Brockton Bay's Marvelous Mage - Chapter Thirty Two (Patreon)

 Despite the somewhat surprising news of Olivia's powers, I had stuff to get done, so I was forced to file it away and move on with my day. I'm sure we would have more time to discuss it eventually, and it wasn't like I could drag her out of the shadows and force her to talk about it. Even if I could, I obviously wouldn't.

 Once Olivia was gone, I led the golems out of the alleyway and into the open space where the community spent most of its time. I ended up giving a separate seminar on how they worked and what they were for, this time for the general group. No one else got linked up to them, but I demonstrated how handy they were and that Charles and John had control over them. Between their reputations and my own, people seemed to accept them pretty quickly, especially when they started helping out with the heavy lifting.

 For a homeless community, there was a surprising amount of organized work going on.

 After I was done introducing the golems to the community at large, I spent a few more hours planting trees and growing them up, enhancing them the same way I had the others. I don't know where Olivia went to get these fruits, but they now had a few fig and cherry trees. It was getting to the point that the community had a pretty seriously sized orchard going on, especially when the golems tore up some of the already crumbling parking lot to expose more dirt to plant in.

 Part of me was worried that the police or PRT would show up when we started tearing up the asphalt, but Charles just snorted and shook his head.

 "We are in the Docks, Arcanum. Nobody owns them, nobody wants them, nobody cares about them," He explained, shaking his head. "The only people who might be interested in them is the city, but they are too broke even to consider reinstating the police patrol out here. Never mind inspecting what we do. Trust me, unless we start burning shit down, no one cares."

 When I was finally done working around the community, and I left to make a run to the hospital, Charles was already putting groups together to make runs out to singular homeless people, a few smaller camps. People were grabbing bags of fruit to bring out and distribute to people who needed them.

 Meanwhile, I was starting to consider the idea of starting to help the homeless shelters and soup kitchens around town. Providing them with fresh fruits could drastically cut their spending on food, and handing out bags of produce was a great way to help people who were struggling but weren't homeless. 

 I just needed a way to get around this world's ridiculous laws about capes selling things. I didn't plan on making a dime off this, but if I started providing even the tiniest, itsy-bitsiest fraction of this city's paying population with food for free, I knew for a fact I would be swept away in a legal battle, probably funded by the PRT.

 When it was time to go, I hopped up onto Troy and guided him through the alleys to a populated road. This was the first time I was attempting to ride him through such a setting, and I wanted to take it slow at first. I pulled him out onto the street, speeding him up to keep up with traffic, basically riding him like I would drive a car, stopping and starting at stop lights and the whole nine years. 

 The temptation to peel off and push Troy hard, to weave between traffic and really get going, was massive, and it only got harder to ignore when Alya confirmed my own growing suspicion. We weren't actually traveling that much faster than I would be if I were running. So, I made the decision to travel as if I was on a bike rather than a car. I shrunk Troy down as much as I could before letting Alya guide me off the street and through another alley. Rather than following the strict road rules like a car, we were pushing the limits quite a bit more. We took shortcuts, jumped over fences, occasionally weaved through cars, and cut out intersections and lights when we could. I would have never been able to do it on my own, not without a substantial bit of magic, which would have probably required several levels of a whole new subject, but with Alya's help, it was easy. 

 With this new method, I was making considerably better time than I would have by running through the sidewalks or streets. Even better, I knew that in the case of an emergency, I could really start to ignore traffic laws and push Troy to his absolute limit to cut down on that time even more. 

 The first stop for the last few hours of the morning was the Central Hospital, where I spent a few hours cleaning up concussions, fixing a brain bleed, and treating a half dozen other problems. A not insignificant portion of the people who I treated with issues like unexploded aneurysms and minor brain damage were people from out of town, visiting specifically to meet me.

 At the end of my "shift," I had treated twenty-five people in total, eight of whom fell into the paying category. My finances were already looking way better than they ever had back home, even if I planned on donating a chunk of it to shelters and soup kitchens. 

