Millennial Mage

Tala accompanied Be-thric through the gate of the City Lord’s estate, Thron and Gallof each walking at a measured distance behind the one they served.

The day had finally arrived, and they were to leave for Croi in just a few hours. It had been a week since their raid on the House of Ravens, and the city was abuzz with talk and rumors about the House of Blood.

Some thought they had taken the Game of Houses too far, but most seemed to see the lack of casualties within the minor house as a sign of both the power and the restraint of the House of Blood.

After this last acquisition, it would be difficult to get more protian weapons in Platoiri. Every candidate Eskau of every House was seemingly on edge.

Even so, Be-thric was overjoyed by the results, and even Sanguis was pleased. The elder Pillar had even officially delegated his vote to Be-thric for the upcoming conclave of the Pillars of the House of Blood.

Which brought them back to this day.

If Tala was to leave the city, the City Lord would need to either remove or modify the saorsa-collar.

If he removed it, Tala would have to seriously consider escaping sooner than she planned.

Doing so would mean being hunted more quickly, and likely having to fight, run, and hide the whole way back to the human lands.

While that wasn’t ideal, if it got her home sooner, it might be worth it.

Tala didn’t actually know how they would be traveling, and every time she’d asked, Be-thric had been rather cryptic, simply smiling and saying, ‘You’ll see soon enough.’

Because that’s not unnecessarily ominous or anything.

-He’s been fine lately. It’s probably some sort of pleasant surprise.-

Yeah, all he did was kidnap us and brainwash us into being his loyal servant and slave. No reason to doubt the guy.

-You know that’s not what I meant…-

The sun was not yet up, but the guard at the gate had been expecting them.

The Pillar, Eskau, and two adjuncts climbed the tower and found the City Lord exactly as Tala had found him each time that she’d attended him.

“So, you’ve come about the human’s collar?” The City Lord’s voice sounded almost lazy, but it was heavily laced with power, regardless.

Thron and Gallof dropped to their knees and bowed. Tala and Be-thric each bowed their heads in acknowledgement.

It was Be-thric who responded, “We have.”

“Are you going by mundane routes or through Doman-Imithe?”

“I had planned a route through Doman-Imithe, but recent reports show a shift in the paths. Do you know of a safe way to Croi?”

The City Lord cocked his head, and Tala could imagine his self-satisfied smile. “You could not afford my guidance.”

He still had not turned around.

“Is that where your conclave will take place?”

Be-thric nodded. “All from the House of Blood eventually flows through Croi.”

The City Lord snorted. “That may once have been true, but Corinis is not as he once was.”

Be-thric sucked in a breath, anger flickering across his face. Still, his response was measured. “Pillar Corinis mourns his brother still, City Lord. That is not weakness.”

The City Lord finally turned around then, his eyes hard. “We all mourn the passing of the Mind Flayer. I counseled war in response, but I was in the minority. Even so, eternity is unending and all valleys indistinguishable by the metrics of infinity.”

“Save the valley of death.”

“For those who enter it? Yes. But for those who simply pass by?” He shook his head. “It is but another ripple.”

Be-thric was clenching his jaw, clearly furious.

The Mind Flayer is dead? That... is actually a relief.

-Not that we knew much about him.-

Except that he ripped the knowledge of how to make the Black Legion from the mind of every human and arcane alike.

-Any idea what Doman-Imithe is?-

No, and by the look on Gallof and Thron’s reactions, neither do they. She was keeping a close eye on everything with her aspect-mirrored perspectives. It was somewhat hard to read the two arcanes, given that they were still kneeling with their faces to the floor, but she thought she could detect confusion and curiosity from them both. Something to research later, I suppose.

-Be-thric might just tell us.-

She sighed internally. You are probably right…

She didn’t really want to talk to him more than necessary, but it would be foolish to not engage with such an obvious source of information on the topic.

Be-thric seemed to have gotten himself under control when he spoke again, “Regardless, City Lord, it seems that we will take a more mundane route.”

“Very well.” The City Lord snapped his fingers, and Tala froze.

She was utterly unable to move, as a metal spear appeared, floating beside her, pointing at her neck.

He then gestured, and the spear plunged into her collar. By all rights it should have gone through into her throat, but just like the other time the collar had been adjusted, the item simply sank in, shifting the magics within.

