Chapter 94, 1/2

Chapter 94, 1/2

As the sun crested in the east, Erick gazed down upon desert sand through the many eyes of his Ophiel. The land was a blackened, burning stretch of soil, where mimic corpses burned right alongside spider bodies. Erick adjusted the wind, but instead of returning the breeze to the northerly wind common to Spur, he turned the wind off, while sending up a cascading white orb to reveal the survivors of his fire tornadoes. Quite a lot of blue dots appeared on the resulting map.

Erick was not responsible for the safety of the city when it came to all threats. The Guard existed for a reason. He was here on garbage duty, taking care of the largest piles of garbage, and mostly because he wanted to; these were his kills, after all.

With ten Ophiel and kilometers upon kilometers of spider bodies, and the occasional mimic, it was an easy sort of necessary job. Erick blew together corpses, then ignited them with [Cleansing Flame]. But [Cleansing Flame] dealt no damage, so while most corpses burned under phosphorous white fire, occasionally, white spiders walked out of the flame, unhurt. They were tiny things, but they were still deadly.

Erick threw [Force Bolt]s at them until they died. It took a few bolts to kill them, but both Erick and Ophiel ran [Hunter’s Instincts], and they had the map revealing the location of every spider, so the threat of any of them getting through the cleanup was very, very small.

As white fire passed through burnt, desiccated corpses, small spiders weren’t the only things to drop onto the sand. Glittering rads began to litter the Crystal Forest floor, in the wake of the fires. Glittering Jewels also littered the desert, picking up rads and attaching them to their bodies with expert telekinetic control. There was a lot to pick up, and a lot of the rads were a lot closer together than usual, so Jewels worked pretty fast, compared to how he worked when the corpses were tens of meters apart and he had to tear into the bodies to retrieve the rads himself.

(Apparently Jewels was a boy, according to Erick’s anthropomorphizing instincts.)

Erick asked Poi about delivering most of the rads to the bank, and Poi had delivered. Soon, piles and piles of rads were blipping into his account, but after the first hundred thousand rads, which was around 500,000 gold, or a million mana, Erick began diverting the wealth into his home. He needed resources for all of his upcoming enchantment experiments, after all.

Ophiels delivered rads to an empty room in Erick’s house, on the ground floor, gradually filling up a 3 meter by 2 meter room, one load of glittering loot at a time.

Kiri looked at the filling room, and said, “Uh. Erick. This is... extravagant.”

Erick looked in at the room with her. It was about a third full. He had to raise a stone divider in the doorway so that the pile wouldn’t spill out into the rest of the house. He offered, “I think I destroyed half of the rads. So it won’t be as bad as—”

An Ophiel blipped in, depositing a goodly pile of rads onto the sea of glittering white light. He blipped away, back to the battlefield.

“Okay.” Kiri said, “Uh... Let me recalculate.” She thought for a moment, then continued, “A single 10 mana rad is a little over 2 centimeters square. Almost all of the ones out there are this size. You can fit about 61,000 of those into a cubic meter. Ophiel has filled this place with about 6 square meters of rads already. Which means around 350,000 rads. Fully filling this room would mean placing over a million rads into this space. But since you killed over 2.5 million spiders... Or rather, half that for actual takeaway...” She paused. She said, “I think you’re gonna need a bigger room. Slightly bigger?”

Poi spoke up, “Taxes.”

Kiri nodded, saying, “That would get rid of a lot of it.”

Erick said, “I still have four months on that!”

Poi shrugged, smirking a little.

Another Ophiel blipped in, adding to the pile. It sounded like dumping ice onto ice.

Kiri said, “Whatever the case, piling them in a room is not a solution.”

Poi smiled slightly wider, saying, “Other cities are calling for your aid now that they can see what you can do. This ‘problem’ is only going to get worse.” He added, “The bank says they’re willing to take more rads, but you’re going to need to upgrade your account if you plan on doing stuff like this. They have protocols for archmage hauls, and they would like for you to avail yourself of their proper services.”

Erick did not miss the joy Poi took in calling ‘too much money’ a problem. Oh, what a problem to have! It was not lost on Erick how silly it was to fret over this money, but this much loot did place yet another target on his back. He certainly did not need this much loot in his house, or anywhere near his person. Erick gazed upon his pile of basically-gold, and wondered if this was why the archmages in Jane’s games always made big dungeons. To keep their too-much loot somewhere safe?

Another Ophiel dropped another pile of glittering rads into the room.

... Erick could make a dungeon. It would even be fine if it got looted by intrepid adventurers, as long as they didn’t take too much. He couldn’t just make one big dungeon, for precisely that reason...