 When I was done at the hospital, I walked out to the parking lot, where Troy was "parked." Quite a few people had stopped to take photos of the wooden golem, who was lying down in one of the nearby parking spots, pretending to be a real horse. As I approached, I whistled out to him, and the golem slowly started standing up at my command. 

 After signing a few autographs and even letting a young girl sit on Troy for a few minutes, I was off. My geomancy absorption needed a refresh, and I wanted to do some work on making more golems. In order to do that, I needed to move my partional from my temporary home out to the forest, and I needed to do it while not seeming suspicious or drawing attention. Normally, I would just change into my civilian clothes and pretend to go on a hike, but Troy stood out like a sore thumb on fire.

 I ended up riding Troy back to the Docks community. I left him in the capable hands of John and Charles, warning them that I would be back later that night with more golems. They assured me they would be waiting, and I left to get changed back into civilian wear, heading directly to my old temporary home. I quickly cut the partional up using the stone cutting spells I got from the geomancy subject, making sure to cut them in a way that I could easily put them together again. I put them carefully into a large bag before carrying them out of the city as casually as I could. It was just a few hours after noon when I finally arrived at the forest compound.

 After spending an hour growing out a new platform along the ritual space, I then put the partional back together, fusing it with a stone fusing spell, and quickly the testing partional out by absorbing another pile of steel. I then realized that I had been an idiot and that the geomancy subject had already given me the perfect tools to construct stone golem frames. It had been so long since I had built anything related to geomancy that I had entirely forgotten the stone-working spells that came with it.

 I ended up spending the rest of the day making three more golems, this time constructing them out of stone. I started by creating the three cores before gathering some rocks using my enhanced strength. Luckily, there were plenty of them scattered around the clearing and the forest. I would carry them back to the ritual platform, then, using a frame made from growing branches out of the platform, I stacked the rocks up, carving and fusing them together until I had the same general hunched-over shape that the living wood golems had. Then, it was simple to prepare the golem frame, cut a place for the golem core, and seal it back up when I was done. 

 Even better, when the first golem was done, getting the materials for the second and third was considerably easier since I could just order the first golem to go out and find me more stone. 

 The three stone golems were a bit slower than me, about the speed of an average person, but they were incredibly resilient and strong, much more so than the living wood golems. They would offer an excellent variety to the Docks community defenses, especially since when I was done working on the golems, I had just enough time to make four of the stunning wands that I had designed previously. They were simple little ritual wands, and while they would be useless against any brutes, once I worked them into the living wood of the older golems, they would let them take down normal thugs easily.

 Once I was done, I finally headed back to the community under the cover of darkness. It was slow going since the stone golems had to move at a snail's pace in order to stay quiet, and even then, they weren't what I would call stealthy. As I walked through the city, I looked up to the sky, noticing that the moon was just a sliver of glowing white. Mentally, looking back, I was pretty sure that it had been a bit more full the previous nights, which meant that it would be a new moon soon. 

 That sent all sorts of ideas scattering through my mind, as full and new moon phases were both potent additions to quite a few ritual types if you were willing to work the proper part into the design. While there were dozens, maybe even hundreds, of ways it could play into a ritual, a new moon was particularly good for rituals involving hiding things and darkness, both of which I now had use for

 "Alya… I want to run a bunch of rituals under the new moon," I said quietly as we crossed a street, the three stone golems following behind us, plodding along slowly. "I have some ideas for a gift for Olivia, and it's about time I finish making my house and layering over the hiding enchantments. If I tie them all together under the new moon, with a nice big ritual, and then cap that off with what I designed already, I think the whole compound is going to be pretty much unfindable. 

 "So then another day of shopping?" She guessed. "Will you be inviting Olivia to the compound?"

 "No, I don't want to pull her into this any faster than she wants to," I explained. "Admitting what my powers really are is not something I plan on sharing with people until it's more than completely obvious I am not a parahuman."

