Millennial Mage

Chapter 493: Proof of Concept

Tala, Rane, and Terry proceeded up the mountain range, making a couple more stops in order to collect stone for Rane.

They were quiet stops as Tala contemplated the Irondalians as well as the other ways in which who she was and who she wished to be actually interacted with humanity—gated and gateless—as well as the rest of Zeme.

She also had the recurring, passing thought that she was still officially an Eskau of the House of Blood. According to the arcane society on this continent, she could show up in any city and demand certain concessions, receive certain courtesies, and have specific rights. This was true because the House hadn’t revoked her status. They had explicitly not revoked it. Because of that, not only would she have those benefits, everything she did, once her status was revealed, would come down upon that House.

She felt like she could use that, even if she still didn’t know how to feel about it over all.

All this and more tumbled through her mind as Rane gave her the space to process, and Kit harvested the stone.

One of the two sources was another spot marked out in the wedding present that they’d received, but the other was a spur of the moment thing.

Rane saw some stone sticking up from the ground and paused to examine it, shearing off small bits in order to test its workability. As it turned out, it had some interesting properties... at least that’s what Rane said.

Tala didn’t really have a deep enough knowledge of either stone or of sculpting to fully grasp what he was explaining as he had excitedly asked for them to harvest some for him.

In both cases, Kit harvested a good amount of the material, leaving Rane with a rather good stock of stone to work with over the coming years.

Well, months at least. He was a much faster sculptor than his mundane counterparts after all.

When they were exactly as far north as old Marliweather, they turned and set off east, across the plains.

When they were about halfway from the mountains to the city, they were greeted with a truly puzzling sight.

There seemed to be a colony of arcanous rodents who had actually built a wall around the entrances to their collective burrows.

The wall was constructed of odd, nearly cubic, brown material.

The rodents themselves had profiles reminiscent of bears, if at maybe a third the size. Their faces were also far more rabbitlike, but their ears were rounded.

Tala frowned. “What... what is that?”

Rane was frowning as well. “I think they’re wombats?”

“What?” She looked at him in confusion. “Some rat-bat hybrid? Is that even possible?” She considered for an instant. “Well, they are both mammals, so—”

“No, no.” Rane shook his head, ending that line of thought. “They’re just a large rodent-like mammal. I don’t know much about them, but I do remember something about a fire-aligned colony of the creatures living in this area. They are less aggressive than many arcanous creatures, but still not exactly peaceful.” He frowned. “I think I have a cousin who got one as a familiar a century or so back? I recall playing with him a couple of times as a child. The fur is stiffer and stronger than you’d expect. Though he was gentle enough once soulbound.”

“Huh.”

Terry had stopped with them, and he was crouched low.

Rane gave a little smile. “Bad idea, Terry. They probably couldn’t hurt you, but—” Terry flickered forward, and Rane sighed. “Well, he’ll learn.”

As Terry arrived just outside the wall, the wombats collectively let out a sound akin to a cat being run over by a wagon—the sound the cat would make in furious exclamation, not the sound its body would make as it was being crushed.

At the same time, licks of magic shot out to the wall, and it burst alight, creating a literal ring of fire around their homes, even as they retreated toward their burrows.

The ground also caught fire, making a solid circle of flame, and if the smoke was any indication, the burrows had fires raging within them as well.

When the smell reached Tala, she grimaced. “Oh, that’s foul.”

Rane shrugged. “Well, I’m pretty sure that’s their poop that’s burning.”

Tala gave him a look. “They form their poop into bricks? Seriously?”

He shook his head. “As strange as it sounds, I think that even the mundane ones poop cubes.”

She raised an eyebrow. “That... What? Why?”

He shrugged again. “How should I know?”

Terry looked genuinely at a loss.

There wasn’t anywhere for him to flicker to that wasn’t engulfed in flame.

He could probably survive the fire for a time, but it would be uncomfortable at the very least. As the fire was magical, it would likely singe or actually burn him, too.

The terror bird was clearly irritated. If Tala had to guess, he was torn between wanting to just leave them be and not wanting to be warded off by flaming poop.

Tala snorted a laugh, then shook her head. “I suppose I can see how the colony has survived this long. They make it not worth the effort of eating them.”

“Yeah, and no one wants poop-smoked meat...”

“Isn’t that the truth.” She grimaced again. “Speaking of which.”

Rane nodded. “Yeah, we should be moving on.”

* * *

Tala, Rane, and Terry stopped in the plains on the edge of the disrupted region of old Marliweather.

There was essentially no evidence of the city’s previous existence, despite the area having only been abandoned for less than a hundred years.

But that lack of evidence was only for mundane senses. To Tala’s threefold sight, the evidence was unmistakable.

Great gashes in Reality were manifest in her sight, and the stone- and starward creatures were swarming around the splits that extended in those directions.

Experience told her that she shouldn’t go any closer as her magical weight could easily make things worse, and that was not the point.

Rane looked back and forth between her and what little he could perceive in the distance. “Well, this has nothing to do with me. I’m going to go play with my stones.”

He had an excited smile as he opened the portal into their sanctum. Tala huffed a laugh. “You did that on purpose.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He gave a wink. “You know where I’ll be, if you need me.”

Tala found herself smiling even as she shook her head. “You have fun, now.”

“Oh, I will.” The portal closed behind him, but Tala could see him—through her perception of everything within Kit—unconsciously rubbing his hands in anticipation as he regarded various potential pieces of stone.