He would have to make several dungeons in several locations, preferably in hard to reach places.

But.

No.

Not today. He had a much better use of these rads than sticking them in the ground somewhere. Right now, it wasn’t yet noon. That meant there was plenty of time to organize a lot of the rads out there into 1000 mana stone boxes, to exchange them for darkchips...

It was a plan, of a sort.

“Okay, so.” Erick said, “This is what I’m going to do. We’re going to turn in what’s still out there for darkchips.”

He outlined a plan, and got to work. Kiri helped, making the process go a lot smoother. He let this third room fill with rads, which should be more than enough to enchant with, for now, then he started having Ophiel [Stoneshape] appropriately sized boxes out of sand.

Soon, Erick had a multitude of stone boxes, each with an interior cavity measuring 14x14x10 centimeters. He lined the boxes in rows upon rows, out in the field. They were about the right size to ensure that a full box was about 100 rads, and that was about perfect—

Oh! There was a fun idea. [Flight of a Thousand Hands] was literally 1000 telekinetic, airy hands. On a whim, Erick controlled an exact 100 of the hands and grabbed exactly 100 rads. He put them in a box, and the box was perfectly full, if a little below the top. Erick smiled to himself. This way was much easier than counting out 100 at a time. He wasn’t going to count out 100 at a time, anyway; that’s why he made the stone boxes the correct size. But it was nice to know his calculations were correct.

These rads were worth 10 mana each, for a total worth of 1000 mana per box of 100. Each box was also worth 500 gold. Turning in grand rads to Candlepoint would be a lot easier, since there was no need to count anything, but none of the spiders had any of those, and grand rads were worth literally twice as much for the same amount 1000 mana that existed in one of these stone boxes. So Erick wasn’t going to be doing that.

Grand rads were worth 1000 mana and 1000 gold, flat rate, no matter their size, mainly because they were all variant sizes, shapes, and technical worths, but they were also the only rads that could regenerate their size and mana if left alone long enough. Smaller rads got used up when they were used to recharge magical items, like rods of [Treat Wounds] and [Prestidigitation] stoves. But grand rads could be set beside those same magical items to recharge the rads in those items, with only a little bit of destabilization themselves. That destabilization would recover with time, too. Even right now, Erick had at least three rods of [Treat Wounds] in various parts of the house, nestled beside grand rads, recharging.

Hardly anyone actually used grand rads for anything but currency or keeping their magical items functional, but all grand rads, no matter their size, regenerated their mana at the same rate, which was about 1 mana every minute. Hence their flat rate.

Erick wasn’t sure he agreed with the economics of that, but that’s what society did, so Erick participated how society declared he could participate. He was absolutely sure that if he went around looking for buyers or looking for sellers in the less up-and-up markets of the world, that he could get around the 1000gold flat rate. But who had time for that, right now? Besides, Erick was dealing with 10 mana rads, and those were a flat 5 gold. Erick was absolutely sure that he could never get around that price; it seemed rather set in stone.

... Erick turned his attention back toward the stone boxes sitting out in the desert. Jewels had been dumping stones into the boxes without care for precision, so Erick had Ophiel Handy Aura smooth out the count. Ophiel quickly got the hang of using Erick’s 100 hand Handy Aura trick. He was a smart little [Familiar], for sure.

Hours passed, as Erick’s assembly line of summons did more work than Erick would have ever done himself. Seriously. This was pure grunt work. Thank the gods for summons.

When the corpses were gone and the rads were all collected, Erick ended up with 121 rows of 100 boxes, each box filled with 100 rads. The small field of boxes took up roughly 18 meters by 14 meters of space.

Over 1.2 million rads! 12.1 million mana! 12,100 darkchips! Theoretically.

Sunset was still several hours away, though, so Erick couldn’t just leave his loot sitting out in the open. So with a bit of blipping, [Stoneshape]ing, and [Prismatic Ward]ing, Erick dropped the rads off in another location, closer to Candlepoint, but not too close. They were certainly out of sight, though.

Once that was done, Erick went on to the next project: The corpses and rads and everything else he had left out in front of Kal’Duresh. He had been a bit distracted when he was completing that job, what with Al and the Ballooning Spider attack on Spur happening at the same time. He had left that job mostly unfinished. If people had stolen from the piles of half-[Cleansing Flame]d corpses, he didn’t really care, but he was still going to get his gold while he could.