 "But you plan on giving her a ritualized gift to make her more powerful?" She asked. "How is that not pulling her in deeper?"

 "I… see your point," I said with a wince. "Okay, I'll ask her first. Hopefully, she will be at the camp when we get back."

 By the time we arrived at the community camp, it was starting to get really late, but John was still waiting for us in the central area between the two buildings the community had taken over as their own. The rest of the space was silent, with the four living wood golems standing along the wall.

 "Well... those look a lot more like what you would expect from being called a golem," he admitted when he first saw the large stone constructs. "You sure they aren't gonna… fall over and break?" 

 "The stone ones are way more durable than I am, and I'm bulletproof to pistol calibers. At least for the most part," I explained. Technically, I hadn't been a hundred percent sure of that before Alabaster shot me, but he was packing some rather large pistols, so I was confident in my durability. "And they aren't like cartoon golems. These are some serious brutes. Trust me, if people start some trouble, these guys will end it."

 We talked for a few minutes, during which John brought up that they planned to keep the stone golems, or more specifically, whatever I had shown up with for the second batch since they didn't know what they would be beforehand, a secret. They were worried that if they presented too strong of a front, the Empire would simply show up in full force and crush them flat. I pointed out that if that happened, they were supposed to sacrifice the golems and run, and he assured me that they understood that part. 

 "I think you're underestimating just how quickly Purity could flatten this whole area if she wanted to," John said, shaking his head.

 "I got a little something for that as well," I responded, reaching into my jacket and pulling out the wands. 

 I only had four in total, one for each of the living wood golems, but each one of them could shoot a few dozen blasts of knock-out electricity, similar to the spell I used to keep people unconscious after I beat them. Thankfully, this one had a bit more range, which should let the golems shoot down any fliers that decided to target the community.

 Even better, the golems' natural magical generation would allow them to recharge the wands, taking their daily limit from a few dozen to probably just over a hundred. 

 I spent an hour or so fusing the wands into the living wood of the golems, putting them into their arms so that the blasts of electricity would fire out of their palms. The range was something like thirty feet or so, which made the wooden golems' fifteen-foot vertical jump height all the more critical. 

 When I was done, I linked the golems to John before he offered me a spare bed to stay in for the night. Considering that I had been planning on going back to my temporary home to sleep on the couch, I accepted his offer. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be, as I was just about to step into the warehouse when my phone rang. Recognizing the number as being from Brockton Bay Central, I quickly answered. 

 “Hello, Arcanum here,”

 "Arcanum, I'm glad you picked up," The familiar voice of my personal liaison came through. "Listen, we need you to come in… Amy Dallon just showed up with a broken arm and some serious head trauma."

 "Details, now," I said, already turning away from the warehouse. Before he could say anything, I whistled, and from somewhere around the warehouse, I could hear Troy galloping towards me. 

 "We don't know much. It's a bit of a madhouse here with the PRT and Protectorate showing up and New Wave…" My handler, Dr. Palrisa, explained. "Nobody seems to be talking about what actually happened, but there is a lot of tension and…"

 "The patient, Dr Palrisa, details on the patient," I said, stamping down my exasperation.

 "Her vitals are what we would expect. We suspect there is some pressure building up in her skull, but it's at manageable levels as long as you arrive quickly," He explained. "She has a decent fracture in her skull and her arm… it's a significant break but not life-threatening or likely to cause permanent damage." 

 "I'm on my way. I should arrive soon," I responded, nudging Troy into a gallop, the golem mount charging through a nearby alley.  "Please pass on that I'm incoming to everyone who should know, including the PRT and New Wave. I want you at the entrance ready to guide me to her." 

 The doctor gave a final word of confirmation before I hung up, leaning down to grip Troy tightly, pouring my magic into the golem. Sparks flew from his metal hooves as we flew down the streets, a sinking feeling already settling in my stomach.