, and it listens to people who know how to use it."
Snow crossed his arms and watched him. "Intent or not, this is huge, Robert. We're talking miles of land here. How are you going to pull this off without…" She hesitated. "Without breaking yourself?"
Hamish chuckled and stepped closer. "Fine, Robert. We've got yer back. Just don't expect us to start diggin' with shovels."
Chaucer tossed his star into the air and caught it. "You dig, Robert. We'll keep the Cu Sith off your back. Just try not to make the moat too fancy. You'll embarrass the rest of the city."
Robert shook his head, a small smile breaking through despite himself. But deep inside, doubts crept into his thoughts. Could he really do this?
He kept his grin sharp, not letting the others see the worry beneath. This wasn't only about moving dirt and water. it was about protecting lives and standing against something far bigger than himself. For a moment, he wished Lillia were here. She always had a way of cutting through his bravado with her quiet calm.
He pushed the doubts aside and took a deep breath. Now wasn't the time to second-guess. Letting his magic surge through him, he pressed his hands into the ground. "Alright," he said firmly. "Let's get to work."
Robert stood still for a moment, closing his eyes as he tuned into the magic around him. His left eye glowed softly, the crystal within sparking to life as it scanned the ruined city. With its enhanced sight, he began to chart the path he would carve. Princess Street stretched before him, a natural line to guide his work. From there, his eye followed the roads and open spaces surrounding the Nuck, keeping a wide distance from the monster's position at the center of the devastation.
As he focused, Robert shifted into a meditative state. His breathing slowed, and his awareness expanded outward, searching for mana in the air. He could feel it, floating like clouds. It was everywhere, pouring out from the Nuckelavee's portal, lingering from the deaths of the Cu Sith, and saturating the area from the Nuck's foul breath attacks.
He began to draw it in. The mana responded, swirling toward him in streams of color and energy. Fire, death, earth, wind, and dark magic coalesced, flowing into his nine-pointed crystal mana core. Each point flared with light as his pathways worked overtime, converting the wild, foreign magics into usable M-power. The process wasn't easy.
His internal mana pathways burned with the effort of balancing the elements, each one feeding into another to create a stable energy flow. His core pulsed brightly, growing stronger with every second as more mana poured in. It felt like trying to tame a storm, but Robert's focus didn't waver. "Come on," he muttered under his breath. "More. I need more."
More he received, and he began to feel his body grow hot and atomic. His crystal was filled to the brim with the energy and he knew he would not be able to take much more, but then he unleashed it. Opening his hands, and placing them at either side of him on the ground, he channeled light, earth, and water into the ground, headed two directions from him, left and right. As the magic dug into the earth, the ground responded with deep cracks and shudders.
From Robert at the center, the earth groaned and split wide, like a jagged wound opening. Chaucer, ever observant, watched the Nuck stumble slightly and grab the roof of a nearby house when the land suddenly jolted under his hooves. Far north, near Leith's crumbling docks, its grotesque bulk loomed, a blight against the smoky dawn. Appearing confused, the abomination glanced around for a moment before becoming distracted by a few men running for their lives hoping it wasnt paying enough attention.
They were not successful. Its diseased breath billowed, scorching cobblestones black, a venomous tide clawing south toward the ravine.
Robert allowed the mana to flow into him, and he twisted it. Altered it. And focused his pure will into the intention of converting it to mana he needed to use. He shoved this mana deep into the earth and willed it to follow the path his Magical left eye had plotted with its scanning senses.
Finally, the earth gave way. With a resounding crack the earth began to spread apart and explode upward, splitting and separating roads, launching earth and stone tens of meters into the air. The crack widened and excavated itself. Briefly, he felt like an archeologist on a mythical scale, pulling centuries worth of sediment and civilization from where it had been laid.
The ground widened, 5 feet…ten feet…20 feet… The further Robert created his ravine, the easier it became to separate them. The cracks continued at blinding speed, north from two directions. They curved away from Robert, east and west of the Nuckelavee. More earth shot up and removed at Robert's direction, the water magic he instilled began to take effect, water leaking out from the exposed earth, would trickle down the sides of the ravine and collect at the dusty smoking bottom.
