Chapter: 327 Bonus - The Unit (Patreon)

Previous __________ ToC __________ Next

Clevnis moved his hand forward in a practiced motion, slowly shaving off the thinnest layer of stone from the top of a block.

His blades were, theoretically, without width, but if he wasn’t careful—

Crinkle.

Clevnis cursed, barely keeping himself from kicking the stone block and blasting it to gravel with pure, brute strength.

He and Cerna had agreed that he would only get one block of material a week to practice with. This week, he’d chosen stone. The quantity limit had done wonders in helping curb his outbursts.

Anger is all well and good, but I can’t let it lead me to do things I regret.

He’d let his anger control him subtly for far too long. Still, it had been… What, a decade?

It had been more than ten years since he had hurt or destroyed anyone or anything in rash anger.

Even things that don’t matter. He could buy ten thousand little stone blocks, so destroying one was trivial. But it’s the principle of the thing.

He was—and would remain—a man of principle.

He leaned forward to examine what had happened.

His angle of cutting had started to turn slightly tilted, causing just enough upward force to crack the thin layer of stone.

As I push forward, I’m letting my wrist begin to rotate, and that’s what caused this.

He nodded to himself, resetting to the thickness that he was practicing with.

Over the years, he had perfected his technique with various materials or thicknesses, before reducing the thickness, increasing the size of the material to cut through, or increasing the brittleness of the medium.

Stone was the toughest trial so far.

So hard, so brittle…

He was working to cut an eighth of an inch thick layer, which, while thin, was still thick enough to have stability for minor imperfections.

And I’m still failing to make a clean, single cut, leaving an undamaged remainder.

It didn’t help that the block in question was two feet to a side.

Cerna walked up behind him, wrapping one arm around his waist and resting her cheek on his shoulder. “How’s it going, love?”

He turned and gave her forehead a kiss. “Just finding flaws in my technique.”

She huffed a laugh. “Chasing perfection?”

“I’ve got the time.” He turned and wrapped her in an embrace, resting his head on her shoulder in turn. She was just a bit taller than him, and he loved how that let them fit together so perfectly.

“That’s true.” She gave him a squeeze and pulled away. “I’ve got things to do, but I didn’t want to leave without checking in.”

“Thank you. Do you need anything while you’re gone?”

“Start dinner?”

He grinned. “Already simmering.”

“Then, no. Do you need anything while I’m out?”

He thought for a moment. “I think I just opened our last cask of salt.”

“So, not pressing, but grab some if it’s cheap?”

He grimaced. “No, this waning is going crazy already. Get a few if the price is at all reasonable. I expect caravans will become less frequent sooner than usual, and I don’t want to be caught out without the necessities.”

She nodded. “Anything else in that vein, then?”

He hesitated. “I’ll do a quick inventory and grant you access to a list.”

She kissed his cheek. “Thank you, love. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

As she left, Clevnis turned back to his stone. Three more cuts, then I’ll make the list.

WIth practiced ease, he formed a flat blade in the very zeme that surrounded him.

Nice and slow.

* * *

Cerna left her husband’s side, and as she moved through their comfortable home, she began drawing her premade magics from her bound storage.

A network of gold, silver, and copper wove through her hair, clicking into place before one end pierced her skin to access a power port.

It came to subtle life, giving her subconscious mind a three-hundred-sixty degree perception of her surroundings.

She didn’t have the capacity nor desire to perceive all around herself constantly, so she shunted that off. The result was what amounted to an instinctive knowledge of everything that lay around her.

As usual, she had included the scripts for magesight to be added to the perception, but left it behind a silver gate, so she wouldn’t waste the metal if she didn’t encounter a need for the extra vision.

She also wove her safety net into it, as she did into all her constructs. If she didn’t disengage the magics within three hours, very powerful workings would be enacted to… solve whatever problem was delaying her.

She wasn’t entering a combat situation, so she left most of her power ports unutilized.

As she was planning on picking up some casks of various supplies, she wove a strength enhancing working across her torso, bypassing the difficulty of built-in articulation by concentrating it on the more stable parts of her body.

She hesitated. This waning has been rather unpredictable.

There shouldn’t be any issues within city walls at this point, but…

Better safe than sorry.

A simple-looking metal braid seemed to grow out of nothing, drawn from her bound-storage into place on her shoulder before she grabbed it with her power and jammed the tip through her skin, into the port there. Power flowed through it, and a reactive defense bloomed into place.

At the moment, it was more of a sensory organ for her magic than anything else, but it would respond to incoming threats as appropriate. More than anything, it was like a librarian, rather than a book. If defense was needed, this spell-form would get the proper magic as quickly as possible.

