Chapter 183, 1/2

Chapter 183, 1/2

After Bright Tea at the White Palace, Erick felt lost. So he went to bed.

It had been a good decision, though he didn’t actually get to sleep for a while. His mind was too full of thoughts.

The people at Bright Tea had not asked if he was a Wizard, and it was only now that Erick realized why. They didn’t ask because they did not want to know. Their stance had mirrored that of Poi’s, back when Erick finally thought to bring up the subject with him back when they were at the grass travelers. Poi already knew, but he did not want to talk about it because talking about the issue would make it real. And so, just like with Poi, the wrought of Stratagold did not want to consider that Erick might be a Wizard.

Because if Erick were a Wizard, then they would be obligated to commit certain acts of violence, or magical neutering, or whatever it was they did to a newly-discovered Wizard. So they chose to forgo that specific question. And what was worse, is that if they would have asked, Erick would have lied, and Kromolok’s white [Zone of Truth], or whatever, would have called him out on the lie, and then things would have gotten very messy, anyway. So they had chosen to ask instead after Erick’s goals and character. What they found there was acceptable...

But then Erick had told them that he was likely immortal, now, thanks to Rozeta...

And that was a big deal for them.

It was like a switch had been flipped in the royals and in everyone else in that room.

That Erick was now immortal put him into a whole different category of interactions. What sort of interactions? Erick had no idea at the moment.

Eventually, as his thoughts rounded and he went over them for the tenth time, he found nothing new to consider. No new angles. No new unexpected threats.

He slept.

When Erick woke up the next day he did his usual business behind a Privacy then walked out to the front room of his [Fairy Stronghold], and saw the proof of his new path of interaction with the wrought sitting on the kitchen table. It was some herbal food sitting under [Preservation Ward]s to keep one cold, one warm, and one of them dry on a little plate. It was breakfast made by a health nut whose ideas of health were from another world. Which, Erick supposed Tasar was. Or if he wanted to be truly technical, Erick himself was.

One bowl of green slop. Pasted herbs, or something. Smelled okay. Cold, which was... It was a cold slop. It wasn’t Erick’s best idea of a good breakfast. But... Cereal was cold? So maybe this was fine.

A tea of bitter black root. Did not smell good at all. It stank, actually. Like herby dung, or something similar.

A few cubes of some sort of— Ah. Soul balm palm cubes. Little hard-and-waxy tan things; the dried sap of the soul balm palm trees. Erick at least knew the reason for that particular health food; it helped to speed up the healing of the soul. Was Erick’s soul broken, though? He didn’t think so. He remembered drinking soul balm palm tea back in Treehome, courtesy of Syllea, and it was rather good tea. This stuff looked vaguely more... Homey? Expensive? Both, actually. This version looked different than the one Erick had already had; it was a tea that had been distilled into candy form, probably.

There was also a thin book next to the ‘meal’. The book was handmade, with a red cover and no outside writing. Erick had already glanced inside through his mana sense, though, and saw it was a primer on acquired immortality. Erick just blinked at that.

Of course the wrought would have some sort of... Not a mass-produced primer, but of course they would have a primer of acquired immortality. Sitnakov had said something about helping Erick ascend to immortality if he threw in deep enough with Stratagold. This was probably an extension of that.

And over on the other side of the house, Erick saw Tasar blipping stuff from one end of the large empty room to the other.

She stopped a few moments after Erick entered the kitchen, tripping a purposefully-left puddle of green shadows she had left on the wall. She stepped out of that section of air, into the kitchen, smiling brightly, “Good morning!”

“Good morning.” Erick asked, “So what’s all this, then?”

Tasar got right to it, saying, “I suppose you’re keeping your immortality under cover, but I got to talking with everyone else who was in that room with us yesterday and the King and the Queen sent over some supplies for you. A welcome-to-eternity gift. All of them are good supplies to have on hand for the type of immortality you seem to now possess, but it’s clearly different from what Stratagold was offering to help you learn how to cast. Still, though, the supplies are useful for all people with enhanced natural lifespans. They don’t do much for normal people, unfortunately; The Script already pulls up mortals as high as baseline biology will allow, but immortals need something a bit extra.”

