Chapter: 186 - I Really Want To (Patreon)

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Tala was in awe.

She was busy processing the berries like mad, carefully biting them in half, pulling out the seed, sucking the juice off, and sending the seed back among the trees. The halved berries then went into another barrel, as she moved onto the next little packet of juice and power.

That was fairly standard, though she hadn’t done it in a couple of months. She even was able to add in the tossing of jerky to Terry every so often.

No, what was awe inspiring was how Cazor could strip a tree with a bare few moments of work. She’d tried to pass it off and hide how impressive it was to her the first time he’d done it, but that fiction was getting increasingly difficult to maintain as he repeated the act with aplomb.

It did seem to visibly drain him to do it, however, and the time between each tree grew markedly.

Tala had barely processed roughly as many berries as Cazor had gotten from the first tree when he flopped to the ground for the fourth time, panting.

“I don’t…” He pulled out a water-skin and took a deep pull, swallowing with abandon. “I don’t remember these things being deemed to have any sort of intelligence.”

“You mean the movement?” She chucked another seed back among the trunks of the grove.

“Well, that’s a part of it I suppose, but that can be purely reactionary. They are adjusting to my method of harvest and are disrupting my power more effectively with each tree.” He hesitated. “Well, four is hardly a good sample-set, but even so.”

“Why don’t you take a break while I process these?”

He grunted. “I was going to do that anyways, but sure. Thank you for the suggestion.”

It honestly didn’t take her long, and in the end, she’d guess that she had just shy of fifty gallons of halved, de-seeded berries.

That’s ridiculous. His method of harvest was so incredibly efficient compared to her own. I’d have had to be out here for days to get this much.

Cazor opened one eye. “Done already?”

“Yeah, sorry. Seems like your break is over.”

“Eh, it’s fine.” He made no immediate move to get up.

-Hey, I have kind of a crazy idea. Ask Cazor if he’d be alright with us keeping some seeds to experiment with.-

Tala asked, and He sat up, giving her a long look. “Not going to sell or trade them away? You only want them for your own use and experimentation?”

Alat?

-Of course.-

She nodded. “Exactly.”

“That’s fine, then. They’re actually less dangerous than a good chunk of research materials for some specialties. You aren’t going to plant any within the city, right?”

-No planting, no.-

“That is not my plan, no.”

“I see no issue, then.” He stood, groaning and making sounds of protest.

“Something wrong, old man?” Tala quirked a smile.

Cazor cocked an eyebrow at her. “This is massively draining; I hope you know.”

“I can guess. And even if I couldn’t, you make it quite obvious.”

He huffed a laugh and shook his head. “Fine, fine. I’ll keep a lid on the complaints.”

“Oh, you’re fine. I thought it was kind of funny.”

He turned away, muttering to himself. “Funny, eh? What I’m doing is impressive as slag.”

Tala just shook her head at the oddity and tossed more jerky for Terry.

“I have an idea, and whether it works or not, it will likely wipe me out for a good while, but I think it will be more efficient, overall.” He lifted both hands and a much greater pulse of power radiated off of him.

Tala stood up a bit straighter, watching as smaller iron clouds took turns picking from individual branches, instead of whole trees. As each finished its branch, it came to deposit the collected berries into the waiting barrel.

That makes sense. Smaller manipulations take less energy. But will it give the trees a greater chance to adapt?

“That looks easier. Why would it wipe you out more?”

“More. Concentration. Required.” He said each word greatly spaced out, and Tala took the hint.

With the process slowed a bit, Tala was able to see iron contracting around each stem as another portion grabbed and twisted a given berry free.

Masterful control, that.

Not wanting to get distracted, Tala began working on her part.

-Wasn’t your part stripping?-

No. Hush, you.

Cazor was trembling from the effort as his little iron clouds finished with the fifth tree. He looked her way and smiled triumphantly. “How was that?”

“Impressive.”

“Good, because that’s all I’ve got for the moment.” Without another word, he flopped backwards, seemingly asleep before he hit the ground.

-Likely mental exhaustion. He’ll be fine in an hour or so.-

Can we help him?

-I came across a few methods that might help. Can you alter your magical signature to match his so his body doesn’t reject power coming from us?-

Um… no?

-Oh, well, then none of these will work.-

Is such a transfer possible?

-In theory, yeah, but I found no evidence of it being done.-

Tala huffed an irritated growl. Is there anything we can do?

-Well, there are a few things that humans do to mentally relax.-

Oh?

-…wow…we are naïve.-

What do you mean?