There. She exited their modest home, out onto the street just a few blocks from the Archon Compound.

They could have afforded better, and closer, either to the wall or the Compound, but they didn’t need to, and they could afford it because they didn’t spend on such unnecessary expenses.

Cerna enjoyed the sub-set of humanity that lived in waning cities. They were a bit hardier, a bit more risk-tolerant, and almost always industrious.

A caravan had just come in, and they’d had a few hunters in their number. Because of that, Cerna was able to buy up nearly two thunder bulls worth of meat.

Clevnis had gotten her the list, and they were quite short on red meat in their stores.

It wasn’t necessarily easy to strip magic from thunderbull meat, but when she was planning on salting it and freezing it for a long time, the process was unnecessary.

The power would dissipate naturally.

She also talked to the hunters and found out that they were intending to stick around for a while.

Cerna immediately bought first rights to their harvests for the next month, directing them to hunt toward the east.

The five men apparently had experience hunting the wind cattle that were rare to the west, but quite prolific east of Alefast.

Once properly free of power, the wind cattle meat was incredible, and she could use the other harvests to power all sorts of items.

Sadly, once Alefast wanes, it will be a long while before they are easily available again. There was nothing for it but to stock up as much as she could between now and then.

Yes, this hunting party will do nicely.

She was a whirlwind through the market, buying up an overabundance of provisions, all on the way to her original destination: The money changer who greeted each arriving caravan in order to buy their hard coinage off of them.

It’s time to negotiate for some more precious metal. She’d turn it into thread later.

She could get to Bandfast or Makinaven with relative ease, but she’d lose more in income than the trip would save her, unless she wanted to drastically destabilize one of those city’s economies, and that would ruffle too many feathers to be prudent.

Still, she enjoyed the haggling as the respite it was.

And after this, back to work.

* * *

Limmestare walked slowly around the clearing, book in one hand, magesight projected outward.

He had never understood why so many Mages tied their magesight to their eyes.

It was utterly unnecessary, and often even created odd overlays of information that muddled what their magesight provided.

Limmestare had opted for fully spherical magesight, which let him perceive magic in every direction regardless of physical barriers.

It also let him read his book while still being on guard duty.

At the moment, he was overseeing the clearing of a large copse of white oak that had sprung up too close to the wall to be allowed.

Thankfully, while the trees’ growth was decidedly magical, the trees themselves weren’t magical or motile.

Thus, all that Limmestare had to do was protect the foresters from any threat that might come in, attempting to take advantage of the distracted mundanes.

In most cases, having a Refined on overwatch this early in the waning would be insane, but Alefast had already had several work-details assaulted in the last years, one even being utterly obliterated despite having a Mage in tow.

So, caution was warranted.

He turned the page, reading at a leisurely pace.

Every so often a tree would topple under the ministrations of some of the two hundred or so men working in concert.

As each trees fell, Limmestare would use the ring of glass he embedded near the top to nudge the falling trunk, and increase the safety of the entire endeavor.

He could have taken down the whole copse of trees in a few minutes, but such an overt display of power would have undoubtedly called a magical beast down on the area, and it was good practice to keep such clashes to a minimum where possible.

Ensuring that the trees didn’t fall on anyone, though? Not a difficult thing in the slightest.

Truthfully, even in that regard he barely did anything. These men were professionals and knew well what they were about.

A ripple on the edge of his awareness caused him to close his book and slip it into his bound storage.

A small pack, definitely magical, not arcanous. Shadow and light? Oh, that’s a fun one.

He clapped once, gaining everyone’s attention. “Incoming pride, you have five minutes to secure what you’re working on and gather at the protection point. I expect we’ll be back on task in fifteen.”

“Yes, Master Limmestare!” The chorus came back as men moved from their steady, task obliterating pace to a sort of controlled frenzy.

Three minutes later, two more trees had been toppled, and the two hundred men were gathered in tight quarters in the designated clearing.

They made good time.

“Activate the defensive barrier, light and shadow.”

A man from the middle held up a cube of what seemed to be bronze, intricately woven through with copper, silver, and gold, “Light and shadow! Activated.”

A bubble flickered into being before their mundane sight for just an instant before vanishing once more.

To Limmestare’s magesight, it was still there, of course.

It was only another minute or two before the pride slunk in view.

These lions were striped like tigers, but with white and black, instead of orange and black.

The two males had glorious manes of pitch black fur, with light shining from the tip of each hair.

The lionesses were already prowling off to each side, working to get at the tasty humans in the center, bypassing Limmestare.

The males will engage me, while the females try to bring down the prey. He nodded to himself. So far, exactly as expected.

