Chapter: 356 - Contemplations and Suggestions (Patreon)

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Tala sat in the middle of the wagon circle, contemplating the fickleness of memory, even a perfect memory.

She could remember anything that she wanted to, but that didn’t actually mean that she constantly had her every experience sitting in her mind, actively known to her.

This time, she had ‘forgotten’ one of the hallmarks of being with a caravan.

It was rather boring.

Virtually anything that she could do to use her time more effectively would reduce her ability to be on watch for the caravan, so she was stuck where she was, doing very little.

To be fair, it was the best-case scenario, and she was grateful on behalf of those she was watching over that things were boring. After all, if it wasn’t boring, people would likely be getting hurt or dying.

As Tala took overwatch for the caravan, she saw the guards tending to their wounded. One of the Mage Protectors was working to magically heal in the most extreme case, while most of the wounds were tended by poultices, bandages, and good old fashioned first aid.

Everyone being worked on survived, blessedly.

From all of the waves of wolf attacks, the caravan had only lost one guardsman, and he had already been dead before she and Rane had arrived.

It was unpleasant, but far, far fewer died than she had feared. This group of guards was apparently an even more experienced set than usual, due to the somewhat larger size of this caravan.

As a consequence, it was unlikely that any of those that Tala had trained with were among them, and none stepped forward, so that settled that potential.

While the guards and Mages cleaned up and dealt with the battle’s aftermath, Rane had offered what help he could give while Tala maintained her ‘vigilance’ outward.

She’d initially gone to offer help, but Rane had quietly reminded her that having her seen as watching over the caravan would offer more to the guards and Mages than just an extra set of hands.

He knew that she could do both, but trying to get the guards and Mages to understand that would have been more trouble than it was worth. Worse, even if they succeeded, an air of uncertainty would have remained, regardless.

Thus, Tala had reluctantly agreed with his assessment, though doing so brought a smile to her lips.

She could still remember the awkward young man who had joined her caravan back from Alefast what seemed like a lifetime ago. He had had the training to make these types of decisions, but he had been hesitant to take the lead or make his voice heard.

Well, no… he was granted leadership almost immediately, but he didn’t handle it as gracefully as he could have. He didn’t word things that well and put his foot in his mouth as often as not.

-That’s the truth.-

“Umm… Excuse me, Mistress Tala?” The mageling—the girl who had been standing beside one of the Mage Protectors—was slowly approaching Tala. She bowed when Tala turned her way.

“Yes?” Tala didn’t know what the girl wanted, but she didn’t much mind. It was something more interesting than standing around, reading fictitious books.

-You do that all the time.-

No, I read books while exercising, or stretching, or walking, or—

-Yeah, fine. I get what you mean.-

“Greetings. I am Narci. I…” The girl colored slightly. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I was a year behind you at the Academy.”

Tala frowned. Alat?

-Hey, I wasn’t around back then. Let me see… Let me see… Let me… Oh! There she is. Wow… You saw her… maybe four times? Your memories aren’t perfect from then, so there are some blurry people that could also have been her. Why does she think you’d remember her? You don’t even have her name in here. I’m glad she said it.-

Tala nodded slowly, making the frown that had grown across her features seem less like displeasure and more like consideration. “I do think that we crossed paths every so often. Good to see you again, Narci.”

She tried not to feel awkward at the forced social nicety. There was comfort in the fact that the words weren’t actually a lie. It was good to see her, as the other option would have been that the girl was killed before Tala arrived, and it was nice that that hadn’t happened.

-Yeah, tell yourself that. Such twists in logic are great for your moral character.-

Hey, I’m trying to be kind here.

Narci had brightened at Tala’s words. “I’m so glad! I know that we barely saw each other; I’m flattered that you remember me at all.”

Tala almost said that it wasn’t that surprising given that she remembered everything, even the smallest detail. Blessedly, Tala stopped herself, realizing at the last moment how insulting that would sound. Instead, she simply smiled and waited, putting on a patiently expectant look.

