Chapter 124, 1/2

Chapter 124, 1/2

The day dawned with a gloomy haze covering the sky, and remnants of a near-constant, small rain, settled into puddles on street corners, which reflected the green, gold, red, and white lights of the season. A cold wind blew across the Forest, and into Treehome, casting a chill into the air, but doing nothing to hinder the festivities. Some people were still partying, but most of those awake this early morning were either bakers waiting for their bread to rise, or revelers on their way home after a night of parties and fun.

- - - -

The gloom was there, outside his windows as Erick laid in bed. He briefly woke when he thought he heard someone, but that turned out to be nothing but the wind. He closed his eyes, and drifted back to sleep. No need to get up, yet.

- - - -

Erick stood on the porch in the gloomy sunshine, smoking a blunt of blueweed and feeling good, with a warmth spreading through his body, and his belly full of a delicious breakfast.

The sun had risen hours ago, but no one in the suite, besides Jane, had risen until the doorbell rang. Jane had ordered room service, again. A pair of bellhops and their delivered goods almost tried to enter the room when she opened the door, but she stopped them before silver-domed plates and bowls went tumbling. This was how Erick woke to the scents of an already-cooked breakfast. Sweet rolls. Sausages. Syrup and pancakes. Eggs and breakfast tea. Mushrooms and some sort of oatmeal-like soup, both of which weren’t all that bad at all. Erick had never had mushrooms for breakfast, and he had quite liked it.

As he leaned against the balcony, watching the Forest to the north, Erick roughly planned his day. There was much room for adjustment, after the main event was done.

Soon enough, Poi came and said, “Syllea is ready, if you are.”

“Oh? Already?” Erick looked to Teressa, who was cleaning up breakfast, and who had stopped the second Poi mentioned Syllea. Erick asked, “Are you going out today?”

Everyone else within earshot found something else to do.

Teressa waffled for a moment, before saying, “No. Tomorrow, though... I’ll go out there tomorrow.” She glanced toward Kiri and Jane, saying, “We might sign up for a Celebration Hunt tonight.”

Jane whipped around, smiling, “You want to Hunt? Great! Yes! Let’s do that.” Jane instantly locked eyes with Kiri.

“Ehhhh...” Kiri shut the book she was reading, then said, “Well... Yeah. Okay. Let’s do a Hunt.”

“Yay!” Jane said, with enthusiasm.

Erick smirked, then tuned to Poi. “Then I’m ready. Where to?”

“Her house. The backyard.”

- - - -

In the light of day, even as gloomy as it was, Wyrmrest was the most impressive Arbor of Treehome, by far. From high above, he looked like a normal enough tree among a field of grass, with knotty, dense roots that twisted and turned and covered a space twice as much as himself. But if you were anywhere close enough to judge his true size, you would see that those knotty roots were actually normal-sized houses, stacked and nestled among each other in numbers that defied easy counting. You would see the grass that surrounded him was just the normal trees between the Arbor and the rest of Treehome. You would see that his trunk was a few hundred meters wide, which went well with his two kilometer height, to support a canopy that was almost as wide as the tangled houses below.

Erick, with Poi at his side, stepped onto the light a few hundred meters above Syllea’s house. He gazed up, briefly, to see the underside of Wyrmrest; to see the Starfruit glowing among those green leaves like tiny motes of light from afar. Those Starfruit were each the size of a person, but no one could tell that from down on the ground.

Erick turned his attentions back down to the ‘ground’.

Wyrmrest’s primary district was a maze. Bridges connected upper parts together. Stairs ran up and down everywhere. People worked and played and lived inside Wyrmrest himself, and Archmage Syllea was no exception.

... She was a slight exception. Her house was on the top floor of the knots down below, right next to Wyrmrest himself.

Erick saw his target, and stepped down onto a bit of wooden land behind Syllea’s house. The space was an off-kilter, somewhat square dip and rise of wood, of about 20 meters to a side, with three sides belonging to Syllea’s house, each of which had either glass windows or a glass door, and the final side being Wyrmrest’s main trunk. The Arbor of the district named after himself, loomed like a cliff, high above.

