Millennial Mage

Tala sat in her sanctum beneath the fake night sky. It was fascinating how the stars, clusters, and even nebula looked real, while being utterly alien to what she was used to on Zeme.

She’d asked about it once, and she was told that it could show a facsimile of Zeme’s sky, or something like this, depending on what she wanted. Apparently, it was a feature of Kit, not something that they’d added specifically.

Still showing me what I want to see. Eh, Kit?

The stars above almost seemed to twinkle.

There was, obviously, no light pollution, and no clouds. It was a sight that few would ever see.

And it’s fake.

-But it’s still beautiful.-

Tala was on a randomly chosen hill in the plains that ran around the outside of her sanctum. The grass and turf beneath her was soft and springy. Night time birds and insects could be heard throughout the space, lending a further element of realism to the false reality in which she sat.

The arcanes really knew their craft, and this sanctum stood testament to that.

Even so, the night wasn’t perfect.

A small annoyance sat in the back of her mind.

There was a message sitting available in the Archive.

She knew what it said because Alat had immediately read it when they were granted access, but she wasn’t ready to act on it.

She really did need to, though.

-Tala. You need to talk to someone. You asked Mistress Ingrit to find someone. She has. We can’t just ignore it.-

I know… Tala was absently working on her new scalemail vest.

She had to remove the white steel from her elk leathers for the scales, but that was easy enough. In fact, she was able to use the magics of the garment to make the metal come out in the exact shape she needed. So, now, instead of forming a shaped log of metal and separating scales from that, she was simply creating each scale on her sleeve, and then pulling it free, removing it from the elk leathers.

The process was magically expensive, but nowhere near prohibitively so.

Thus, the results were actually much better this time around. The main difference was a small hole at the base of each scale, which she caused her vest to grow through.

She would take off the vest when she was done, making it separate from her other garments, but it wasn’t time for that, yet.

She would have formed the scales in place, but she had to separate them before she could amplify their gravity. If she didn’t do so beforehand, the separation would be a sufficient change to their makeup to break the working.

The benefit of the tie was simple. The little bit of resistance would force a scale to orient properly as it pulled outward. Thus, they should now all strike edge-first, rather than the somewhat haphazard orientation that she’d dealt with for her earliest version.

-Tala. He is a professional, specifically trained to help Archons process through traumatizing experiences. He has centuries of wisdom and practice.-

I know.

After a short pause, where Alat was clearly waiting for Tala to continue, the alternate interface sighed. -Most of his clients are those traumatized by merging, either choices taken, or those experienced before being avoided.-

He sounds great.

There was another pause. -…So?-

Tala sighed. Fine… Schedule something for tomorrow?

-He has a slot open first thing tomorrow morning. Would you like him to come here, or would you like to go to him?-

Him coming here would be nice. Should we ask Lyn?

-She’s never been too picky on company. I’ll update a note for her, so when she sits down for her morning reading she’ll know what’s going on.-

Thank you.

-Appointment scheduled… You know; we could move Kit to the front door. It shouldn’t be too difficult to have it only open for the right people or under the right circumstances. At other times, Kit could be dormant across the opening, and Lyn’s door would function normally.-

That’s… I’m not sure if it’s incredibly clever or really terrifying.

-Why not both?-

Sure, I suppose.

She’d already slept, and even after staying up late with Rane, Lyn, and Kannis to play the card game, morning was still quite a ways off.

There was another long pause while Tala continued creating and amplifying the gravity on the scales.

Alat was the one to break the internal silence this time. -You know, I’ve never experienced voidsight directly…-

Tala grinned. It was a topic that they’d wanted to experiment with, and it was a welcome distraction. Fine. We did want to test mirroring voidsight onto bloodstar perspectives, and passing a bloodstar perspective to you is the easiest way for you to directly experience it for yourself.

Tala could pass direct access to her own eyes’ perspective, but it left her utterly blind, and she hated the experience.

With regard to voidsight, Tala and Alat had been digging into exactly how and why it had come to be, and the answer was laughingly obvious after they took a bit of time to research.

When Flow was in a void-weapon form, it should kill her.

When they’d realized that, Tala had needed to take a long walk and eat a stack of donuts before she could return to the problem.

The truth was, she shouldn’t be able to wield it at all; no human should. So, as a natural part of the merging, as the results selected specifically involved her ability to use the weapon, her body had been touched with void, immunized to it almost.

That had actually explained quite a few of Mistress Holly’s test results, and the Inscriptionist hadn’t been surprised in the least when they’d conveyed their discovery to her.

When Tala pushed Flow into a void-form, the weapon acted as a source of void-magics, and those flowed through the tendrils already in place within Tala, allowing her to wield the blade without inherent danger.

There was a lot more that happened, obviously, but the end result was that the void-magics collected around her eyes in her most strongly cemented natural magics, her magesight.

This combination is what granted her voidsight.