“I have allowed the collar to remain un-triggered between here and Croi, within that city, and for a return trip. I have allowed three weeks for that venture. If more time is needed, seek a modification from the City Lord of Croi. I’m sure that she would have no trouble altering a collar of my creation.”

The sparkle of malice within the City Lord’s eyes made Tala doubt the assertion. It seemed that this City Lord did not particularly like the City Lord of Croi, and thought her abilities lacking.

Be-thric bowed his head once more. “Thank you, City Lord.”

Again, the City Lord waved the comment away. “Eskau Tali, you will attend me promptly after your return, be it in three weeks or a day.”

Tala nodded. “Yes, City Lord.”

“Good.” He simply turned back to his writing table, clearly dismissing them with the action.

The four left without a word, the silence of the City Lord setting that expectation.

After they once again were out of the City Lord’s estate, Thron and Gallof each breathed a sigh of relief.

Gallof glanced at his former candidate Eskau with a smile. “For all we missed out on, I am not sad that interacting with him is among that which is no longer expected of us.”

Thron grunted and nodded.

Gallof then turned towards the estate that they just left and bowed. “No offense meant, City Lord.”

Tala almost questioned the arcane’s actions, but then realized that it was not unreasonable to assume they had been overheard, and in either case, the placation was likely wise.

Be-thric shook his head slightly. “He does not listen to every comment about him within Platoiri, and if he did, and reacted, he would wipe us all out and be done with it. There is not a person in this city who hasn’t complained about something relating to him or how this city is run. Such is natural. No one and nothing can please even a single individual all the time, let alone a population of this size.”

Gallof bowed towards Be-thric. “Thank you for the wisdom, my Pillar.”

Be-thric waved him off. “Tis nothing much besides the truth.”

Tala thought the time was right, so she asked, “Pillar Be-thric?”

“Yes, my Eskau?”

She was proud that she didn’t flinch in the slightest at his response. “What is the Doman-Imithe?”

Thron and Gallof both perked up, clearly interested in the answer as well.

Be-thric seemed to consider. “I had hoped to show you.”—He looked between the three.—“Show all of you, actually, but it was not to be. I cannot say much, save that it is a place of dangerous magics, but little of intelligence. For those of power, it is a simpler, often safer, means of traveling between known points.”

“For those without power?”

Be-thric smiled humorlessly. “Any not at least part-way through the Maturation of their power wouldn’t survive to take a breath. Those fully Mature can survive if they are careful. More power, as stands to reason, increases one’s ability to come through unscathed.”

A place that is nearly instantly lethal to anyone below Orange, below Fused?

-Now, I’m interested.-

Yeah, me too. “How do you enter it?”

Be-thric grimaced slightly. “I cannot say, not yet. Hopefully the conclave will open that information as well.”

They were walking back towards the House of Blood’s hold in the District of Doors.

Gallof cleared his throat. “My Pillar, with the…less conventional means of travel unavailable, whatever it may have been, what needs doing for our venture?”

Be-thric sighed. “That is an excellent question. Please procure a permit and appointment for ballista travel.”

“Very good. Four hours?”

“If you would, yes.”

Thron was nodding, but Tala frowned. A quick, virtually unnecessary check with Tali’s memories showed that Tali didn’t know what it was either. “Ballista travel? I assume you don’t mean ballistic?”

Gallof shook his head. “No, no, Eska Tali. A small, expanded space is attached to a ballista bolt, then fired from a heavily enhanced and incredibly accurate siege engine. Such a projectile can obviously not land within our destination city, but it can get us within about ten miles, compared to the four hundred we would have to cross otherwise.”

Four hundred? Alat… if that takes us south.

-That will be out of range of even our section of the Archive.-

Thron nodded. “It is incredibly expensive, but we should be in the city just after sunset. With the conclave in two days, any other method would be cutting it close.”

That’s… that’s sort of genius, depending on how it’s done. She was trying to look past her sudden concern.

-Could such things be implemented to augment or replace caravans?-

Possibly? “Are there no dangers to such a method?”

Be-thric nodded. “Of course. The magic-resonance from the flight will likely call beasts to the point of launch, the point of landing, and draw them after us all along the flight path. We will have a battle on our hands when we exit, but it should not be too great a trial.”

Tala found herself nodding. “And that’s why a permit is needed on this end.” And likely why such things aren’t used between human cities.

“Precisely.”

Tala cleared her throat and tried to act casually. “Which direction is Croi in?”