Syllea opened the glass door, saying, “Hey, Erick!”

“Hello.” Erick smiled. “Woke up later than usual and had a nice brunch. Thanks for the help in securing that room; it’s been great.”

Syllea stepped outside. “I’m glad you like it.” She got right to it, by saying, “So I was thinking of your dilemma regarding anonymity, Elemental Mercy, and your desire to subdue a target rather than kill them. I have a question though: What sort of people are you considering to use these spells against?”

Bayth stepped out of the house, next, silently holding a pair of chairs. She set them beside the door and sat in one, as she gestured to Poi and the other. Poi nodded, and sat down next to Bayth.

Erick looked around, at the clear air, and the lack of spells in the air, aside from the starfield that was Wyrmrest’s Domain. He asked, “Can we talk openly?”

“Oh yeah.” Syllea waved him off. “Wyrmrest has control over much that happens this close to him. Sound and mana sense only goes as far as he wants it.”

Erick blinked on his mana sense, and sure enough, his sight ended at the walls of this outdoor space. So Erick answered Syllea’s question, “I just want to be generally unidentified around others. But... specifically...” Erick paused. Ah. This was more difficult than he had expected. He tried, “There was this one guy—” His throat closed. Speaking was impossible. He felt both embarrassed and furious at himself for one brief moment, but then he breathed. He looked away. When he turned back, he spoke through the feeling of a stone sitting on his neck, “Specifically, there was this one guy who put [Neck Bombs] into the bodies of children.”

Syllea tensed, but said nothing. Erick practically saw as Syllea reassessed her future questions, but he also saw that she was willing to listen to what Erick said next.

Erick was thankful for that. He continued, “He put bombs in the necks of kids in order to keep his power over the nearby populace. I... I got lucky. I managed something that I don’t want to repeat.” He lost most of the pain in his chest as he realized that Syllea needed to know something. “The guy had a Charisma Stat. When you put two of the New Stats into a person, there’s a reaction. That reaction tore the guy apart. His soul turned broken as it collapsed inward— It didn’t kill him and I’m not sorry I did that to him. He deserved every bit of what he got. But... He could have had triggers on those kids... I got lucky, in that moment those triggers didn’t trigger. But before I did what I did to the man, two of those kids were blown up as a warning to me.”

Syllea seemed to relax, in that way that a person does when the horrible thing they expected to happen, happened.

Erick said, “That’s why I need something to put someone down and keep them down, without killing them. I’m fully convinced that if I just killed the guy, every single one of those kids and many of the people they were near would have died as a direct result of my action.”

“I had heard about you committing some sort of action against a guy... But I had not heard it quite like that.” She stood a bit straighter, stared Erick in his eyes, and said, “What happened was fine.”

Erick almost objected.

Syllea shook her head, and spoke with conviction. “Erick. You and I are the type of people who need to make the hard decisions when it comes to people’s lives. I know you understand this, for you killed that Charisma guy and only had two bits of collateral damage—”

Erick felt his face shift toward disgust.

“—and yes, calling the deaths of two children ‘collateral damage’ is harsh, but life is harsh.” Syllea said, “And that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is shutting someone like that Charisma person down so they can’t trigger whatever spells they might have waiting for a ‘go’ signal. This is best achieved with Mind Magic, but I’m not a Mind Mage, and you don’t want to get burdened by those people, anyway.” She quickly turned to Poi, saying, “No offense.”

Poi just bowed his head, ever so slightly, indicating that no offense was taken.

She turned back to Erick, asking, “Unless you want to go that route? Choosing that path means you aren’t allowed to participate in normal life. You would become a hermit. No one would know who you are after you became a full member of the Mind Mages, because you would remove yourself from their memories. There are archmages that do this, but I only know of them because I’ve been allowed to know that they exist.”

Erick had a lot of thoughts about what Syllea had just divulged. His first one was that he had not expected to hear that from her, but that he really should have; she had been at this archmage-thing for a lot longer than him. His second and third thoughts made him glance toward Poi.

Poi openly lied, making no effort to cover that fact, “Those people don’t exist.”