He had Poi contact the Baroness’s people, and they cleared Erick for action. He immediately set out cleaning up the rest of his spider-tornado mess. Soon, Ophiels were blowing scattered piles of bodies into bigger piles, while spreading white flames, as quartz Jewels gathered glittering prizes from the sand. When all was said and done, the math proved that some people had stolen from the pile. Erick only ended up with another 615,000 rads out of 2 million spider kills, but that was okay. Erick didn’t need the money, but he did put the extra 15,000 rads into the rad room of his house, to make his deposit at Candlepoint a nice, round number. His total expected darkchip return bloomed to 18,100. If his count was a bit off, that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if Candlepoint disputed his count too much, either.

He certainly didn’t care about the prizes of Candlepoint. But maybe he should? He could get something, maybe? Eh. They were all traps. Best not to touch those sorts of things.

Erick paused, sitting in his library, while reading about weather and enchanting, and simultaneously organizing Ophiels and Jewels. He looked up at nothing in particular, and said, “I need to speak to the Mage Trio before I deliver these rads.”

As if the universe decided to compound his workload, Poi stepped to the door to the library. He said, “Guildmaster Fork Oreellico sends word that the paperwork is done on his end, and they’re ready to talk Spatial magic.”

Erick looked from his open books, to Poi. “... What?”

“I told you about them this morning?”

Erick chuckled and sighed at the same time. “A little multitasking is a good thing, but my gods.”

“Shall I inform them you are busy?”

“No. I can meet them now. I have, what? Three hours till sunset? If they think it’s going to last longer than that, I need to reschedule.”

Poi nodded, then looked to the air. Tendrils of intent radiated from his head, into the manasphere. After a moment, he turned to Erick. “They can make it quick. They have a primer to go over. An initial talk might take an hour or so. More can be planned later.”

Erick Handy Aura’d his books away, then got up, saying, “Let’s go.”

- - - -

The first floor of the Wayfarer’s Guildhouse was a large open area of blue tile and people either delivering goods, picking up goods, or Wayfarers blipping in or out, guiding large groups of people to their next destination. Erick had learned about the Wayfarers in his time learning about Spatial Magic, and almost every one of them could [Teleport] anywhere from ten to twenty times as far as he could, with the basic [Teleport] spell. These people blipping in and out were truly coming from other cities on Glaquin; they were not simply at the end of their multiple thousand kilometer blip journeys.

Erick was slightly jealous, but he liked Particle Mage too much to ever give it up. He was a Particle Mage, through and through.

The second floor of the Guildhouse was full of stock and boxes and shipments, going wherever they were going, either in the hands of individuals, or on large [Teleporting Platforms], like Erick’s own. The Guildmaster’s office was on this floor, but when Erick showed up to the Guildhouse, his mauvescaled guide took him up the stairs, past the second floor, onto the third floor.

The third floor was full of dormitories. Erick didn’t spend much time here; just long enough for his guide to tell him what he was looking at, as he peered down a hallway filled with doors.

The fourth floor was full of classrooms. Erick’s guide showed him past a few rooms where chalkboards were full of maths of differing difficulty. In some rooms, teachers taught handfuls of students the easier math, while in others, graduate kids went over their own, much more complicated formulae. The mauvescale left Erick, Poi, Kiri, and Teressa, at the large, open doors to a decently appointed, windowless room. An oval table with a wooden top occupied half of the space, while three people and their chalkboards occupied the other half.

Erick recognized Guildmaster Fork, the brownscale son of Apogee, but he was wearing what looked like formal robes. His clothes were sky blue, and well made. Erick felt a pang of self consciousness, because the other two people in the room were also wearing the same type of high quality robes as Fork. One was an incani man of dark grey skin and horns, while the other was a brown skinned human man. Both of the new people looked to be in their 50s. Erick’s mauvescale guide stepped back, and excused herself, as the three people in the room looked at Erick.

Fork said with a smile, “Welcome, Archmage Flatt. Do come in.”

Erick walked in, saying, “Hello, Guildmaster Oreellico.” He looked to the other two people. “Hello...”

Fork gestured to the incani man, saying, “Guildmaster Rexarix, of Bend, of Old Kingdom of the Wasteland Kingdoms.”

Erick said, “Hello,” as Rexarix bowed slightly, saying, “Greetings.”

In addition to all that, Erick had already suspected, and been told as much by Fork long before today, that [Gate] was also Basic Tier magic.

Erick asked, “Is all Spatial Magic Basic Tier?”

“Yes,” Rexarix said, slightly smiling. “No extra points, though. What you’re famous for is not what Spatial Mages do. We don’t go around creating new basic spells.”

