Millennial Mage

Tala quickly swept her rest spot, tucking the couple of odds and ends that she’d left out, away into Kit.

“Terry.”

Terry was already beside her, sized for riding.

Tala wanted to go, investigate the Leshkin, and slay what she found. But that’s not the wise course. I have no one out here to protect, no goal other than survival. I should go the other way.

In her mind, the juggernauts loomed large, exuding terror.

That fear made her want to charge towards the unknown Leshkin, to prove that she wasn’t afraid with each slain member of their cursed race.

No, Tala. That is not courage. That is just letting your fear rule you in a different way.

Tala growled, clipping her anchor to Terry’s collar and swinging up onto his back.

The terror bird looked back to her, a clear question in his eyes. Which way should we go?

She’d watched the Leshkin harm so many, even killing some of those under her protection. She wanted revenge.

But that was foolish. Even if the exact Leshkin who had caused those deaths were, indeed, near the murder dell, destroying their bodies wouldn’t do anything permanent to them.

She could go, hunt down their hatchery, or nursery, or wherever their heartseeds were stored.

And that is even more foolish, Tala. You could do that once you’ve elevated yourself another few steps and you’ve equipped yourself properly, but even then, it would still probably be foolish.

She thought of Jevin, then. A powerhouse, equipped with the best the Constructionists could put together, and a truly god-like being, at least within a certain radius.

If he hasn’t wiped them out, there must be a reason. It must be harder than I’m imagining.

She thought about that for a long moment. What was she imagining?

In her mind’s eye, she pictured herself and Terry breaking through and around juggernaut guards and into a long building, full of pulsing, fleshy seeds.

She would run down the aisles, Flow outstretched, wreaking havoc and a harvest of death upon the enemy of humanity.

She snorted a laugh. Yeah… I’m definitely oversimplifying the task.

She sighed. The wise course was obvious. It was also obviously not what she wanted to do.

Wisdom. I have to choose wisdom to grow in wisdom…even when I don’t want to.

“Makinaven, Terry. Let’s go.”

Terry bobbed a nod, even as he turned, crouched low, and took off at a sprint, heading north, back towards the city-in-a-tree.

* * *

They passed the draw-down line without incident, but Tala stayed vigilant, keeping a wary eye on the surrounding trees.

Terry continued to sprint through the woods without slowing.

It was only then that Tala remembered: Terry didn’t really have any recourse against the Leshkin. He must have wanted to leave from the moment they heard the first cry.

She leaned a bit farther forward and patted the avian’s neck. “Thank you, Terry.”

He turned his head slightly to the side to glance back at her momentarily.

“Thank you for staying with me and being willing to let me come to the wise choice.”

He trilled in happy acknowledgement.

Soon after, they came into the clearing around the great tree, and Tala took a steadying breath. I know running from your fears makes them worse, but it was still the right call.

It was mid-afternoon, and mundane citizens were working all throughout the vast open expanse.

The strong scent of mint was carried on the breeze, and Tala found herself grinning. Right, wasn’t the tea-brick seller connected with a large farm to the south? Lots of mint, indeed.

She didn’t stop or seek out the source of the scent. There would be no real point.

The power in the air was, again, almost smothering. I swear the signature feels familiar.

It was hardly the time to investigate that, so she pushed it to the back of her mind.

Tala asked Terry to slow as they approached the southern gate, and she called out to a guard. “Hello, there!”

“Greetings, Mistress. How can we assist you, today?”

“I’m looking for a skilled tanner for beast hides.”

The man looked up, clearly considering. “I’m sorry, Mistress, but I don’t know of one. If you can wait, I can go ask our Master Sergeant. She should know.”

Tala nodded. “Thank you, I don’t mind waiting. Are you sure it’s alright? I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

He smiled and gave a half bow. “It would be my pleasure, and duty, to serve.” He turned and went through a well-hidden door, just inside the gate’s arch.

Tala had only waited for about five minutes before the guard returned with a scrap of paper.