“Yes...” Erick said, “Stratagold tried to offer me immortality spellwork to tempt me to side with them... But I know for a fact that Phagar has said that true [Immortality] magic is not a thing under the Script. So what was going on there?”

“Ah. Okay. Well.” Tasar said, “It’s all in the primer, but I would rather explain it all to you if you are amenable. It seemed like a lot of things happened yesterday, and I wasn’t sure if you were ready for this sort of talk yet.”

“Thank you for the concern. I’m ready, though.” Erick pulled out the chair to the side of the ‘breakfast’ and sat down, saying, “I’d like you to explain all of... There’s a lot, actually.”

Tasar pulled out the chair opposite Erick and sat down, saying, “Gladly. Where would you like to start?”

One series of questions rocketed to the front of Erick’s mind and would not allow any other thoughts until it was satisfied. “What were the other types of immortality on offer? What does it all mean?”

Tasar nodded, then said, “Before we begin, a warning.

“Mortals don’t like dying, as you are well aware. But these spells are self-cast only, by the designs of the Script, and they’re not truly [Immortality], either, since Phagar locked that up tighter than a Ban, as you already know. Not many people actually know that, but I should not be surprised that you do. Anyway.

“All of these magics are functional immortality. And as such, they all have drawbacks.

“But mortals don’t care about drawbacks when they’re dying. The powerful ones will go through any danger if it means living a longer life. Sometimes the weak ones do, too. This desperation always leads to problems. Killing and sacrifice. Generalized disruption which leads to more death and... A lot of bad things happen if these methods to immortality were to be explained to the general public, because they would want them, and they can’t cast them anyway, so this is my warning:

“Don’t go telling people what I tell you right now.” Tasar said, “That way leads to death. Maybe not now, but eventually. It always does. Without fail.”

Erick nodded. He left the rest of that whole discussion for another time for he did not feel like digging too deep into the ethics of immortality-for-some right now. “I understand.”

Tasar continued, “There are a handful of major ways to achieve functional immortality.

“The first is [Polymorph]. Almost everyone knows this way, and I’m not talking about killing and eating a younger person. We’ll execute you for that if we find it happening. What we wrought can do, is grant you the use of our neighborhoods to allow you to blend in as one of our people in one of those neighborhoods. It’ll take a year or three, but if you can follow the programs set down and the routine, then you can eventually [Polymorph] into one of the types of people in those neighborhoods. Using this method, if you lived in an orcol community you would become a flesh and blood orcol. You won’t become a wrought, though; that never happens, no matter how much some people might want it to.

“This is the easiest method as it requires almost no actual magical skill, beyond learning the intricacies of [Polymorph]. A whole school of magic unto itself, but still just a single spell.

“After the first three transitions you should be able to do this anywhere in the world, in any community.

“The second way to achieve functional immortality, and also the reason for these items here today, is to be able to cast the high-tier Blood Magic spell [The Rite of Ancient Blood]. The higher tier the better. At eighth tier, which is the one you want, it costs a million and a half mana and has to be cast in ritual, once per year. If you cannot reach the eighth tier and you are forced to go for a lower tier, this still works, but it is an inferior method; the usual result is the spell [Blood Renewal]. [Blood Renewal] needs to be cast every month for a million mana, in the same sort of ritual.

“This is the method which requires the most upkeep, in the form of sagetree soup, bitterblood tea, and soul balm palm tea.” Tasar gestured to the items on the table. “Every time you cast this type of magic on yourself you need to do this health regimen, which means [Blood Renewal] will have you eating these things 12 times a year, as opposed to [The Rite of Ancient Blood]’s once per year.