Thus, in order to mimic that sight, Tala had to mirror not only her perspective, but also her natural magics of magesight onto a bloodstar, and then further mirror void-magics from Flow or her elk leathers overtop the other aspects.

It was quite convoluted in totality, and she’d been hesitant to try it because she knew that she’d likely obsess over getting it right once she started.

Well, now is as good a time as any. She had just finished adding the latest scale to her armor.

With careful deliberateness, Tala mirrored the aspects overtop one another, onto a bloodstar.

First, she mirrored her ability to perceive onto the drop, looking back at herself. She still found that mildly disconcerting even though she was incredibly used to it by this point.

Next, she focused on her magesight, joining that with the bloodstar and the mirrored perspective already in place.

She could have simply mirrored the magesight, but as it was a working used to enhance and alter vision, that wouldn’t actually have accomplished anything.

Her own loosely controlled yellow-orange aura became easily visible to the secondary perspective.

The coloration was faint but distinct.

The magesight was impressed within her natural magics, else it wouldn’t have been able to be mirrored, but it still wasn’t deeply impressed, and without her inscriptions to back up and reinforce the spell-form, it was much weaker than she was used to.

-Oh, Tala. This is going to be insanely useful, even like this.-

That it will be. It was difficult to force the mirrored aspects to merge, but they were already used in conjunction naturally, so they didn’t fight back too hard.

Finally, she twisted her will, catching onto the void with her elk leathers.

She might have used those magics from within Flow, but that void-power was dormant, and she was looking for a means of voidsight without having to have Flow in a void-form.

The void in the elk leathers wasn’t overwhelming, but it was pervasive.

After a flick and extension of her mind, the void joined the other aspects mirrored onto her bloodstar.

The small drop of blood turned black. No, that wasn’t right. The change rendered it much more than black—or rather much less—the bloodstar seemingly becoming a hole in the very air.

As the void filled the mirrored aspects, the perspective it granted Tala changed.

Before, it had been like having an eye floating above her, giving her a single direction of view.

With void added, light now came in from every side, giving a forced omnidirectional perspective.

The world seemed to shatter within that view, and uncounted nodules of reality flickered into visibility even as her perception spun and rotated, seemingly at random.

As it was an omnidirectional view, what she could see wasn’t changing, but it seemed to be constantly reorienting within her own mind, and the results were incredibly nauseating.

Tala heaved, even though she couldn’t puke, her body rebelling against the input.

She let the aspect mirrors fall away and flopped onto her back, trying to let her head settle.

Oh, that was awful.

-Just a bit, yeah.-

Great first attempt though!

-Oh, undoubtedly. I’m not sure how we’ll fix the… oddities, but unreservedly a promising start.-

* * *

Tala knelt over a bucket that she didn’t need.

It was filled with slightly crushed mint leaves, wafting a powerful anti-nausea scent.

She groaned. This is awful… Why? Why are we doing this!?

-I still say you should just give the perspective wholly to me. When we tried that, it worked just fine!-

Of course it did, and we have that in our tool bag, but I want to be able to use this, too.

She heaved, but the anti-vomit scripts kept her stomach contents where they belonged.

This is worse than just vomiting…

-Well, you could disable the scripts, right?-

But then I’d vomit. Do you want me to vomit? What kind of idea was that?

-…you’re fine. Stop being difficult.-

Tala flopped over on her side, groaning again.

The sky was lightening overhead, and dawn was approaching, both that of her fake sun in the sanctum and that in the city outside.

So, you’ll watch with voidsight?

-That’s the plan. You’ll have to hold the mirrors, but I can watch.-

Tala sighed, sitting up.

With now practiced ease, Tala set up the three layers of aspect mirroring, purposely denying herself access to the perspective and surrendering the point of view to Alat.

-Ready.-

A simple thought allowed Tala to dismiss the bucket of herbs, and as expected, it was simply gone.

-Fascinating. It’s just as we’ve seen before. It’s like the nodules of reality slip apart, and the fraction which is most closely related to the bucket was pulled backward, or away, or downward, or through, or… we don’t really have a word for it. I think I was able to somewhat trace it moving toward the center of the sanctum, though.-

That’s really interesting. They’d seen the bits of reality moving before when Kit acted, but Alat had been honing her ability to discern details with their voidsight. Now, using it herself, directly, she seemed able to see a bit more than she could while just reviewing memories.

-I’ll keep playing with this. While I do that, you have your appointment with the Archon.-

Right. Tala stood and willed herself back to the core of her sanctum.

An instant later she was standing where she had wished to be.

-Oh! RUST MY BISCUITS!-

Tala frowned. Isn’t that Mistress Holly’s phrase?

-Tala! You were moved.-

Yeah, that’s what I wanted to happen. We can’t move other sapient life, because it naturally resists, but I asked to be moved, so it worked. When she’d really realized that, she’d passed the detail on to Mistress Elnea for the team researching the founts. Rob couldn’t resist her transferring of the orb. He clearly wasn’t the same as a person, and neither were the other founts.