Thron grunted. “Southeast, but mostly east.”

She nodded, keeping her relief from showing. “Huh.” Should still be in range, then.

That was a blessing and a half.

Gallof bowed. “I will head to the administrative offices, then to the local ballista travel specialist most in favor with the House of Blood at the moment.”

Be-thric nodded. “I leave it in your hands, my adjunct.”

With that the tall, gray-skinned, white bearded arcane departed, a smile on his lips.

The Pillar didn’t look at the others as they continued to walk, and he addressed them, “Make your own preparations for departure.”

Thron bowed and Tala grinned. There was an experiment that she’d been hoping to try. “As you say. Where shall we meet?”

“The exit of the House of Blood’s hold in three hours.”

Thron bowed and thanked the Pillar for his guidance.

They arrived and parted ways.

Tala immediately tossed Kit against the nearest wall.

Thron noted the placement and went to get them a large breakfast.

Good man.

Be-thric went deeper into the hold to do…whatever it was he had to do. Tala didn’t really care.

-I’m so glad we have time to keep trying this!!-

I know, right? Tala had had the idea late the previous night, and had spent the last hours before the trip to see the City Lord in final preparations.

The door into Kit opened on her testing area, deep in the heart of Kit.

She closed the door, and it vanished, revealing the hall that had been behind it. A purple glow now came from that end of the hall.

Tala had been checking on the automaton’s growth over the last week or so, and it was coming along nicely. It already looked much more human in proportion, and the power within was amazing.

There were still no signs of a mind, consciousness, or any magics of animation. So, that was a relief.

But that was a different project, and her time was limited.

Before her, a simple ten-foot cube was hollowed out in the surrounding dirt and stone.

It extended before, above, and to either side of her, the entrance she stood at being in the bottom center of one of the sides.

With a grin, Tala targeted all of it. One thousand cubic feet.

That wasn’t a part of the target-lock, obviously, but it was good for her to remember, to ensure her math had been correct.

The target was a combination of specifying this exact subset of air and a consideration of it as being useful compressed as ‘Tala’s first air sphere.’

She’d found that applying a label to her targeting was the easiest way to break the working, because all that breaking the working required, if so labeled, was firmly and unequivocally deciding to label the target something else.

But that was beside the point.

Join. She aimed the amplification at itself and began ramping up the gravitational attraction of the air to other parts of the locked-onto particles.

She’d initially tried variations of the ‘all air within this space’ amplification, but she found that that made the latter steps impossible.

The air began to compress inward, drawing more air in to fill the now vacant space. This moved air was not affected by the working directly, simply filling in the space that the affected air had vacated. Long tubes up to the surface allowed that air to be drawn down from the main area of the sanctum.

The distortion of light through the air became easier to see the more the air compressed.

At first, the large sphere pulled up, off of the edge of reality that was the floor. But it soon lost most semblances of buoyancy and floated down, settling into place on the hard surface.

Tala was taking it slowly with the amplification, checking the magics and verifying the integrity of the working throughout. This was more amplification than she’d ever applied to one working, at least to her memory.

Near the end, the distorted transparency of the air began to cloud, replaced by a mainly blue-green matte color, shot through with red, black, and true-blue.

The colors became more and more distinct until it seemed that the entirety of the result was made of the colored material.

Then, the black and blue faded towards red and were wholly subsumed, leaving red and blue-green that both became more and more reflective, taking on a metallic appearance.

It had taken right around six minutes, and the new creation of compressed air reached almost precisely one-cubic-inch.

A little faster than I calculated, even going much slower than I had to. Nice.But what in zeme happened to it? She walked forward and placed her hand on the small sphere.

It felt hard. She was able to pick it up, but just barely. The round surface and the small size made getting a grip on the thing trickier than she’d expected. Plus, the surface was oddly low-friction.

In the end, she was only able to lift it by getting her fingers around the sides and under, not relying on friction at all.

By her calculations, and the feel in her hand, she would place the weight at just about eighty-three pounds. Around nineteen pounds heavier than a tungsten sphere of the same size.

She hadn’t really accounted for the air being slightly cooler underground, so it ended up heavier than she’d planned for, but not too much. Not that that’s a problem.

It felt warm, too. Not hot, because she’d moved slowly and allowed it to equalize as it compressed, but it was definitely quite a bit warmer than room temperature. So, it should shrink, just a bit, as it cools off.