Fork said. “[Teleporting Platform]s and such are offshoots of Basic Tier. But [Blink], [Teleport], the proper [Teleport Object] and not the one after [Teleport], [Teleport Other], and [Gate], are all Basic Spells; each one qualitatively different than the previous.”

“My colleagues are correct.” Fieldsmith said, “Just like how each qualitatively different Force spell is laid out there, available for anyone to purchase, Spatial Magic is locked behind true mastery of the subject.” He shrugged. “That’s our collective theory, anyway.”

Erick asked, “But why is there a [Teleport Object] in the Script, past [Teleport]?”

Rexarix said, “You can get explosions out of [Force Bolt] by Mana Altering for explosions, but it is not the same as [Force Bomb].” He added, “[Force Platform] out of [Force Wall]. [Stoneshape] out of [Telekinesis]. The list goes on.”

“Okay.” Erick said, “Yes. I can see what you’re saying... But it’s still surprising.” He asked, “Is all magic this way? Does all magic come from the application of an Elemental Body?”

Fieldsmith sat back in his chair, contemplating. “I’ve always thought so, though I never managed anything except for a few Spatial Magics.”

Rexarix shook his head. “Highly doubtful.” He looked to Erick. “From my understanding you are able to sing at the sky and create new magic. This very act disproves the Elemental Body as the progenitor of magic theory.” He added, “There’s also Blood Magic, and Soul Magic, as paths to Basic Spell recreation. I’m sure there’s more, but those are not my areas of expertise.”

Fork said, “There is some truth to the Elemental Bodies as the basis for much of magic. After all, almost all Wayfarer Spatial Magic is created through the use of [Air Body], while the Force line of spells can be created through any kind of Elemental Body... Theoretically. I haven’t had much luck with that, myself.”

Fieldsmith said, “Yup.”

Rexarix just nodded.

Fork said, “And while this facet of the Elemental Bodies is crucial to understanding and recreating Spatial Magic, it is not, exactly, why we are here.”

“Quite.” Renarix said, “We can discuss whatever needs to be discussed, take some breaks, and come back later, when we must. We’re all busy people.”

Fieldsmith said, “I’ll agree to that.”

Erick nodded, then asked, “Back to [Teleport Object], then? Or rather, [Teleport Other]?”

Fork and Fieldsmith turned to Rexarix.

Rexarix said, “My colleague Fieldsmith has managed to do a lot with [Teleport Object], taking the spell to great heights, tagging objects with a spell imprint for later retrieval. Hence, why he was charged with care for the book you now possess.” He said, “My own experiences are closer tied to [Teleport Other].” He continued, “To condense dense spell formulae down to a few short words, what you do, is attune your own Elemental Body to another’s natural existence, and then you move them. But there is a catch. [Teleport] is an intrinsically non-harmful spell. If a [Teleport] would harm a caster, it doesn’t work how the caster wants it to work. Keeping this nature throughout the entirety of your endeavors into Spatial Magic is generally the best idea a Spatial Mage can have, for in doing this, you turn your Spatial Magic into something closer to healing magics, that works even on those unable to give their consent.

“And then there’s the process of attuning your magic to the magic of another, or adjusting their magic to your magic. Or meeting in the middle.” He gestured to the book in Erick’s hands. “The three various methods are outlined in there. Each one is difficult to achieve, because in attuning yourself to another being, you are opening yourself for unforeseen dangers of another’s magic working on you.

“The road to creating [Teleport Other] kills just as many as the road to creating [Teleport], itself. Many who pass the first hurdle on the way to [Gate] fail at this hurdle, and end up killing someone. Many drop out because of the guilt.” He added, “We are Wayfarers, after all. Killing someone with a [Teleport] is anathema to our beliefs.”

Erick nodded, listening.

Fieldsmith said, “You also can’t create [Teleport Other] unless you target another sapient person. Animal experimentation does not work. This stops a lot of people from ever trying; me included.”

Rexarix agreed, saying, “Yes. That, too.”

Erick asked, “And now we come to [Gate]?”

Rexarix unhappily said, “You need to create the same space in two different locations. The exact same space.”

The three of them watched as Erick pondered.

Erick frowned. “How is that difficult?”

Like a person knowing the depths of the problem being forced to deal with a lay person, Rexarix calmly asked, “How would you do it?”

Erick threw out an idea. “Vacuum in a space... A pair of doors, [Duplicate]d, or whatever that Registrar spell is. The doubling one. You put a vacuum in a prepared space that is magically the same, and then you fill them with a special [Teleport]-harmony infused [Ward]— Ah. No. You fill them both, at the same time, with your own Elemental Body harmony. And then you step through, creating a [Gate].”