-No, no. You’re not understanding. You moved. Kit didn’t move around you, nor did it restructure with you in the new place. The bit of reality that is you was moved, like teleportation, but it was direct, not a throw through the void or ether, or whatever, and a complicated catch. You just moved.-

Her eyes widened. Direct manipulation of the bits of reality. Did you see how it was done?

-Ha! Are you kidding me? Not even a little… well, maybe a little.-

Well, we’ll have to test and re-test. There’s lots to learn.

-…not now, though. Go.-

Fine… Tala opened the door even as it appeared before her.

She stepped out into Lyn’s hallway, hanging Kit from her belt as she walked out into the sitting room. She was about to take up a chair when a solid, simple knock sounded against the front door.

It was a double-rap and no more.

Well, that was good timing.

Tala moved to the entry way and opened the front door.

An older man waited on the other side. He was tall and slender, seeming built more like a deer than a lion, if that made sense.

He had short, curly hair that had all gone grey, and his face was an odd mix of stern and soft. He smiled warmly, his voice a bit higher pitched than she might have expected, “Mistress Tala, I presume? Or is she within?”

“Um, that’s me. Master Nadro, is it?”

“I am, indeed. It is my pleasure to meet you.”

“And for me to meet you.”

Tala stood for a long moment, and Nadro simply waited, a patient smile comfortably held across his features.

She frowned. Isn’t he going to say anything else?

-Invite him in, Tala.-

“Oh! My apologies, won’t you come in?”

“Thank you.” He gave a shallow bow and followed her back inside. “Should I take off my shoes?”

“Hmm?” Tala glanced at his boots. “Oh! No, that’s fine.”

She tossed Kit at the wall just beside the entrance, opposite the washroom.

“Please, after you.”

Nadro nodded and pushed open the door, stepping through and out into her dining room. More specifically, they came out beside the two cushy chairs, overlooking the plains and forests beyond. “Oh, my. This is truly stunning, Mistress.”

Tala followed him through. “Thank you; I find it rather peaceful. Tea?”

He didn’t take his eyes from the view as he shook his head slightly. “No, thank you. I have a jug of my favorite, if it comes to it. I’m happy to share if you wish?”

“No, thank you. Do you mind if I make myself some?”

“I don’t mind in the least.” The man took another step forward to stand closer to the massive window.

Tala pulled out her tea making supplies, going through the motions she’d refamiliarized herself with in the last week. Nadro did nothing to interrupt the comfortable silence as she worked.

Finally, when she poured herself a cup, his voice reached her. He hadn’t turned around. “You seem content to separate yourself from others. Has that always been the case?”

She hesitated for just a moment before sitting in her favorite of the two chairs. “What a way to start a conversation.”

He turned toward her, even as he moved to sit in the other chair. His smile shifted slightly, but he simply left his question as it was.

Tala took a sip and shook her head. “What do you even mean?”

“I could ask you what you think I mean, but that would start a whole cycle of unhelpful ridiculousness.”

She chuckled in spite of herself.

“To answer your question, though: I was honestly hoping you would tell me. I haven’t gathered any information on you. I try to let my clients tell me about themselves on their own. I am simply gauging based on what I have seen in the minutes since we met.”

“And that is?” Tala was genuinely curious why he’d come to that conclusion.

“You live in here, even when there is plenty of space in the real world.”

“Why do you think I live in here? I could have just brought you in for a private chat.”

“You could have, of course, but I can see the magics about you, the telltale signs of time in a dimensional space. You’ve spent more time outside of Zeme in the last days than within.”

Tala tried to see his level of advancement once again but couldn’t. His aura was utterly undetectable to her.

“Your choice of tea-ware is cast iron. While such a choice could merely be a stunt for Fused or higher—rarely truly dangerous at that level of advancement—it is clearly familiar to you, and I would guess that you’d had it well before becoming Fused. This implies incredible neglect in your education, apathy from your acquaintances, or a cognizant choice on your part.”

She leaned back, taking another sip.

“I see I have guessed correctly, but this time is not about me, nor about what I can guess about you.”

Tala shook her head. “Then why would you start our time together with such a question?”

Nadro’s smile pulled up on one side. “Because our time is valuable, and it is best if you recognize early that there is no point in deceit. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t wish to, but falsehoods won’t be borne.”

She almost objected, but finally nodded. “Alright.”

He flicked his hands, and a large earthenware mug and jug appeared within them.

With careful deliberation, he poured himself some of the steaming liquid before the jug vanished, presumably back into his storage space.

Nadro didn’t say anything else, turning his gaze back out of the window and letting the silence settle in.

Tala shrugged to herself, enjoying her own tea while looking upon the view as well, while the false sun rose.

She had refilled her cup three times before she finally broke the silence. “I fear that I am nothing more than a tool, used at the whim of others, for their benefit.”

Nadro turned slightly to regard her, his face showing hints of empathy, along with careful attention. “I’m listening.”

And so Tala spoke, telling her story from the beginning. “My mother died in childbirth…”