“Of course they don’t,” Syllea allowed the lie, saying, “I must have been mistaken.”

“That’s not an option for me, anyway,” Erick said.

“Good news, then, because a Mind Mage’s [Sleep] is somewhat duplicated with Elemental Mercy. Or, rather, it’s more like if you compound enough False Damage onto a person they usually go unconscious.” Syllea said, “A Mind Mage’s [Over Mind] is the perfect counter to triggered spells, though. Just so you know, you cannot duplicate that outside of that branch of magic.”

“... [Over Mind]?”

Syllea rambled off, “It’s a spell that wraps the target in a false cocoon of ‘everything is okay’, cutting that target off from all spells they have cast. It doesn’t disrupt more spells or more connections from being formed, but it’s good for an opening spell in order to go for a quick and less painful take-down. If you want the perfect solution to your problem of taking down a person who has planted bombs, [Over Mind] is it, but learning how to do that spell requires you to fully commit to being a Mind Mage. Which you won’t do.” Syllea said, “But now you know what the perfect solution is, which I always try to know before I make my own imperfect solutions.”

“How do you know of that spell?” Erick asked, for he had certainly never heard of much Mind Mage magic beyond the simple ones, like [Sleep] and [Sense Emotion], and the dangerous ones, like [Dominate]. He briefly wondered if Poi had any of those, but he doubted Poi would tell him, which was probably for the best.

Syllea said, “The only reason I can imagine that you don’t know more about various Mind Magics is that you haven’t yet pursued that particular discipline. Either that, or it could be that you’ve only been at this archmage stuff for less than a year. It wasn’t till five years in that I met the Mind Mages.” She shrugged. “And even then, they just told me how to identify and defend against some of the more dangerous mind altering spells. Have they not formally approached you, yet?”

“Have they?” Erick asked Poi.

“Not yet, sir.” Poi added, “You’re too high profile.”

“Ah.” Syllea said, “That makes sense. I might be an accredited archmage, but only a few people ever achieve the level of notoriety you’ve achieved. Which brings us back to the current problem. I’m probably a bit more knowledgeable about your spells than most, but every single new mage out there knows about [Call Lightning], Ophiel, and [Withering]. So you need a new way to fight, to be more low-profile.”

Erick nodded. “That’s the long and the short of it.”

Syllea asked, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re all about large spells and vast effects. Do you have any short range spells at all?”

“I do, but I barely use them. Being in melee is... I’m not good at that.”

“That’s fine. I’m rather poor at melee, too.” Syllea said, “But I can fake it well enough with a few buff spells. Do you want to do the melee-thing?”

“... No.”

“Mid-range mage, then.” Syllea said, “Much easier to acclimate to. Much easier to fit in with all the other mages the world over.” Syllea paused. She asked, “Did you ever do the normal ‘adventurer mage’ thing? From what I heard, you just stayed in Spur, mostly. Except when you came out to Oceanside that one time.”

“That is correct. Oh— I did go on a wyrm hunt once. That was... That was dangerous and I was not truly prepared for that, but it worked out well enough.”

Syllea nodded, then said, “Okay. So you’re... pretty new to the kind of fighting that most people will do in their lifetimes.”

“I have taken remedial adventuring courses at a Guildhouse, as well as done the equivalent of three months of sparring every single day... But I haven’t done that in a while. And it wasn’t continuous sparring... or very good sparring.”

Syllea’s face seemed to light up. “That’s all good! That makes me a lot more confident in helping you.”

“I can do the mid-range mage-thing, even though I don’t have much experience with it.” Erick said, “I really am just looking for spells to appear to be like another person when I’m in a low-recognition environment.”

“I can skip almost everything I was going to say and go right to the magic, then.” Syllea said, “I’m going to ask a few questions. Tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.”

“Okay.” Erick wondered where she was going with this, but it seemed fun. “Sure.”The initial posting of this chapter occurred via Ñøv€l-B!n.

“Fire.”

Erick recoiled. “Too much lingering pain.”

Syllea tilted her head. “Lightning.”