“Here you are, Mistress. Just east of us, here.” He gave her further directions, then handed her the paper with another description of how to find her destination.

“Thank you, guardsman. Take care.”

He waved goodbye as Terry turned and took off towards the tanner. A business fully outside the city proper. She shook her head. The forest cities had many, many oddities it seemed, and Tala was starting to enjoy most of them quite a bit.

* * *

Tala found the tanner to be quite reasonable, and they did settle on a payment of one hide to tan the other. When she returned, she would get to select between the two hides, and take the one she preferred, so Tala didn’t really see any way she could lose out.

That accomplished, she and Terry returned to Makinaven, thanked the guard, and entered through the Southern Gate.

It was still late afternoon, so she wasn’t sure where Rane would be.

He’ll probably be either with Master Jevin or back in the training hall we’re using.

She decided to drop through the Constructionist Guild. If nothing else, she needed an oven-air incorporator. Thankfully, the stipend had come in, and her debt with the Constructionists had been cleared.

In no time at all, Terry had flickered to her shoulder, and Tala was pushing open the door into the Constructionists' third tier compound.

“Mistress Tala?” The greeting mostly overrode the standard chime sounding in the back rooms.

“Master Grent?”

“Hello! Welcome.” He gestured expansively. “Good to see you back here.” He said a few quiet words to the assistant he’d been dialoguing with upon Tala’s entrance. As the assistant departed, Grent turned back to Tala, a genuine smile across his face. “How can I assist you, today?”

“Well…” She thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I have some harvests to sell, an incorporator to buy, I’m interested in what watches you have on hand, and…” She contemplated for a moment. “I think that’s it.”

He nodded to her. “Certainly. Right this way. I’ll take you to an acquisitions room. You can lay out your harvests there, and we can go over what they’re worth.”

Ten minutes later, Tala, Terry, and Grent regarded two large tables covered in a single layer of harvests.

“What did you do, Mistress?”

She frowned his way. “What do you mean?”

“There are harvests here from a half dozen species, all predators. Did you go hunting or something?” After a moment, he shook his head. “No, that’s silly. Why would you track down all of these individually…they don’t seem to have any magic about them, any longer, so are you selling them just as materials? Did you find them in some uber-predator’s den?”

Tala picked up one of the claws and scraped off the layer of iron-salve.

Grent took it from her and sighed. “Why the rust would you coat these in iron?”

“To preserve their power?”

“Why not get an iron box?”

“This is more efficient?”

“Power-wise, yes, but you can’t reuse this…” He ran his thumb over it. “Salve? A box is a one-and-done purchase.” He looked around. “I suppose you’d need a lot of boxes…” He frowned. “So, have you been hoarding these? Bringing them all at once to…what? Get a higher rate for the lot? That’s not usually how it works.”

“No, I killed these today.”

He stopped, set down the claw, and turned to face her. “Mistress Tala.”

“Yes?”

“I think you have a story to tell.”

She hesitated, then grinned. “For the right price, as an addition to the sale? I can work with that.”

Grent laughed. “Sure.” He went through every item, only scraping holes in a few random layers of salve to verify they all had the same level of power held within. He then carefully smoothed over the breach to keep the power well contained. “Well, these are all of the highest quality, but I would expect that even from unsealed harvests the day of their acquisition.”

“So? How are we looking?”

“I don’t know what sort of behavior I’ll be encouraging, if I buy these…” He gave her a searching look.

“I’m not telling you the story before I sell.”

His mask broke, and he grinned. “Twenty gold for the harvests, and ten for the story.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “These are worth at least thirty gold, without the story.”

He nodded, waggling his head noncommittally as he scratched his chin. “So then, thirty gold for the harvests, and I’ll buy you coffee? You tell me the story while we drink.”

She huffed a laugh, shaking her head. “You said, yourself, that these are from a wide variety of creatures. These have to be worth more than thirty.”