Explosively the two cracks turned toward each other, far north of the Nuck, and found each other with a powerful eruption of earth, stone, and human laid metals. Pipes that were in the area had burst and emptied their water into the new trench, that was still being excavated.
Robert felt the magic loop around again, the crooked circle had formed around the Nuck, he began to feel his arms weaken, and grow numb. Hamish was right. He couldn't keep this up for much longer, his head swam. And of course, he pushed on "No… no… More… wider!" Finally the Nuck took notice, fresh blood from a human ran down its chin, dripping onto its chest.
He began to scream again. The reverberating roar of hostile anger and command. The Cu Sith that had been helping him hunt and round up humans to his location, responded with their own howls. Returning in urgency, they began to run toward the south, where the ravine had begun, and the Nuck started charging through houses and other buildings, crashing into them in desperation. He sensed it, the bottom of the new ravine had a small ring of fresh water collecting in the bottom, and it felt as if he had been chained. A flimsy thread of a rope for now, but it was growing stronger, and he could not allow it to be.
Reaching into his dimensional pocket, with a thought, Robert pulled free two vials of mana. At the moment he could feel weakness playing at his mind trying to bury him in sleep. His head was throbbing in pain from the effort. Not far, Hamish and Chaucer had taken up guarding positions on either side of him now, to protect him from Cu Sith, still on this side of Robert's ravine. They were in an absolute frenzy, and came one at a time to each of them, oblivious to any sort of tactical intelligence. With little effort, Hamish and Chaucer could both easily dispatch a single Cu Sith.
Their stink of death had begun to permeate the area, and corpses of them littered the ground in increasing numbers. In between slashes of Chaucer's thin sharp blades, he would toss a stack of throwing stars at targets he could see approaching from a further distance. "I get it now. Fire and Forget. Just flick, and slash. Flick, and slash." Every flick sent forth three new throwing stars trailed by streaks of light. Robert downed the two vials at the same time, swallowing deeply of the fruity electrical liquid.
Almost instantly, he began to feel his energy reserves begin to replenish. Turning to Snow, "Snow, take that side here heading east, empty all your reserves of mana into the water element…both hands together and don't hold it back. We have to fill this faster…" Snow glanced fearfully toward the Nuck, but to her credit just nodded with resolve, "Okay Robert." She pivoted on her heel and stood over the ravine aiming east. Summoning forth all of her available mana, and her sapphire mana core flaring bright, she channeled everything she had into her hands, clasped them together, and opened her fingers toward the bottom of the 10 meter ravine, taking a deep breath in, she unleashed all she had. Her turret trilled cheekily, flinging ice shards with snappy crystalline pops, skewering Cu Sith with a taunting whirl.
She fueled her intention with her fear and her desire to protect the city. Great torrents of water, like a mighty river, burst out of her palms toward the ravine, the sound roaring like a broken fire hydrant of pressure. Stumbling back from her own magic, she could feel her feet start to slide backward on the wet pavement. The force could have lifted her off the ground if she had turned and pointed at it. The water struck the bottom of the ravine with massive force, causing the loose earth and material to mix with the new water and surge off around the ravine with rapid speed.
Robert had another way to manipulate his magic, he channeled his beam energy together in two hands as well, the water attempting to become an aggressive blast of water magic, but his intention shifted. "No, no…listen to me." He said to his rapidly increasing power, "Fill this moat. Tangible, cold, crisp clean water. Restrain the filth and disease of the Nuck, purify any death that tries to cross you." A giant sphere of water had begun to swell around his hands, and grew to nearly his elbow before he released it. As it fell into the ravine from him, it seemed to swell, and increase in volume. As if the water he released was actually a dozen times more in quantity than was visible.
The mana churned from him and from the ambient aether in the area, being drawn into vast waterfall of liquid mana he emptied into the ravine. His wave headed west, and increased the size of the ring of water several fold. The Nuck was halfway to them, they still had time, but not enough.