“Sagetree soup is a blend of herbs gathered from a sagetree, which some Blood Mage created in the year 150 Post Sundering in order to make all his Blood Magic work better on himself. Sagetree soup actually heightens all beneficial magic you cast on yourself, granting a small but noticeable multiplier to things like [Personal Ward]. It’s only about 5% to 10%, where you spend 100 mana and get the effect of spending 110 mana, but the effect lasts a long time if you don’t stress it; nearly a month!

“It will be used up within three days if you use Blood Magic’s path to immortality.

“Bitterblood tea is the exact opposite, as it strips away harmful effects of spellwork cast from any source upon you for the next month. If something is supposed to deal 100 damage, it might actually only deal 90 or 95 damage.

“Same deal there with a month-timeframe reduced to days in the case of major Blood Magic.

“Together, these two effects eliminate the dangers of an unchecked [Blood Renewal] or [The Rite of Ancient Blood].

“And then you have the general panacea for magical ailments; soul balm palm tea. It helps to speed along the healing of the soul which is always necessary after large body-altering magic.

“And finally, the last method to immortality is to cast the spell [Timelessness] on yourself.” Tasar said, “That is very much a double-sided spell. You no longer age, but you also no longer naturally heal, or tire, or get less-tired after resting. You also no longer take damage from any damage over time effects, and you don’t need to breathe. You can cancel the spell at any time, and there are no side effects from canceling it, but there’s also no turning back the clock once you allow time to flow forward. You can only ever stop time; you cannot reverse it.

“[Timelessness] also doesn’t run down the clock on improperly-created magic. You must still break the magic and then wait days or months without [Timelessness] active in order to gain the creation powers of the Script once again.

“And the fourth method... It’s not really immortality.” Tasar said, “It’s lichdom. Learning enough soul magic to become a self-summoned creature, creating your body as necessary. Lot of drawbacks to that one... Really too many to name in any short amount of time. The short version is you lose your senses and you have to become a creature of mana sense and otherwise, and also you lose the pleasures of the flesh, which include sleeping and understanding humor and love. You can regain a lot of those pleasures if you become very good at Soul Magic and Blood Magic and Summoning Magic— Necromancy is a very large field of magic. But otherwise... you become an unfeeling, uncaring husk of a person.

“There’s technically a fifth method, too, but that requires you to become a dragon.” Tasar shook her head a little, saying, “I don’t think you want to become a dragon.”

Erick sat back in his chair and took that all in. “Immortality is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be.” He glanced at the three bits of ‘food’ on the table. “Those seem like they would allow me to use [Bloody Ward] without issue.”

Tasar instantly narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “You should still not use that spell. The effects from sagetree soup and bitterblood root tea are extensive, but also minimal, and they will get used up if you actively stress them. These foods probably won’t even do anything for you, depending on...” She seemed to want to hold her tongue, but then she could not, “Depending on what exactly happened between you and Rozeta; the nature of your specific immortality. But the Blood Magic route is the one that Stratagold was most ready to present to you, and so there is no need to deny you the items that they had prepared for you, anyway.” She rapidly added, “You don’t have to tell me what sort of immortality you gained, and I am specifically not asking you to tell me...” She paused, then decided that those words were enough. Then she nodded.

Erick looked at the green slop...

It wasn’t actually slop. It did look like green tomato soup, though. And it was cold.

Erick had fucked that guideline pretty hard.

Oh well.

Erick felt he understood a lot more about the Geode wrought and their brand of immortality after reading the book, but this collection of words was obviously not the full story.

Wrought lived everywhere on Veird, though it was usually hard to find them out in the open like you would a dragonkin or a human or incani. According to this book, this arrangement was by the design of their culture, or at least this was the design of the primary culture of Stratagold, from which this book was created.