Merciful Purge, instant, medium range, 500 mana

Inflict ongoing 5x WIL False Damage to a medium-sized target. Lasts 1 minute.

Merciful Ooze, instant, medium range, 50 mana

Summon a Merciful Ooze under your command that will trap and stifle a target, dealing False Damage for 1 minute.

Merciful Ooze Mothertree, instant, long range, 2500 mana

Summon an ethereal Merciful Ooze Mothertree under your control. The Mothertree constantly and consistently spawns and shoots inexorable Merciful Oozes at designated targets. Lasts 1 minute.

Attacks which destroy the Mothertree will release all Merciful Oozes at once.

Erick read those boxes, and saw a few good ways to proceed.

“This [Merciful Purge] is nice.” He said, “[Merciful Ooze Mothertree] seems pretty amazing, too.”

“The first is a [Force Bolt] strung through Blood Magic for the multiplier and then switched over to Mercy. Blood and Mercy are closely related, so this works rather well, but maybe don’t try that one till your soul heals.” Syllea said, “I mostly use [Merciful Ooze] when I need to subjugate a lot of people. Haven’t killed someone with that one, yet! The base spell is [Force Bolt] then Mana Altered for Ooze and Mercy. To get the Mothertree, you have to Alter again for Tree. You can throw in some Blood Magic, too, if you want higher multipliers on that one, but I found that high multipliers on Oozes tend to be too deadly to use for subjugation.” She stressed, “But while Mercy is good for not-killing people, if you use it against monsters you’re asking for a bad time. Monsters don’t really care about Health, headaches make them mad, and monsters like wyrms will not even care at all about your Mercy.”

“I have a question about suffocation.” Erick asked, “Is that as deadly as I think it is?”

“Suffocation is the weaker version of asphyxiation.” Syllea said, “Certain spells have a way of getting into the body more than others. Air is one of these. Most living things breathe the same way, via sacs of blood in the lungs, and when you use Air spells you have a tendency to rip up those tender sacs inside the lungs. Suffocation is one of the ways Elemental damage can get through the natural shielding of Health and Shield, but it's a very superficial thing. Like how cold slows, and lightning paralyzes. In the case of Air Magic, we’re talking about how pressure waves propagate around corners.

“The only time you’re going to actually kill a person with low-grade Air magic is when they take your spell head-on, breathing in the whole time.” She added, “Birds and other hardy beasts also aren’t affected much by Air Magic’s generalized ‘chance to suffocate’. Mostly, an Air spell will just inflict a bit of extra damage and stagger a person when they realize they can’t breathe, but it usually goes away based on the duration of the spell.” She hastily added, “All of this only works against stuff that breathes based on lung physiology, anyway.”

Erick frowned a little at the viciousness of suffocating someone with a spell. But this was life on Veird, wasn’t it?

And yet... There was still something distasteful about denying something the ability to breathe. Sure, Erick had killed monsters by ripping out all their water, or frying them, or blasting them, but to make them suffocate? To make them suffer?

No.

Or maybe... He could at least try it out on some monsters, right?

And that gave him another idea.

“What about poison that puts things to sleep?”

“Alchemy can do this...” Syllea said, “I don’t do alchemy. Or much Decay magic, for that matter. Those two go hand-in-hand quite often. Here’s your problem with a [Sleepy Cloud]— It wouldn’t be called that, since you aren’t using the [Sleep] spell, for without using the [Sleep] spell, you’d have to make a different magic for different people. There’s flowers in Nelboor, Wild Calm Roses, that puts orcols to sleep, but does nothing against anyone else. There’s calming tea made from Townhouse Tree roots that knocks out humans, but does nothing to anyone else. This is the problem with weaponizing sleeping poison; it might not work on the person you’re using it against.”

Erick considered generalized anesthesia, and filed that idea away under ‘possible Particle Magic’. Syllea wasn’t well versed in alchemy, so maybe she just didn’t know? That was possible. It was also possible that anesthesia just didn’t work on Veird how he thought it could work.

... He could still try to make Diethyl Ether, anyway.

What was that again? Ah! Right! (C2 H5)2 O2.