She laughed, tossing up and catching the highly compressed, solidified air.

Alat suddenly communicated confusion. -Wait… Tala?-

Yeah?

-How heavy is tungsten?-

If I remember correctly, it’s around fifty-four pounds per cubic inch. Why?

Alat pulled up their notes, which appeared like pages in front of Tala that were invisible and intangible to anyone else.

See, right…here…— Oh…

Alat began laughing as they both rechecked all their work. They had meticulously calculated how much ‘air’ they would need to compress and what level of compression that would require.

The one problem?

Tala had missed a decimal point when copying over the weight of tungsten, which they were aiming to mimic.

-A cubic inch of tungsten only weighs about half a pound.- Alat’s laugh became a bit of a manic cackle. -We overshot the density we were aiming for by nearly a factor of one-hundred-fifty!-

Tala sighed. “Well, that’s embarrassing. How did we miss that?”

-We never rechecked the input numbers, themselves, just the equations and the math.- Alat’s mirth had quickly subsided to giggles. -That sphere is…Well, it’s much more than we were aiming for.-

That’s for sure. Tala sighed. Should I disperse it?

-No! That is like a siegestone next to a pebble. Save it, it for an emergency.-

I suppose you’re right. Even a passing consideration made it clear that having this as an ‘emergency measure’ could only be useful.

-On the plus side, it worked.-

Well, we knew it would. Tala was still feeling pretty embarrassed.

-It’s pretty interesting to learn that it seems air isn’t transparent when solid.-

Yeah, who would have thought?

-Mages who study this kind of thing, I suppose.-

Tala shook her head, chuckling. Well, if this is going to be an emergency tool, I should probably make it actually useful. Seems like now is time for the next steps.

She targeted ‘Tala’s first air sphere’ and reduced its gravity with regard to the ground below.

That was accomplished with ease, and that let the ball stay basically wherever she placed it.

With a grin, she made a second one, basically identical to the first, this time labeling it ‘Tala’s second air sphere.’ If I’m bringing a siege weapon, I might as well bring two.

Also, she couldn’t really ramp up the targeted gravity of her sphere without a second one.

With that second sphere the proper size, and its gravity attraction downward basically removed, she took the two spheres, and amplified their gravitation toward each other, just as she did for her tungsten spheres.

It worked perfectly.

Soon, they were pinched tight on either side of a piece of leather extending from her elk-leathers, held close to her side, near her hip.

Tala laughed again. “This is amazing!”

-Congratulations, Tala. Masterfully done.-

Tala turned, and felt an odd resistance. Oh…rust. I just added around a hundred-sixty pounds of inertia resistance to all of my movements. That’s going to get me killed.

Her stomach gurgled.

Right. I can decide what to do about it later.

With a thought, she moved herself to her dining room just in time to see the last servant stepping out through Kit’s exit, and the door swinging shut.

Thron saw her and smiled. “Perfect timing, Eskau Tali!”

She sighed, but had to acknowledge that the servants might have heard him. So, she didn’t correct his usage of the formal language.

“Thank you for placing the entrance in here. That made things much easier.”

Tala shrugged. “Of course.”

She looked at the spread of food laid out before her, most of the ingredients originating from her own sanctum as more and more of the food production had come into full swing.

“Thorn, this is amazing. Thank you.”

He smiled and bowed. “It is my pleasure to serve.”

His eyes flicked to her side and widened slightly.

“So… it worked? Or… what are those?”

She grinned triumphantly. “It worked perfectly. Apparently, solidified air isn’t clear?”

Thron grunted. “Well, glass can be made from sand, so it’s not like things that can be clear always are.”

“That’s true enough.”

“It sounds like we will get to field-test them soon enough.” He tilted his head to one side, clearly still looking at the insanely compressed air. “They almost look like metal marbles, all polished and smooth. Though, I’ve never really seen metals exactly that color before. May I touch them?”

“Sure.”

He reached forward and poked the spheres. “Amazing. They seem harder than almost anything I’ve ever felt. May I try to corrode one?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Later. If it works, somehow, it might cause rapid expansion, and that would ruin this food.”

“Ahh, of course. That was thoughtless of me.” He looked a bit ashamed, but still incredibly curious. Finally, he shook his head and turned towards the table. “Let us eat.”

Tala didn’t need to be told twice.