Come to think of it... The only wrought Erick ever really saw on the Surface were Silverite, Killzone, Liquid, Anhelia, and a few others, but all of them were inside Spur. There were a few more here and there out in the world, but not nearly as many as there were in Spur. Spur’s immortal wrought were all around 600 to 1000 years old, too, if Erick had those numbers right. No one really knows how old Silverite or Killzone were but there was a lot of speculation.

Erick put the book away and went to Tasar.

It was time to learn [Spelleport]! It would likely not solve his Red Dot worries, but new magic was great, anyway. In Erick’s opinion, it was both better to know a bunch of esoteric magic and never need it, than it was to potentially find oneself without the proper spell in any given scenario.

And, even if [Spelleport] turned out to be a dud, as Tasar said it was, it would still be incredibly useful when it came to shutting down lower-level mages. Now Erick wasn’t one to gloat, but the fact is that most other mages are lower-level mages. And all the warriors out there were even lower than that!

... Not that Erick would ever say those unkind words. But truth was truth. [Spelleport] might even be more useful than Elemental Mercy.

- - - -

They practiced magic upon a tangle of Yggdrasil’s bright white roots that arced above the water about half a kilometer away from the trunk. The first thirty minutes went rather well, as it was basically just a reiteration of how Spatial Magic worked. There were also some various experiments where Erick manually blipped a whole bunch of stuff, from fish to Ophiel, to prove he could. Tasar was quite surprised by his manual magic dexterity, but then she got over that and told him how he could do better. He used [Greater Lightwalk] to enact his manual Spatial Magic, as his aura control was still rather shoddy, so there was a lot of room for improvement there; he should learn how to do this with aura control, as soon as his aura was actually under his control completely.

There was no need to show that he could blip people, for Tasar had seen enough.

And then they started talking. Tasar had a lot more depth to the subject of Spatial Magic than anyone Erick had ever encountered before, but that was to be expected. She was a Spatial Mage before she transitioned to a Summoner, back when she tried to make [Gate] centuries ago. She was still a Summoner these days, mainly because—

“Spatial Magic only really does one thing very well,” Tasar said. “It alters the position of a currently-existing object in reality, through the stretching of the caster’s personalized Reality. Spatial Magic doesn’t harm, unless putting something into a specific place would then cause harm, but even then, Spatial Magic works best when you’re working within certain rules.

“Broadly, those rules are ‘where would this item be if its past had been slightly different’.

“Spatial Magic allows us to skip all the steps necessary to actually move something from Point First to Point Last, even if such a transition would have required a hundred Point Middle steps. For instance: you are trapped in a cage suspended over a chasm, and you want to go home. No need to summon something to go grab the keys off the guard, while simultaneously hiding that magic from the [Scry] eyes all around, and then, when you pass that point, you’re still dangling over a chasm. I’ll leave it up to you to decide what other steps there are to getting out of this situation.

“But with Spatial Magic you can just— Pop! Back home. Like the people that captured you had never captured you at all.

“The Script streamlines this action to merely cost 250 mana every single time you work [Teleport].

“But when you’re manually casting Spatial Magic, the more steps you need to overcome from moving to First to Last means the more mana you have to spend to make this Reality a reality. There are a lot of nuances to this. In the cage-scenario, traveling ten meters with a [Blink] to a cliffside you can reach, but where you never would have normally been, is a lot cheaper than traveling all the way back to the point you were captured days ago and then thrown into the cage; ten mana to reach the cliff, 350 to go all the way back home...” Tasar asked, “I see you have a counterpoint?”

Erick did. “Practically all my manual blipping costs nearly nothing. Just normal [Greater Lightwalk] costs. Thousand kilometers each time.”

“That’s because you’re very skilled with [Greater Lightwalk]. Can you honestly envision anything barring your path, anywhere you go? In lightform, you can do this. The fact that you have an Elemental Body at all means that movement is very easy for you, therefore all further steps on the path of your past into the future are easier.” Tasar added, “Though I’m sure... ‘blipping’ in the Underworld has been a tad difficult.”

She wasn’t comfortable with Erick’s word for [Teleport].