Rexarix said, “That is one of the more popular ideas. Doesn’t work. Near as we’ve been able to tell, [Duplicate] doesn’t create a pure copy of the original.”

“How do you get [Duplicate]?” Erick asked, “I’d like to try that method.”

Fieldsmith said, “We have some contacts in the Bookbinders of the Arcanaeum Consortium who are willing to cast the spell for us, under a contract of secrecy. But getting the spell yourself is beyond the scope of our power. And you shouldn’t need a physical device for [Gate], anyway. Every instance of the spell being used has it standing in open space.”

Fork said, “We will need the physical device later, for enchanting purposes.”

Erick said, “True.” He said, “Then how about a [Ward] that—”

“[Gate] is not a part of [Ward],” Rexarix said, a little tiffed.

Fieldsmith breathed a little deeper than normal, while putting on a strained smile and ignoring Rexarix. Fork side-eyed Renarix.

Erick just smiled, then put his hand on the book. “It appears I have some reading to do, and a Headmaster to contact about a [Duplicate] spell.” He stood up. “Thank you, gentlemen. This was a most enlightening meeting.”

The three others stood up.

Fork said, “Of course, archmage.” He lifted his hand. The [Silence Ward] around the room popped, like a soap bubble. The casual sounds of the stone building returned; footsteps on stone while people talked and heavy shipments moved downstairs. “We can reconvene when you’ve had time to read. When do you think that will be?”

Ophiel twittered happy violin sounds, to hear the world return.

Erick said, “It might be a few days.”

After dispensing pleasantries and ending their meeting, Erick met Kiri and Teressa at the door to the room. A slight bit of inspiration struck, since he had two extra people to blip home, but only two hands. A while ago, Ophiel had managed to blip away, carrying objects with his Handy Aura instead of his actual hands, hadn’t he? Erick tried that, now, first sending a telepathic message so that everyone knew what was happening, then using his Handy Aura to have many more ‘hands’. He touched all four of his other passengers on their shoulders, making sure that Ophiel was counted among his targets, then blipped home.

Erick smiled as he appeared in the foyer of his house, along with Kiri, Teressa, Poi, and Ophiel. His little experiment had worked.

Kiri turned to him, saying, “When you explained it, I didn’t think it was going to work, because usually you have to be a Wayfarer to have that many [Teleport] targets.” She glanced at the book in his hands. “Was it really that easy to learn their tricks?”

Erick smiled. “That wasn’t them at all.” He patted Ophiel on his shoulder. The little guy cooed. Erick said, “That was an experiment with my [Flight of a Thousand Hands]. Maybe it works because it’s already labeled as a ‘hand’ spell?”

“Then...” Kiri asked, “Were you showing off on them?”

Erick paused. “I wasn’t trying to.”

Poi smirked. “And yet you did.”

“Nice.” Teressa laughed as she walked off, saying, “I’ll get dinner started.”

“Thank you, Teressa.” Erick turned away from the others, as he sent to Eduard, of the Mage Trio, ‘Hello? This is Erick. If you have a moment, I’d like to talk.’ He left the line open, while he held the black Wayfarer’s book in his hand, and said to Kiri, “So this is deadly, and apparently not for sharing. All the other books in the library are still fine, though.”

Kiri stood straighter. She said, “Of course.” She added, “I wasn’t going to... Of course not.”

“I wanted you in there too, Kiri, but it wasn’t to be.”

Kiri smiled slightly, then nodded.

- - - -

Erick sat in his library, reading his new book, when a voice came to him.

Eduard sent, ‘Hello, archmage. How can I help you?’

‘I’m about to deliver 18 million mana worth of rads to Candlepoint, but I’d like some opinions, first.’ Erick set the Wayfarer’s book aside, sending, ‘How has the Headmaster done this? How does it look on the ground? Are you the ones that actually give Candlepoint the rads to get the materials you’ve been testing? That sort of thing.’

After a moment, Eduard said, ‘We’re over here in Candlepoint right now. We would like to observe your own interaction and how it plays out for you, and then talk to you about your transaction afterward.’

‘I guess that works. I assume you want to get an untainted reaction from them?’

‘Yes. I’d say more, but... I mean... Yeah. That’s exactly it. Thank you for understanding.’

Erick began summoning Ophiels, as he sent, ‘I’ll be sending the goods over soon. Maybe an hour, at the front gate.’

‘We’ll still be here.’