-Nothing. There’s no way we can help him with what we have with us.-

You could have just said that.

-Where’s the fun in that?-

As Tala and Alat fell into silence, and Tala continued processing this new batch of berries. The only change was that, now, she had her final iron-salve out and was coating each seed in the substance before placing it in a container.

As she did this mindless work, her thoughts caught onto a thread.  So, she began to pull.

Alat?

-Yeah?-

You’re basically a being of pure magic now, right? Just connected to a soul?

-A bit insulting, that. I’m a soul manifesting through a medium of pure magic. But go on, I think I see what you’re getting at.-

You seem to have a personality that mirrors many aspects that we’ve seen in other, older Archons. Master Jevin, Noelle, Jenna, and others.

-I hadn’t considered it that way, but yeah, that’s true.-

And such Archons have reached a state that they’ve been remade, sometimes entirely, with Magic.

-Correct.-

She didn’t really know how to phrase this, so she just asked. Is magic snarky? By its very nature? And does it pollute what it interacts with, with that trait? What about other aspects?

Alat laughed within Tala’s mind. She contained herself shortly thereafter and continued the conversation. -That’s a very interesting line of thinking.-

So?

-No. I don’t think Magic makes what it touches snarkier.-

I said I didn’t have a good way to word it…

-Oh, I understand what you’re trying to say, as funny as what you actually said is. I think the changes between you and I are due to different experiences, even for as short a time as they’ve been different, and ignoring the fact that I get to experience yours, secondhand. Old Archons have been around a long time, and so they seek ways to entertain themselves. I have very little to do within our head, so I do the same.-

Simple as that?

-That seems like the most reasonable explanation.-

I suppose so.

They once again fell into silence.

As Tala neared the end of processing the second batch that Cazor had gathered, the man, himself, began to stir.

She had one barrel filled to the brim, tightly compacted, and sealed, already back in Kit. She only needed to run that barrel’s contents through the press, and she’d have her power-packed juice. She had a second barrel about half full of processed berries as well.

In her previous experience, the berries were very juicy, giving almost half their whole volume in juice. How does that even work, anyway? She’d been considering it as she worked almost mechanically at de-seeding the berries.

-I think you’re on the right track in your thinking. Their magic is centered around cohesion, specifically to briefly counter the power of the seeds and trees, but it bleeds over into other related effects. That in mind, it makes sense that they’d be able to retain a much greater volume of liquid, compared to a normal fruit.-

Yeah. I’m not a botanist, though. Do you think anyone’s ever studied it?

-Do I think that anyone has ever studied one of the foundational sources of power for primeval mankind?-

Fair enough, silly question.

-I’ll look into it when we get back to Bandfast.-

Thank you.

“Morning.” Tala grinned over at Cazor as he opened his eyes fully.

He hesitated. “Is it actually still morning? Did I sleep a whole day? Or are you just mocking my nap?”

“Still morning, you didn’t sleep that long. Less than an hour, actually. Did the trees adapt?”

“Less than I thought they would, actually. They seem to have a static means of building effectiveness against a given thing, but it seemed to have faded before my last effort. It also seems related to how much it interacts with a given thing, in this case my power, and doesn’t even seem to remember interacting with it before. The escalation of efficiency in disrupting my power seemed to start back at square one.”

“I think I followed most of that?”

Cazor stretched and grinned. “If I do one tree at a time, and take a bit longer breaks in between than I have been, it shouldn’t get harder with each tree, and I should be able to do twice as many as I’d been thinking I could.”

“That I definitely understand.” Tala smiled back. “Then, let’s get to work. Any guesses on the actual number?”

“We can probably do another…ten? In the next two or three hours or so.” He nodded to himself. “That should fill the four barrels you said you had on hand, right?”

Tala glanced up, checking the time. That will put us at around two in the afternoon. “Just about, yeah. That works for me.”

As she looked up, she saw flickers of power sweep across the top of the valley, avoiding the trees by a good margin but seeming to pass through virtually everything else.

“What was that?”

Cazor glanced up. “What?”

“I thought I saw a magical scan of some sort.”

He looked questioningly her way, likely trying to ask if it was the arcane, without saying so out loud.

She shook her head. “It felt animalistic, if anything.”

He grunted. “Probably a magical creature that sensed us, trying to pin down our location.”

Tala paled, thinking of her first encounter with such a creature. Sure, she’d killed the midnight fox, but that had been a weak being, and she’d actually gotten quite lucky. Though not so lucky that it was a windfall. After all, I lost the harvest…

He took another drink before glancing her way. “Do you think we should leave?”