She took a bit to watch him as he ran his fingers over the surface of various sections, clearly thinking about what he might make with each, and what he was in the mood to make that day.

It brought a smile to her lips, especially when she remembered those fingers and—

-So! What are we doing, now?-

Soon, the uneven cylinder had unfolded its wings, revealing iron-covered contours rather reminiscent of a gyrfalcon, if darker in color and lacking the taloned feet.

With an effort of will, Tala connected with the device, and it took to the air, a bloodstar cloud in tow.

Given how much more information her threefold sight gave her than her mundane senses, using the flier was almost like flying herself.

She had to take the feeling of wind from her sitting form, however, as touch wasn’t something that the device provided back to her... she could aspect mirror that sense onto some of the orbs along with her perception, but that seemed like a recipe for disaster in that moment. So, she contented herself with a fantastic view.

It was time to see what she could do about these rents.

She could see all around the device in fantastic detail, even seeing the air currents via the tiny particles carried along within them. That let her ride the various breezes with ease.

She could move much faster as the flier than with her own body as it didn’t have her magical weight. That, coupled with the iron shielding, meant that there was essentially no way that it could create any magical resonance.

Soon enough, she brought the flier to a halt, hovering barely a dozen feet off the ground as she looked down on a smaller end of the inter-branching gashes in Reality.

She watched the creatures swimming star- and stoneward, seeming to jump across the gaps without any transit time, the reality threads between the two points strengthening with each pass.

Here goes nothing.

Tala reached out, focusing on two reality nodes and the thread connecting them.

She’d done things like this before—rust, she had nearly increased the coherence of her artificial lung to the point that it was a singular node—but she’d never acted across damage before.

Still, her magics took effect. Her long-honed gravity magics working to enhance an essentially identical form of attraction and connection.

Yup, not misusing the magics at all. Not one bit.

The working took easily enough, and she began dumping power into amplifying the connection.

As the gash had already been slowly closing, she’d picked a set of nodes a good distance from the most extreme ‘point’ of this rent.

It was odd to see the creatures naturally causing healing near to where she was working, and even as she poured power into the connection, the ‘point’ drew closer.

There was no danger of it reaching her—the natural repairs didn’t move that quickly—but there was something odd about being in the path of something that seemed so inevitable.

Alat was radiating a pleased feeling for some reason, but Tala decided that it wasn’t worth the distraction to figure it out at the moment.

Finally, after the sun had set, night had passed, and the sun had risen once again, Tala felt her magics reach a tipping point.

The two reality nodes that she had been affecting seemed to almost slip toward one another before clicking into place, drawing the surrounding parts of existence with them.

There was a small cascade as the gash that had been past the attempted repair was now cut off from the other damage. With an oddly silent series of clicks that Tala could feel echoing through the region’s zeme, the little segregated tear pulled entirely back together, Reality reasserting itself in that four inch strip of damage.

A moment later, there was no evidence that the damage had ever been there.

Tala just sat there with a big grin on her face for a long moment. She almost went to get Rane to celebrate, but she held off. There was still something that she needed to check.

Alright, this will be the moment of truth. Have you gotten a good look and record of what we have, here?

-Absolutely. I’m ready when you are.-

Tala nodded once in acknowledgement, even while keeping her eyes closed. Let’s do this.

With a minor effort of will, she changed her mindset, broke her previous understanding of the two nodes, and effectively released her workings.

The two reality nodes that she’d affected seemed to rebound slightly, moving a bit apart once more, revealing damage between them that remained unhealed, but the section that had been pulled together by their previous proximity stayed repaired.

Tala grinned broadly.

-Well done, Tala. That was an excellent first attempt.-

Thank you, Alat. Yeah. Now we just need to observe the location, and make sure that the parts that we affected can still heal naturally.

-I’ll keep an eye on it. I think Rane is starting to get antsy.-

Oh? She turned her focus onto her husband.

-Yup. You two still haven’t investigated the hold that you got from Master Grediv. All you did was devour it and stick it—whole cloth—onto the side of your sanctum for later use. Then, you went back to playing with the fliers, because you knew it would require planning to properly parse it out for melding with Irondale.-

...Right. She sighed and stood, purposely not letting her mind drift to the painful topic that she was out here to escape. Let’s go look at cool things.

-Ahh, yes, the remnants of a conquered House. What joys it will bring.-

Tala grinned then. I know, right? Besides, it’s not just one. It’s several.

Alat chuckled at that.

With an effort of will that was second nature by now, Tala appeared within Kit beside Rane.

He spun and caught her up in his arms, kissing her deeply. “There you are.”

“Here I am.” She said softly as she pulled back after the kiss was complete.

“How goes your work on the outside?”

“I fixed a little bit of one small rent.”

“Hey! That’s wonderful, Tala.” His smile was as genuine as it was pervasive. “I knew you could do it. That’s a solid proof of concept, right?”

His smile was infectious, and she returned it without thought. “Thank you, and yes, sort of. However, we still need to make sure there aren’t unforeseen side-effects. Alat is observing.”

“Oh, so you have some time, then?”

“Yeah, I thought we could do something fun.”

His eyes flicked toward their bedroom.

“Not that. I thought we could finally investigate the hold that we got from Master Grediv.”

Rane blinked, clearly recentering his mind. “Oh! That would be wonderful. Yeah, let’s do that.”

She hesitated, her own eyes flicking to the side. “Yeah, good. Let’s do... that, after.”

With a flicker of will, they arrived where she intended, and she wrapped her arms around him once more.