He wasn’t about to let their plan continue, however, and there was no negotiation with magical creatures.

With a practiced gesture and flexing of his magic, glass spears lifted and shot from the surrounding trees.

Each spear targeted a different lion.

As it approached, it splintered, dividing to drive toward the major joints.

The lionesses did their best to dodge, some moving as streaks of light, others seeming to blend into the shadows around them before appearing elsewhere.

Limmestare’s glass sought them out anyways.

Given their mobility, he wasn’t going for kill-shots in this first exchange. Instead, he was engaging in harrying tactics.

The first lioness was struck, his glass entering many of her joints before fracturing into small spiked balls of ultra hardened, ultra tough glass.

The large cat did not like that, as suddenly, her every movement filled her with pain. Her panicked cry confused her sisters just enough that they joined her suffering in short order.

The males hadn’t been idle, however, and they were both closing on Limmestare with impressive speed.

Rather than dodging the glass he sent their way, the brothers simply radiated fields of powerful light and splintering shadow, protecting the big cats for the moment.

Even with their incredible speed, however, the males didn’t close on Limmestare before he’d used panes of glass to behead each of the lionesses, now that they were much slower and unlikely to dodge effectively.

The battlefield cleared of potential interference, Limmestare turned his full focus onto the two remaining lions even as they lunged at him, covering the last twenty yards with that single leap.

He flicked both hands forward and pillars of glass lanced from the ground, piercing straight through the defensive barriers, and using the leaping lions’ own momentum to create feline shish kabobs.

And that was that.

Limmestare swept the surroundings with his eyes and magesight, just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, but found no other threats.

That done, he moved the corpses over to beside where he stood, pulling all the glass from them with ease. “Alright. Back to work!”

The defensive barrier came down, and the men went back to their tasks, unwilling for the brief interruption to reduce the work that they were able to get done that day.

Limmestare pulled out his book, flipping through it to find where he’d left off.

Now, where was I?

* * *

Vanga waved at the receptionist as she bustled through the door, “Sorry that I’m late, Jane!”

“Oh! Mistress Vanga, you’re more than fine. Two cases for you, today, and two vaccinations.”

“Thank you.” She reached up to a clipboard on the wall. “Here?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Thank you.”

There were very few sick or injured people in a waning city, largely because there were so many Mages and Archons around with healing abilities of various stripes.

Even so, there needed to be some coordination of the various healers, and the Matron of this establishment had done just that.

The elderly woman had no magic of her own, save a deep, heart’s desire to help hurting people get better.

Toward that end, she had enlisted a few dozen of the healing-capable Mages to swing by, timing cases that could wait for their arrivals.

Vanga was somewhat unique in that she was certified to vaccinate newborns as well as grant adults new vaccinations at need.

That had been an exhaustive course of study. It had taken her nearly two centuries of learning and research before she was authorized to give her first inoculation, and that had been to a Mage with self-healing abilities with Archon healers on hand.

The poor man had still had almost an hour of agony before they’d rebalanced him.

Even though that was nearly half a millennium ago, Vanga still remembered the pain that she had caused.

It galvanized her resolve and work-ethic.

In that vein, she would attend to the vaccinations last. The others were likely in active pain and while keeping an infant waiting was unideal, they would be fine, in the end.

She opened the door to find her first patient, a young man with a broken arm in a splint. “Good morning, I’m Mistress Vanga.”

The man gave a weak smile, clearly in pain, even though the arm had been set.

“Based on my notes, you have a spiral fracture of both forearm bones of your left arm. Does that sound right?” It might seem silly, but she liked to check the injury as well as the patient, because sometimes things got crossed, and one couldn’t be too careful.

“Yes, Mistress.”

She verified his name and a few other identifying tidbits, ensuring she was in the right room, with the right patient, and ready to fix the correct issue.

After that, it was a simple manner of engaging the magics in the room to see the state of things in the young man’s arms before causing new bone to form in the cracks, firmly bonding throughout, much like it would have healed naturally.

Stronger, and ready for use. “You may experience some phantom pains for a few days, but you are cleared to use the arm without restriction. How does it feel?”

She spent a few more minutes with the patient, answering some questions, and ensuring he was ready to depart.

The next patient was similar, but with a broken foot.

Once again, the mundane healers had done an excellent job setting the fractures, and preparing the patient for the healing that Vanga could do.

Both injury repairs took less than a quarter hour, all told.

With those two dealt with, she entered the room with a young family. The parents were barely more than children themselves, but she could easily see the love they had for each other and the beautiful little girl between them.

She could also see their nervousness. “Good morning. I am Mistress Vanga. This little beauty is your first, correct?” She glanced down at the information before her as the parents happily agreed. “And her name is Lilly?”