“Oh! Oh, right. I’m sorry, Mistress. I was wondering…” She looked down and away. “Would you have any advice on advancement? I was only a year behind you, but I’m still a mageling and you’re… well, I saw one of your fights for Alefast!” She lifted her eyes, excitement suddenly pouring off of her. “And how you came to our defense, here?”

The girl laughed, now looking up to the stars with obvious glee.

“I want to raise my magics to your level… or at least closer.” The girl seemed to return to the moment and feel some awkwardness once again at the end.

Tala quirked her pursed lips to the side in thought. “Honestly, I would suggest that you do as your master says, and follow the process.”

Narci looked toward Tala with a frown. “But… that’s not what you did… right?”

“Oh, no.” Tala chuckled, “but you don’t ask the winner of a coin toss how they achieved victory, and when a loss on such a gamble means death, it is probably better not to play.”

The mageling seemed genuinely confused. “But… everything I could find about you shows you going around the well-established systems, finding your own way, and flouting the means by which things have been done in the past.”

Tala felt her cheeks heat. “Well…”—she cleared her throat—“some of that was entirely unintentional. While my path has been exceptionally quick, much of that was out of my control, and even that which I did control… I haven’t always been the wisest in my choices.”

It was Tala’s turn to look away in awkwardness. Narci seemed stunned into silence.

“Many of the dangers I avoided, I had been unknowingly preparing for, long before I knew I needed to. Some of that was the wise people around me pushing me in the right directions as appropriate, which is one reason that I suggest listening to your master. More than anything, my magic being bent almost exclusively around defense in the beginning was the largest factor in my survival. That singular fact protected me from many of the repercussions of my unwise choices.” Tala nodded to herself, looking back to Narci, “That I can recommend. If your magics can be bent toward defense, do so.”

Narci was nodding hesitantly, almost to herself. “I am an ice Mage… Material Creator.”—she laughed once, nervously—“It’s why I sought out Mistress Untriti. It’s said she knows how to conjure more than a hundred kinds of snow. Snow! Can you believe it?”—she chuckled more fully—“And ice? That’s her focus.”—she shook her head—“she can create uncounted kinds of ice, each specialized for a unique purpose.”

“That’s… fascinating.” Tala didn’t really know why the girl was telling her all of this, but it did keep Tala from having to just stand around so...

Narci colored. “Right! Well, she’s been suggesting that I bend some of my magics toward learning how to conjure discs of ice with perfect accuracy to either interpose directly in the way of incoming attacks, or to deflect them…”

Tala smiled, taking a guess, “But you’ve resisted?”

The mageling nodded sheepishly.

“Well, I would recommend you do as your master says.” Tala’s smile turned into a broad grin, as she knew that to be a mirror of what she’d started the conversation saying.

Narci smiled at the words as well, clearly understanding what Tala had done. The mageling bowed, “Thank you, Mistress Tala. I appreciate that you took your time to offer instruction that should have been obvious to me. I will listen to my master and look toward survival. I can only advance if I survive.”

Tala held up one finger. “And you can only continue to protect and serve others if you survive. There is a place for noble sacrifice.” Her eyes drifted toward the guards, now finishing up their work, “but if you can survive to fight another day without letting your charges down, that should be your goal.”

Narci bowed again. “Thank you for giving me some of your time and for the advice.”

Tala shrugged. “I was happy to give it.”

Narci turned and scurried back to her wagon, likely hoping to grab a bit more sleep before the morning arrived.

As Tala watched the girl go, her eyes fell on Rane.

She’d noticed him nearby before, but she hadn’t really focused on him until that moment. Now that she was looking at him, however, she couldn’t help but notice the look of utter disbelief that was painting his features.

His mouth was even slightly ajar.

Tala frowned. “What?”

*  *  *

Tala and Rane bid the caravan goodbye once the wagons were ready to depart.

Clouds had rolled in through the early hours, and it was barely starting to snow.

Tala had stood overwatch while the mundanes awoke, were reassured and fed, and were ushered back into their wagons.

The Dimensional Mage was apparently skilled enough that the passenger wagons all had extensive isolation scripts, allowing those same passengers to have passed the whole night undisturbed despite the rather raucous danger the caravan had been in.

