Millennial Mage

Tala felt rather content as she and Rane happily bid goodbyes to Lyn and Kannis at Lyn’s house in Bandfast.

The trip back had been wholly uneventful.

No caravans in distress, needing their interference or otherwise.

No magical monsters posturing or attempting to waylay them along the way.

It was simply a peaceful run through the wilderness from shortly after sunrise to quite a bit after sundown.

But now their time with their friends was drawing to a close.

Lyn and Kannis had to prepare for work in the morning, so they had simply eaten a meal prepared by Mistress Petra as Tala had continued the trek alongside Rane.

It really was kind of him to come. He didn’t have to.

-Yeah, and he insisted when you offered for him to remain in Alefast.-

True enough.

All the goodbyes had been said, and Tala and Rane were heading toward the door, when Fannas spoke from Kannis’s shoulder, “Mistress Tala, may I have a moment?”

The little man had picked up proper forms of address, along with a whole lot more, over the past days.

Early on, he’d apologized for requesting souls as soon as he came to understand exactly what that meant and would have meant. He still said that he was interested in using them if offered, but he regretted essentially asking to kill a bunch of humans for his own gain.

That had made Tala feel… honestly not much better.

It had seemed to mollify Kannis and Lyn though, so Tala had decided to have trust in her friends for the time being.

Fannas was, at the moment, wearing a ruby-red tunic with dark grey pants—one of myriad sets of clothing that Tala had made for him simply because she could.

The most recent ones had actually been quite well fitted, if she did say so herself. It wasn’t a skill that she’d expected to need, but now that she thought of it, it would be useful for when she had children.

No clothes shopping, just tell mommy what you want, and we’ll make it happen in a snap.

-Yes… children. Still far in the future, and not something you’re thinking about at all.-

Precisely.

She turned her full attention to Fannas, “Yes, Fannas?”

As usual, his mouth did not move, and she only ‘heard’ him in the sense that she processed his communication as if it were sound, “I wish to discuss your dimensional storage—your devourling— that you call Kit.”

Tala nodded. “You did promise to tell me what you meant by that, and you also asked me not to prod.”

“And you honored your side, so I will honor mine.”

Needless to say, everyone else had focused in on the conversation between Tala and the artifact.

“Devourlings are like keeperlings in that we all are creatures of potential magic within the void. We would say that they are corrupted keeperlings, because they devour all that they are given instead of preserving and ordering that which they do not need to survive. They would say… Kit has said that I am a corrupted devourling, because I use up magic, but try to hide that base nature with silly platitudes.”

Tala blinked. “What?”

Fannas tilted his head to the side. “What didn’t you understand?” He glanced toward Kannis. “I might need my magics investigated sooner even than we planned.”

That was another thing that had made everyone feel much better: Fannas had seemed almost eager to have his magical nature delved into by experts in the craft.

But that wasn’t what was at issue.

Tala shook her head, “No. Kit, ‘said?’ Kit talked to you?” She looked down at Kit. “You talked with Fannas?”

The pouch did not respond.

Fannas held up a hand and waggled it back and forth. “’Said’ is probably not correct, not in the literal sense. All of us, regardless of kind, communicate through variations in our magical nature. You all do it too, at least you still make plain the variations. It seems like you require vibrations passing through the air to actually comprehend one another, which I find endlessly fascinating.”

Rane interjected then, “What do you mean?”

The little man looked toward the larger, “Imagine that you came across a group of humanity who were constantly talking, speaking their thoughts aloud, but they were all deaf, so they could only actually communicate by writing things down for one another. It feels sort of like that.”

Variations in our magic… like the automaton Io could use to see our truthfulness?

-And how we communicate our desires and wants to Kit.-

Fascinating.

Rane nodded slowly. “I can see that… well, I can understand the analogy at least.”

Fannas literally swelled with pride of accomplishment.

Well, with truth revealed, not accomplishment. Thankfully, it wasn’t enough of a change to necessitate an alteration to his wardrobe.

The little man was now a bit over a foot tall, which had been another reason for Tala to have continued to make him clothing.