She shook her head. “The power seemed to avoid the trees, likely due to what you noticed; they even break down any power that comes too close. We should be safe until we leave.”

“And they may have given up by then.”

“Precisely. At least that’s the hope.”

“I’m fine with that plan.” He shrugged and got to work, quickly harvesting a tree, then sitting down and pulling out a book to wait for the grove’s defenses to relax and return to normal.

Tala continued to work, adding to the buzzing maelstrom of power within her with every drop sucked from the outside of an ending-seed.

True to his guess, Cazor was able to harvest another ten trees. Their fruit filled her barrels, and then some. Thankfully, she had no trouble simply eating the extra, so, the magic-packed berries didn’t go to waste.

“Ready to head back?”

“Definitely.” After a moment’s pause, she inquired. “So, what scripts did you use up?”

“Only mostly used up, thankfully. They’re my fine control scripts. I don’t use them that often, so they are my least efficient. Though, I’ve been trying to practice with them more, so thank you for this.”

She grinned. “Any time.”

He laughed in return. “I still need some help with the inscription costs.”

“Oh, I know. I’ll think of an offer on the way back.”

“Sounds fair to me.” He formed their two iron discs, and the two of them stepped up back in place for their trip home. Apparently, the discs were a product of medium level manipulations of his magnetic fields, not requiring the fine control he’d exercised in harvesting.

She tossed a last bit of jerky for Terry, and he snapped it up before flickering to her shoulder.

As the group began moving, they quickly came to the closest sharp turn in the canyon-like valley, the one that had most hidden the grove.

Tala felt her stomach drop at what she saw.

Little ripples of conflicting magics clashed and fizzled through the air, barely noticeable as they bled around the bend.

It looked reminiscent of the surface of a pond during a hailstorm, only somehow more violent.

“Master Cazor, mage-sight.”

He didn’t hesitate, and she saw power move over his face and head, the spell-lines beginning to glow, subtly. The iron discs immediately slowed, then stopped. “What the rust?”

“Yeah. Something’s happening.”

They both looked around, and Tala was able to see similar effects in almost every direction, save directly around the grove.

The two Archons seemed to realize the same thing at the same time, though they articulated it differently.

“The trees are acting as localized magic dampeners.”

“Ending trees directly disrupt magic in an area?” She immediately saw the benefit of having ending groves near even modern cities, and why they couldn’t be allowed within the defenses. “Oh, I feel stupid.”

Cazor huffed. “You and me both. But that’s secondary. There is something, or more than one something, looking for us, out there, and I don’t see any…” His eyes glanced to her briefly, considering, then continuing as if he hadn’t stopped. “Conceptual power, so I think we’re just dealing with magical beasts, not arcanes.”

“Can we go up? From a greater height we could have a better look and see what’s going on?”

He considered. “We can, briefly. The magical beasts that can fly are usually a much greater danger to people than the ground-bound.”

She remembered the night-wing ravens and saw his point. Those were just arcanous beasts, too. “Up and back quickly, then.”

“Agreed.”

They rose, cresting out of the steep-walled valley. They both immediately felt the turbulence in the magic around them.

Terry squawked quietly and clamped down tighter with his talons, locking him more firmly in place.

Likely in reaction against his instinct to run. She swallowed to clear her mouth. I don’t blame him.

But Tala couldn’t give Terry more than that passing thought. She and Cazor were focused on other things.

Specifically, their gazes were glued to a distant clash that was taking place at the head of the canyon, which led to the ending-berry grove. Right where we slowed down sufficiently to stop making me into a beacon.

The auras of the two beasts were both yellow, but that was their only similarity.

-I want to chastise you for exaggeration, but I can’t see any other overlap… I guess they both exist? We can see them both?-

Alat was trying to distract Tala, pull her out of her shocked focus. It wasn’t working.

One of the two magical creatures was, of all things, a griffon, seemingly taken straight from children’s tales.

The fur on most of its body looked positively metallic-gold, while still somehow looking alive in a way that Tala couldn’t quite pin down. The feathers on the front portion and wings were a brown that evoked bark without seeming wooden, dirt without being dirty, and topazes without being gem-like.

Its beak and talons reminded Tala of Terry’s in an incredibly not-comforting sort of way. And even at this great distance, Tala felt like she could see intelligence in the predator’s eyes.

Its opponent was an amorphous… something, which currently had six fully formed spindly legs which didn’t seem to be truly holding its bulk off the ground. Another leg was growing outwards as she watched.