Ohh. Intelligence was kinda scary. When did he even read about that? Huh.

Syllea raised an eyebrow at Erick’s trailing words. “Are you thinking of manually putting the brain into a sleep-state?”

Well now he was. “I am.” But where to even begin? There was the hypothalamus and the pineal gland that controlled melatonin... Which was another thing Erick could see about recreating with Particle Magic. But as for controlling the brain directly? Erick decided, “I don’t know enough to mess with that and I’m not willing to experiment.”

Syllea smiled. “I would have been surprised if you did. I’ve read old books about people committing atrocities in order to create spells like [Induce Rest] to get around the Mind Mage control over [Sleep]. But in the end, almost all of those people have just found out how to make [Sleep], and then the Mind Mages move in and that knowledge is taken from them.”

Erick almost asked her if she had a problem with Mind Mages, but he left that door closed, as he asked, “Got any suggestions for keeping a low profile? I feel I am likely missing some rather obvious things.”

“You are,” Syllea said, with a smirk. “You should look into some permanent alchemical or Blood Magic options to change the color of your eyes to something less white-white-black. Maybe change your hair, too. Don’t do any temporary spells; those just light up for anyone with a Sight to see. Your eyes are one of the most noticeable things about you, so fix that and you should be good. That, and your clothes, I suppose. Those are definitely the robes of a well-off man. Put on some shabbier shoes. I have a whole room for outfits for undercover work and that’s usually enough, as long as I don’t draw the attention of anyone who would know me for me. I hardly ever use the eye dyes, but they’re decent.” She added, “You also need to find or think of a way to hide Ophiel, but you already knew that. Other than those few things, you should be good for walking anonymously through most human towns.” She shrugged. “Or you could try your hand at what sort of Polymorph you might have? Do you feel like you’d rather be some other race than human? If so, and since you’ve lived in Spur for a while, perhaps you have a different form just sitting there, waiting to be found.”

“I’ll go with the alchemical dyes.” He glanced to Poi. “I can probably find someone to sell me that stuff back home.”

Poi nodded.

Erick turned back to Syllea, saying, “Thank you for this. I still haven’t gotten around to making any buff spells, but I might need to make some of those, too.”

“Don’t go wandering back home, yet.” Syllea said, “We still haven’t gotten the basics of what we just talked about, and you shouldn’t try to make a buff in your condition, or any difficult spells. But if you make some less-than-ideal mid-range spells, then I’ll at least know you know what you’re doing.” She rapidly added, “Not that I don’t think you don’t know what you’re doing! Ah. That came out wrong.”

Erick smiled at Syllea’s unexpected, small contrition. “I’ve only been at this for a year. I’m completely sure that I only have the barest idea that I know what I’m doing.”

“You do seem to be doing alright for yourself, but there’s always more.” With a conspiratorial eye, Syllea asked, “Have you ever experimented with Elemental Destruction?”

Erick paused. “I have. It’s useful for creating specific counterspells. I was warned away from using it in actual spells, though.”

“Oh, drat. Here I was hoping to let you in on a big secret.” Syllea added, “And yeah. You don’t want to make actual Destruction spells. On the spectrum between Order and Chaos, Destruction is wildly chaotic. I lost limbs and otherwise on five separate occasions before I finally decided that I was done with Destruction.”

Erick smiled, and asked, “Have you tried experimenting with [Healing Word]?”

“Bah. That damn thing.” Syllea asked, “You talking about the [Quick Spell]?”

“Yes!” Delighted, but tempered by Syllea’s reaction, Erick asked, “But it seems you dislike it?”

“The problem with [Quick Spell] is that it naturally decreases the power of the resulting spell by a factor between 10 to 5, while multiplying costs to somewhere between the original spell’s cost, to three times the original cost.” Syllea said, “[Quick Spell] is a very hard spell to get right. How good is yours?”

Erick showed her, asking, “About that good?”

Syllea dismissed the spell box, saying, “Not a good way to judge. Did you make a spell from it?”

Erick showed her [Quick Wall], saying, “A tenth as good as the original.”