“Then that explains that. Thank you.”

Tasar nodded, then said, “I can set up some Spatial Magic trials for you to overcome if you wish. You’ll need to use aura control, though. You should be able to experience a bit of what a normal mage goes through that way. Still, though... probably best to wait until you get a clear aura.”

Erick nodded.

“And so: onto [Teleport Magic].

“[Teleport Magic] is more like [Teleport Other] than it is like [Teleport Object]. But it is different.

“This is because magic has intent. A [Force Bolt] will want to hit what the caster directed it to hit. But, looking at another magic, a [Force Bomb] will just explode at the end of its path, or if it is disturbed. In this way, it is about the same mana costs to [Teleport Magic] a [Force Bolt] as it is to, uh, ‘blip’ a [Force Bomb], even though the Bolt costs 5 mana and the Bomb costs 50. Mana costs mean more intent, but the manner of the intent matters as well.”

Erick was realizing something. “[Teleport Magic] will usually cost at least as much mana as the spell costs, doesn’t it.” He added, “Not much better than a [Dispel], then.”

“The power and intent behind the spell you are targeting matters a lot for costs, but! If you fail to correctly guess the mana cost of the opposing magic, [Teleport Magic] might still work, a little. This is not a failed [Dispel] situation, where failing to properly guess the opposing mana check means you fail. Actual results of a failed or minimal success means that the spell you have targeted probably moves a little, or maybe the trajectory is off.” Tasar said, “It’s not too useful of a spell, like I said. Still, it might be good for you to learn it, just so that you have it.”

Erick nodded.

Tasar continued, “Now, how this magic works is to target the intent inside a magic, and to change that intent through a Spatial Magic alteration, so that the spell was either aimed away from you, or aimed to the side, or something. If you spend a lot of mana, you might even be able to completely reverse the trajectory of the incoming [Grand Fireball], though this tactic usually fails. It is usually safer to try and influence the intended target of a [Grand Fireball] to anywhere not near you, or something like that.

“[Teleport Magic] is very limited in scope.” Tasar finished with, “As I said it was.”

Erick nodded again. “Okay. Sounds reasonable.”

“Let us try, then?” Tasar gestured to the side and began conjuring floating, stabilized balls of black-green Force. Erick assumed they were shaped [Force Walls]. “These are Shaped [Force Wall]s. I put a rather minimal amount of intent into the casting, so you should be able to [Teleport Magic] them if you try—”

Erick reached over with his lightform and flicked a bit of his normal Spatial Magic methodology through that first orb.

Tasar went wide-eyed and quiet.

The force orb had blipped upward three meters.

A few blue boxes appeared. Aside from the ones that congratulated him for remaking a basic spell, there was the spell itself.

Teleport Magic, instant, touch + variable range, 25 mana + Variable

A magic within close range shifts around at your variable discretion.

With surprise in her voice, Tasar said, “Ah. So. You’re good at this, then.”

Erick laughed a little. “I still haven’t figured out how to [Teleport] people between Yggdrasil’s bodies, yet. Admittedly I haven’t put much effort into that; there’s only so much time in the day.”

Tasar’s surprise gave way to cold reality. “I haven’t realized how to do this yet, either. The best I could do is what eventually became the t-station network. Would you like to work on that?”

“Nope. Let’s get you [Fairy House]. You have [Fairy Item], yeah?”

Tasar brightened. “I have [Fairy Item] and...”

Tasar eventually summoned some chalkboards with a lot of math on them.

Erick countered with Ophiels singing songs of Elemental Fae.

They spent two hours talking on the subject, but Tasar wasn’t willing to commit to a 100 day spell creation timer if she failed her tier-four [Fairy House]. They tabled the discussion for now, and would pick it up again later.

“I think it’s time to move on, anyway. Time for an inquiry.” Erick said, “Let’s go to the embassy and set that up.”

Tasar blinked a bit. “Uhh— Yes. Okay.”