“Oh, of course they are, and if you’d like to hunt down individual buyers you could easily get forty, maybe even fifty, but we can’t pay you that.”

Tala tsked. “The seal on them is near perfect. They won’t degrade, so you won’t take a loss, even if it takes you a long time to find a use or a buyer.”

“True enough.”

“Forty.”

“Thirty-five, and the story.”

Tala groused for a moment. “Wait! We still need to look into the incorporator, and the watch.”

Grent paused. “Ah, right.” He picked up the slate he’d been working on and searched through. “What temperature do you want?”

“I don’t have a specific temperature that I want. The most efficient?”

He hesitated. “What do you want it for?”

Tala explained what she wanted it for.

After a moment’s contemplation, he nodded. “Well, if you don’t want to go the most efficient route, we have a masterwork schema that might interest you.”

“A masterwork?”

“Something a master Constructionist devoted their career to perfecting.”

“Like the failed coffee incorporator.”

He quirked a smile at that. “I suppose you could consider that in the same vein, but for it to be truly considered a masterwork, they would have needed to keep going, perfecting it, and making numerous versions until it worked the way they wanted.”

Tala nodded. “Ahh, I see. So, what’s this schema?”

“If you’ve got an output that can handle fifty mana per second, then-”

Tala held up her hand, stopping him, and sighed. “At my best, I can manage just more than that, but not for long.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Ahh, right, not Fused, yet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He grinned. “It’s not a secret, not really. Once you’re fully Fused, you're better able to pull power into this world; your gate is more ‘physical,’ and your body more ‘spiritual,’ and all that. Your throughput will at least double. It usually does great things for capacity, too.”

And I’ve another motivation to finish crocheting myself together. “Good to know.”

“Well, when you’re Fused, we’ve a masterwork schema that we can make for a gold.”

“That’s a bit expensive.”

“It’s a variable temperature, breathable air incorporator. It can generate consistent temperature air, anywhere in the baking range.”

“I thought changing temperatures caused the entire schema to have to be reworked.”

He grinned. “That’s why this is a masterwork. It has many, interlocking and interlinking, layers that connect and lose contact as you rotate one of the outer rings, forming the desired incorporator for the various temperatures.”

Tala found herself nodding. “But it’s not very good at any of them. Hence the efficiency issues.”

“Precisely.”

“Well, I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe I’ll upgrade later.”

“Sure. So, then with only one temperature, I’d recommend the hottest possible. You can then treat it like a fire and just feather the throughput to manage cooking temperatures. It’s not precise, but you probably don’t need it to be.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Great, I’ve got one on hand. We made it a couple of days ago for a potter who wanted to do low-temperature glazing, but it turns out that his Mage son wanted to go into a different line of work. I won’t bore you with the details but suffice it to say I’ve got one that should work for you. A hot bit of slag, honestly.” He clicked his tongue. “I’ll throw in a set of tongs; I don’t want you burning yourself on our products. This is broiling temperatures, you understand.”

“That sounds great. Is it a standard incorporator?”

“Yup, standard rate.”

Tala nodded. “And for a watch?”

“Well… what do you want it for? Do you need to know what time it is, all the time?”

“No, I just want to be able to tell, when it’s important.”

“Then, why not get an Archive tablet? It can do that, too. Plus, they’re dead useful.”

Tala considered for a long moment, then sighed and shook her head. “I need to talk with… a friend before I buy an Archive Tablet. Something tells me she’ll have a lot to say on the subject.” Mistress Holly has a set of inscriptions, which I think allow her to act as an Archive connected tablet without the device. It’s about time I got the story behind that, and maybe the same functionality.

“As you say.” He shrugged. “Do you want to see what else we have available?”

“No, but thank you. I think your idea’s a good one; I just need to wait.” I wonder what all I’ll be able to do with it, and what exactly it will require.

He nodded. “Alright, then. These harvests and your story to me; thirty-four gold, seventy silver, a broiler-incorporator, and tongs to you.”