“Rip it up and try again.” She added, “Working magic with a damaged soul is difficult. Maybe wait on that one, too.”

While Erick mourned his failure to correctly make [Quick Spell], he was glad to finally get confirmation that he had screwed up. With a mental tug he ripped [Quick Spell] apart, feeling something shift in his soul...

Two things shifted.

Erick winced, as [Quick Wall] broke, too. A cascading failure. That was new. Erick had heard of what would happen if he ever tore apart a ‘building block’ spell, and now he finally got to experience it for himself. It wasn’t as bad as creating new magic, though, and it certainly wasn’t as bad as an Error.

Syllea still noticed. She asked, “Did you make a lot of magic with that one?”

“Just [Quick Wall].”

Syllea hummed. She said, “Maybe... Maybe you should try for an Air Element spell, so that I can see that you’ve got it, and then we stop here. A mage doesn’t normally get cascading Deletion Fatigue like that unless they destroy the basis of a large branch of their magic. Ten spells or more.”

“That’s...” Erick felt something like heartburn in his chest, and then it was gone. “We can stop after another spell. That sounds like a good idea.”

Syllea held out her hand, channeling an airy [Force Bolt], saying, “Here. This is [Air Bolt].”

Erick listened, but Ophiel teased out the sound of ‘air’ better than he could at the moment. With a concentrated Mana Altering and a mixing of possibility, Erick cast at the summoned crystal, five meters away. A bolt of swirling white air struck the crystal with a blast of wind, and a blue box appeared.

Air Bolt, instant, long range, 10 mana.

A bolt of air inexorably strikes a target for 15 + WIL. May cause suffocation.

Erick flashed the box toward Syllea, saying, “I know I messed that up a little, but it’s close enough. Thank you.” He winced.

Syllea looked down at Erick, and frowned. “Yeah... We’re stopping here. When you’re feeling better, Alter for Air, then Shape as needed, as with all Esoteric Elements. The specific Element Shape spells, like [Airshape], work better than the generalized Mana Shaping, but working with the more Esoteric Elements, like Lightning, requires specialized Element Shaping that you need to make yourself. You could probably make a very good [Lightning Shape] if you tried. But you don’t need those specific Shapings quite yet, and you probably shouldn’t try too hard for them, either.”

“Heard and understood.” Erick felt another odd thing flex inside of himself, and also not. “Ow— Okay. That was a weird stitch in my side.”

With kindness, Syllea asked, “What did you do to yourself?”

“Oh... A lot of things.” Erick stood up straight and tried to stand strong, but a triplicate stitch ran up his right side. He bent over as nausea rolled through his chest. The nausea vanished, quick as it came. He stood up; a bit less straight this time, but more or less okay. “I’m fine.” He breathed hard, then said, “Okay! Yes. We can cut this early. I think I need a nap again.”

“How about some tea?” Syllea said, “Have you tried Soul Palm Balm tea? I have some. It should help your soul better than sleep. It’s pretty rare, but I know some people.”

That was the stuff Jane got in the Headmaster’s hospital. She only got a few doses of it to get her out of the worst of her Dragon Essence sickness, for Soul Palm Balm was supposed to be incredibly expensive. Erick said, “No thank you, I couldn’t possibly impose more than I already have—”

“You aren’t imposing!” Syllea said, with perhaps a bit too much fervor. She paused. She looked away and walked toward her house, saying, “They take the sap of the tree and pack it into little cubes. You have to do a special preparation, which I can show you, and then you can take a decagram with you.” She stopped and turned around at the doorway, saying, “I insist.”

“... That would be great.” Erick decided, “I would appreciate that.”

He followed her into her house, while Bayth and Poi followed him.

Within a minute, Erick had a nice little paper package of cubed tree sap, with each cube glowing with faint flickering embers. It reminded him of the broken Shroud around his own soul.

Syllea sent him off, saying, “I’m going to get you some better blueweed, too. Someone will deliver it to your room.” She added, “Get some rest, Erick.”

Erick felt a warmth of kindness bloom in his chest. He said, “Thank you, Syllea. I will.”