Just as with the other two patients, Vanga took the time to verify she was in the right place, with the right people, ready to do the proper thing.

“Now, do you know how vaccination works?”

The two shook their heads.

“I can understand that. It is a complicated process, but I’ll do my best to say it in a way that makes sense.”

“Thank you, Mistress.” The wife smiled.

“Now, because I’ll be simplifying, it won’t be perfectly accurate, do you understand?”

They both nodded.

“Alright, I will work with the artifacts here to scan your daughter to ensure I have her biological imprint correct. I will then create templates—matching what her body would expect—throughout her body, mimicking the density and spread that they would have if she did get sick.”

“But she won’t be sick?”

“No.” Vanga shook her head, smiling. “You could say that I’m tricking her body into thinking it already fought off the illness. Then, her body will incorporate those self-cures. The more technical explanation is that I create what are called T and B lymphocytes, but that is more than you strictly need to know. Do you have any questions?”

Vanga had perfected her little spiel over the centuries.

If she oversimplified to the point that the parents believed they understood perfectly, then they wouldn’t ask questions, and the knowledge would fade. If she gave a bit more information than they’d ever need to know, they often grabbed onto it, mentally, and it helped them retain everything.

She had tried simply not explaining it at all in the past, but that had just created a sense of mysticism around the whole thing, and that made helping the children who got sick anyways all the harder.

After all, they couldn’t inoculate against everything, and if parents believed that their children were ‘magically protected against disease,’ they would reasonably ignore symptoms.

All that to say, the parents asked a few questions, and Vanga performed the procedure with relative ease before she headed to the next family, a smile on her face.

She truly loved helping alleviate suffering.

She couldn’t do it all, but she could do her part.

* * *

Girt slunk through the wilds around Alefast, checking up on a blip in the detection grid. Magical creature identification always became a fish-pull when a waning got going, the results were pretty random.

Thankfully, they could generally determine some basic characteristics, and that was why Girt has been sent in.

They had detected a queen type, an egg layer.

He took comfort in the blissfully cool stone surrounding him, even as a part of his mind maintained the needed properties on the outermost layer of stone.

Each step was utterly silent as his rock merged with the ground and came back out, leaving no trace in its wake.

Others complained that his method of movement should make noise, but that made no sense to Girt. The only time noise was created was when distinct things came in contact, a drop of water landing in a puddle, cloth sliding along another fold, things like that.

He made the rock one, so why would there be noise?

But he was getting distracted.

It wasn’t too hard to find the mouth of the cave in question, and Girt paused to survey the lay of the land.

There was subtle movement on the ground at the base of the cave, and Girt was able to detect the first offspring of this magical threat.

Worm-like slugs—as long as he was tall and thicker around than his shoulders—were coated with a thin layer of dirt in a vain attempt at camouflage.

The life-blood moving through their squishy forms made their surfaces pulse slightly, which is what ruined the illusion that they’d attempted to effect with their stillness.

Not rock worms, blessedly not an insectoid. He reached out to his Archive connection, and then through it to his researcher. “Master Sutaga, I have the first of the creatures in sight.”

It took a moment, but Girt finally saw a response coming back, “Master Girt, understood and awaiting a description.”

Girt did his best to describe everything he could see, including terrain features of the nest’s entrance, the type of rock, soil, and vegetation in the area, and what his magesight detected of the beasts.

“Those seem to be muma’a worms. Treat their blood like sticky fire. It is an odd compound that is so good at oxygen absorption that it will burn in virtually any condition.”

“Except within their own body?”

There was a pause.

“Except within their own body, right?”

“No, their vascular system simply seems to be thick enough to hide the light and heat resistant enough to endure. They are anaerobic creatures, who still somehow absorb oxygen for some processes.”

“So, their blood takes the poison out of them?”

“Yes, they act similarly to plants. In fact, there is a standing order for some of the smaller worms alive, if you have the option. They are rarer creatures, and many would like to study their lungs as they work, rather than simply examining the remains post-mortem.”

“Understood. I’ll see what I can do. Abilities?”

“Skin hot enough to burn a mundane, fire breath on command, barbed tongue that will snag and draw in their prey. They don’t rely on eyes, most varieties don’t have them at all. They sense via vibrations in the air and stone. Collective consciousness with their queen. Consider them all limbs of the mother, though they have been known to survive after her death, so like a starfish?”

Master Sutaga knew of Girt’s upbringing on the open sea, so he often used comparisons with those origins. “Understood.”

“May the stars bless you, and zeme carry you forward.”

“See you on the other side.”

With that, he broke his connection to the Archive. He had work to do.

Previous __________ ToC __________ Next