“Thirty-five gold, incorporator, tongs, coffee, and pastries, then you get the story.”

He scratched the side of his chin, then gave a half smile. “Done!”

“A sufficient quantity of coffee and pastries for me.”

He hesitated. “Why do I get a feel that that means something more than I realize?”

“Are you a gambling man?”

He gave her a long look. “No. Maximum four cups of coffee and half a dozen pastries.”

Tala sighed. “Fine…”

His eyes widened. “How many would you have needed?”

“You’d have had to buy out a bakery.” She gave him a wink. “Do we have a deal?”

He held out his hand. “Deal.”

* * *

Tala leaned back, washing down her sixth pastry with the last of her final cup of coffee. “So, I decided I didn’t want to risk a fight with Leshkin and returned home.”

Grent was staring at her with obvious incredulity.

“Any questions?”

“How…how are you alive?”

“Was I not clear in the story?”

“Oh, I understand how you survived, today, but how does someone who’d do that survive, long term?”

Tala grimaced at that. “I don’t do things like that, often. I was trying to give Terry, here, a nice day out.”

Terry trilled happily, without moving.

Grent gave the terror bird a sidelong look. “And he’s not your familiar, yet?”

“Nope.”

He grunted. “Okay.” After a moment, he asked, somewhat hesitantly. “You know, from your story, you should have had a lot more harvests than you brought in.”

Tala hadn’t wanted to divulge that Terry could eat as much as he had, or much else about the terror bird that wasn’t required for the story. “Well, the Leshkin did arrive before I could harvest from more than I brought to you.” Technically true.

He gave her a long look. “So it seems.” He seemed to consider for a long moment. “You know, not many people can engage that number of opponents and leave harvestable materials.”

“Oh?”

Grent nodded. “There are tons who could eviscerate, immolate, disintegrate, or otherwise obliterate so many enemies. Most much faster, actually, but none would leave a harvest to be reaped.”

“What’s your point?”

“You could make a killing as a harvester.” He grinned. “Pun very much intended.”

She huffed a laugh. “I’ve thought about it, but I don’t know that I want that much danger, constantly.”

“Well, think it over. Harvesters don’t get any base pay, but they still can make a lot of coin…”

Tala cocked her head. “What’s the rest?”

He sighed. “The saying is that Harvesters are like gilt paper, they are inundated in gold, for as long as they last.”

“Low survival rate?”

“Very. That is actually one of the chief reasons harvests still command such a sum. There are usually only a couple of Harvesters per city, and that’s a maximum. Here? We’ve one, that I know of, though a few wanderers come through now and again.”

“So, why form a Guild? Why should I even consider joining such a Guild?”

“Ready market for the harvest?” He shrugged. “You seem to have good info, but some of the most expensive harvests are hard to find buyers for, and many of the most common ones aren’t always in demand.”

Tala scratched her cheek. “I’ll consider it, but I think I’m happy as I am, for now.” Might be worth doing some harvesting day-trips, though, between Caravan runs. “Well, thank you for the coffee and pastries.”

They stood, and Grent offered her his hand. “Mistress Tala, it’s been a pleasure.”

“Likewise, Master Grent. I hope we see each other again, sometime.”

He paused before asking in a rush, “What about tomorrow?”

Tala hesitated. “Oh?”

“We could grab coffee again, maybe in the morning. I’d love to hear about your other ventures.”

Tala shrugged. “I’m sure you’ve done more exciting things than I have.”

“Well, we can swap stories then?”

She paused, considering. It’s just coffee, Tala. “Sure. Meet at the Constructionists' Compound?”

“That sounds like a plan. Nine?”

“I have a breakfast appointment. Could we do ten?”

“Sure. See you then.”

They walked to the door, side by side, both feeling a bit awkward at having finished their conversation then heading in the same direction.

Blessedly, once they were outside, Grent headed down and Tala headed up.

“Take care!”

Tala waved over her shoulder, Terry already standing beside her, ready to ride. “See you tomorrow.”