More than anything, the legs seemed to facilitate quick changes in direction. And they seemed required because, despite its size, it was fast.

The blob darted, reshaped, and almost flowed around the griffon’s mostly physical attacks, occasionally even splitting into two seemingly independent entities before recombining and continuing the conflict.

Strangely, neither obviously magical creature was using anything that seemed to be a magical ability, relying instead on their brute physicality. The attacks that came closest to being magical were gusts of wind thrown by the griffon’s wings, seemingly sent to unbalance the blob.

As Tala watched, the blob-thing ripped off and then threw a portion of its body, which struck the griffon as it strafed past, seemingly trying to rake at its opponent with talon and claw.

The mini-blob impacted one of the griffon’s wings and immediately sprouted at least fifteen little clawed legs that began to tear at the feathered appendage.

The griffon dropped to the ground, twisting the affected wing in front of its face so that it could peck free the offending new opponent. The eagle-lion seemed very little worse for wear after it had eviscerated the seemingly homogeneous, living projectile.

“Why aren’t they using magic?” Tala’s voice was barely above a whisper, even though the combatants were miles away, down the mountain, nearly back in the plains. Only her incredibly good eyesight let her see as much as she had.

“I can’t really see what’s going on. I’m just watching tight masses of power move around each other in violent seeming patterns.”

Tala briefly explained what she was seeing.

“Your vision is insane. Do you know that?”

She gave a weak smile. “Thank you? But what about my question.”

Cazor grunted. “Any magic they use will produce far-reaching echoes. Even their presence is causing the ripples we’re looking at. Those ripples can look awfully tasty to anything higher up the food chain.”

Tala’s eyes widened. “So… they’re trying to avoid discovery, too?”

“That would be my bet. Humans are much better at detecting, and worse at hiding from, magical creatures, so I don’t think anything else would notice that conflict and come looking.”

That was at least slightly comforting.

“So, they both sensed our magic booms and came looking?”

“Magic boom?” He hesitated, then nodded. “Like a sonic boom. Not really the same, but close enough.” He nodded again. “Yeah, that was my guess, too.”

Tala tsked. “No wonder there’s a prohibition against traveling too fast outside of cities. Can you imagine if we’d led them to Bandfast?”

“Yeah, that would have been bad.”

She cleared her throat. “Speaking of which… how are we going to get back without doing just that?”

“I can move us as fast as possible, below the threshold that you begin to create a,” he smiled, “magic boom.”

“Don’t laugh at me. It makes sense. It’s understandable.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“Do you have a better name for it?”

“The technical term is motive aura resonance.”

“Oh… yeah that’s better.”

He grinned. “Anyways. I’ll take us as fast as I can around those and back to Bandfast.”

“How fast is that?”

He hesitated. “How much risk are we willing to tolerate?”

“Some? I really don’t want to draw a magical creature down on Bandfast.”

“Any chance we’re getting helped with those?”

Tala grimaced unhappily. “Unlikely.” She didn’t say more. The watchers are watching for an arcane. They aren’t babysitting us to protect against magical creatures.

“Yeah, I thought not.” He clucked his tongue, his thoughts seemingly taking a new direction. “It would be really foolish to go fight those.”

Tala felt her grimace morph into a grin as she picked up on what he was getting at. “Incredibly foolish.”

“It would practically be begging for our magic to be seen for dozens of miles in every direction. Who knows what we’d bring down on ourselves.”

“Undoubtedly.”

Cazor scratched at his chin. “I’m sad to admit: I’ve never gotten to test myself against something that powerful, and the times it’s been close, there’s always someone or something to protect, which limited my effectiveness. Or, there were more powerful Hunters nearby to clinch the kill.”

She nodded sagely. “That sounds like that wouldn’t be a fair test.”

“Exactly.”

“Mages need to test themselves in order to grow.”

“That’s true. That’s true.”

She shrugged. “Not much out here worth worrying about, and there’s no one to clinch the kill but us.”

He gave her a long look, his smile slowly growing. “I really want to do it.”

“I’ll take the griffon?”

An expression of joyous glee stole over his face. “Mistress Tala?”

“Yes, Master Cazor?”

"You have the best ideas."

-And here I would have guessed that Mage Hunters were selected for their sound judgment and careful nature. That boy is just like us, only more fragile. How is he even still alive?-

Hush, you. He’s confident and experienced. We’ve trained together and fought at similar levels. If he can take one, I should be able to as well. Cazor’s not a fool. We can do this.

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