The Dimensional Mage had noticed Tala’s presence, with a bow, but otherwise he and his apprentice hadn’t even stayed out of their wagon long enough to get food, instead sending a servant to get that for them.

Huh… I suppose that was what was expected of me as a Dimensional Mage…

-That would have been laughably easy… Why didn’t you want a wagon and a servant?-

I had debts to pay off, and I wanted to actually experience the Wilds.

-Right, right. How did that work out for you?-

Tala glowered internally, and Alat gave her a mental hug.

-Hey, I think it’s worked out pretty well.-

Tala mentally grumbled, but a smile was still tugging at her lips.

Rane glanced her way as the wagons were rolling out of sight. He smiled, cocking his head to one side, “What has you in such a good mood?”

“Just thinking back on our time in various caravans.”

He grunted, but his smile grew. “Yeah, those were strange times. I have to say that working a caravan was nothing like what Master Grediv promised.”

“Oh?” Tala turned toward him.

“Yeah. I even confronted him about it a couple of times.”

“What did he say?” She was actually curious.

“At first, he just rolled his eyes, as he usually does when I challenge him on something he believes is obvious. Regardless, when I persisted, he challenged me to go hear stories from other Mages who had worked the caravans.”

“And?”

“And… his accounting, advice, and forewarnings were correct. It was our caravan that was strange.” He flicked his eyes to her and then away, his smile taking on a teasing lilt.

Tala narrowed her eyes, “You mean that I was strange.”

He looked at her with visible confusion, “ ‘was?’ ”

Tala grimaced, but then they both laughed, and she shook her head. “I walked right into that, didn’t I?”

“Just a bit.”

She gave him a longer than usual look before reaching out to brush some of the newly falling snow off his shoulder. “When did you find your feet?”

It was an awkwardly worded question, but he seemed to understand her meaning, and he shrugged. “I… went on sort of a journey after you vanished. I had to interact with a lot of people before I even knew where I wanted to go.”—he shrugged—“I had to grow up in ways I didn’t even realize I was still acting the child. I had to get over my awkwardness… at least the best that I could.”

He smiled, a bit of his awkwardness showing through. Tala smiled in return, “Huh.”

A moment later, she turned toward Bandfast, helped by Alat’s easy identification of the landmarks.

She shook herself, freeing a little snow from her shoulders. “Shall we?”

Rane nodded once, “Absolutely. After you.”

*  *  *

They took a leisurely pace through the wilds, allowing both of them to practice techniques that were harder to utilize within a training room or a city.

Rane practiced purposefully bouncing from tree to tree, using his magics to redirect his kinetic energy from each platform without actually harming the trunks or disturbing the snow that perched on the branches.

He said that he was trying to be able to simply add kinetic energy onto himself at will, but he was still having trouble getting over the mental block of needing ‘something to push off.’ He even knew that he wasn’t actually pushing off the various ‘somethings,’ but it was still a block.

Regardless, it was entertaining to watch the massive man zigzagging through the trees. As the land rose and fell, if he didn’t adjust his movement perfectly, he would occasionally have to slap the ground to gain height or the underside of a branch to drop lower.

Additionally, he had to spin and twist in the air to position his body to move past obstacles, making it look like nothing so much as a man running an obstacle course, without the need for running.

Tala focused on… her sight.

The main reason she had trouble practicing her sight in a training room or even in the city is that to explore it properly, she needed variance and the ability to focus mainly inward.

She knew that she needed to shift her mental model for her magesight, specifically, but simply lacked enough understanding to do so properly.

Training rooms lacked the variance, and the city required her attention being directed outward to one degree or other.

Jogging through the countryside was a near perfect setting for this type of practice.

She was very frustrated at how she had so much trouble truly combining her mundane vision with magesight and voidsight. It was as if something about the visions didn’t want to work together.

She’d been overlaying her mundane vision with either voidsight or magesight for so long that interpreting the overlay was almost second nature. Unfortunately, that way of doing things actually hid details that her mundane sight should easily be able to see, as the bright highlights of her magesight made it much harder to notice minute, mundane details.

Similarly, voidsight was overtop her mundane sight, so if she was using all three through the same perception, there was even more interference, and it was maddening.

She didn’t want to have to vary what her bloodstar-based, mirrored perceptions were showing. She wanted each of them to show her everything, all the time.

She even knew it was possible, because there were other versions of magesight that were a greater melding of magesight with normal vision, but they tended to lose detail and complexity on the magical side, so Tala had opted for the version that she had always used.

But that was not the crux of the issue. She needed to reframe her magesight, so that it could fit more cleanly in with her mundane vision and voidsight.

She might need to alter how she saw with her voidsight as well, but that was a much more raw ability, coming from her soulbounds rather than from scripts. Thus, it was much more naturally accurate and complete than something constructed could hope to be at the start.

Thus, she was focusing on her magesight.

-We need a way of conceptualizing the heights and depths of the dimension of magic, without reusing the words height, depth, width, breadth, and the like.-

That would be lovely, but where are we going to get the right words for it? Like you say, unless we can conceptualize it, how can we force my mind or magic to parse it correctly?

-Yeah, we have near and far, but what’s the word for something near or far, magically speaking, while in the same physical space?-

I have no idea… And that was a core reason why she couldn’t see anything not magically in line with the physical world. It was a limitation she had never even considered, but after Master Grediv explained the City Stones, she realized how obvious it should have been.

Well, it should have been obvious if she could have seen into the dimensions of magic, but she couldn’t.

Yes, Tala, if I didn’t have the limitation that I have, it would have been obvious that the limitation I have was limiting.

-Yeah… that was confusing even to me, and I’m in your head… and I am you.-

Tala shook her head and sighed, returning to her contemplations.

She had gotten by so far because she could vaguely sense things that were within the dimensions of magic, and only those that were also physically close to her or those that radiated so much power their effects reached through the intervening space across the magical dimension until they were close enough to her that she could sense them.

It was effectively like feeling her way in the dark, instead of being able to see.

That was utterly unacceptable.

It was unacceptable because she was leaving herself blind to a whole scope of existence. More than that, the hints that Master Grediv and other Paragons had dropped implied that a better understanding of the dimension of magic—and the ability to view her own soul within that framework—would be a key aid in her advancement.

-I still like the words that I suggested, and once we have words for the concepts, we can begin stretching our various ‘sights’ to convey those ideas.-

Tala groused slightly, even as she ran across the snowy landscape. Fine. Let’s hear them again.

Alat projected a contented smiled, -Superficial for magic that is at zero on the axis, or central point, for the magic dimension.-

That does make sense, I suppose.

-Other than that starting place, we can just use anatomical terms. Posterior for ‘away.’ Superior, for ‘up.’ Inferior for ‘down.’-

I still think that superior and inferior will be confusing. She thought for a moment.

-Stay on task, Tala. We need ‘up’ and ‘down’ in the magical dimension. I’ve put forward my ideas. What do you think?-

I’m not sure. Tala bit her lip, even as she jumped off the top of a low hill, lowering her effective gravity to drift further.

-Still thinking of anatomy terms: We could always use cranial and caudal? Those are less universal terms, but they convey the same thing.-

Cranial for toward the head, caudal for toward the tail… Tala grimaced at the inaccuracy of those.

-Or down.- Alat offered, hopefully.

Yeah, I know that’s how you want to use it… Let me think about it. Alright?

-Sure, sure. It was just a suggestion. We just can’t progress easily without codifying a way of thinking about this.-

Tala knew she was right, even though she was making some progress without having words picked out. We could always use sacred and profane for up and down.

-We could, but I feel like we’d be tainting our mindset before we even started with those words.-

Tala sighed, vaulting over a downed log. Yeah.

She settled in to consider further as she and Rane continued their measured excursion through the Wilds.

As she considered, she found her mind drifting toward her friends every so often, and as frustrated as she was with her current block, she was excited that she was getting time to spend with those she cared for.

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