His growth did seem linear rather than proportional, so it would likely be decades, if not centuries, before he was anywhere close to ‘life sized.’

But Tala had let herself get side-tracked once again. “So, the keeperlings and the devourlings are the same type of creature, but they simply act differently?”

“Hmm?” Fannas turned back toward her. “Oh, no, not at all. Not on any level.” He made a sound like chuckling. “We aren’t creatures in the sense you understand, and our base magics are very different, but our core, around which our magics exist… that might be the same? I can’t say I understand it any more than you all actually understand your own souls, but they aren’t souls.” He quickly clarified. “I do know that much.”

“So, like a core that allows sentience?”

“Near enough. I wouldn’t cease to exist if my magics failed, I would simply return to void, and need help from one maker or another to re-spin magical pathways around myself before I could reenter this world and try again.”

“Maker?”

He was being far more responsive than he had been up until this point. “One who makes. I’m not sure I can be clearer.”

Tala sighed. Well, there ends the helpfulness, then.

-Not necessarily.-

Oh! Her eyes widened at the realization. “Are the makers creatures of the void like you?”

“Of course. Their nature simply causes them to spin out magical matrices for others.”

That was, in fact, the end of the useful information.

The four humans asked a few follow-up questions, but nothing more was revealed.

Even so, Lyn gave Kannis a look, and the mageling nodded. “We’ll go to the Constructionists now.”

Lyn smiled. “That does seem wise, yes. Tala, you’re heading over to see Mistress Holly, right?”

Tala nodded. “Yeah. I need to have my scripts slightly modified. I’m still finding my mind skipping about due to over-strain.”

Kannis opened her mouth, a mischievous quirk to her features, but the girl paused, then closed her lips once more, seemingly thinking better of whatever she’d been about to say.

Tala, likewise, decided not to comment on the mageling’s actions.

They all went back out of Lyn’s house, said final goodbyes and parted ways.

Rane came with Tala, as made sense. He was only in Bandfast to accompany her, after all.

Just a short walk to Mistress Holly’s… Even as she walked, she found her mind drifting, considering.

Short walk… short… by what units? In what increments? Tala felt the final pieces of her conceptualization of her voidsight clicking into place.

-Oh… Oh! Like the magical spatial axis.-

Exactly. Our conception of the void began with understanding the superficial, physical world, so why wouldn’t that conception of the void extend to it? Between every increment of every spatial axis is the void. Voidsight just reveals the ‘thicker’ delineations, where more incremental gaps line up, where the void is more… void?

Alat chuckled within their head. -Yeah, like between molecules, the void there is not only the gulf between atoms, it is also that between molecules.-

At the edge of an object, there is also the void between one object and another. It’s not larger or more ‘void’ because of that, but in a certain way of thinking there is less there.

-Exactly.-

Tala felt her magic take a noticeable step forward.

-Oh! Another little increment toward Paragon. That is a nice confirmation that we’re thinking in the right direction.-

She smiled. Definitely.

WIth that boost to her confidence, she dove back into her contemplations.

So, reality nodes were an emphasis of the unique existence of what they delineated as well as the sphere of influence of the being or item.

Tala’s node would seem larger as she held more sway over that which was around her.

Sovereigns must have reality nodes that are truly colossal.

-And mundanes seem to barely extend beyond their own flesh.-

That does imply that it takes into account both voluntary and involuntary action and ability. After all, most mundanes actually have very little control over their own bodies.

-That’s true enough.-

Tala jerked as she nearly walked face first into a door, realizing that they’d arrived at Mistress Holly’s workshop. “Oh!”

Rane grinned. “You seemed rather lost in thought.”

She chuckled slightly. “I rather was, yeah. Did you try to talk with me?”

He shrugged. “Only once, but it was rather obvious that you were otherwise occupied.”

“Oh…Thank you for just walking with me. I apologize for ignoring you.”

“Any time, and think nothing of it.” He smiled.

She smiled in return before pushing open the door and leading them inside.

That was kind of him.

The receptionist greeted them, only to be overridden by Mistress Holly calling from the back. “Come, come. I don’t have all day.”

Tala gave an apologetic smile and wave to the receptionist that she’d likely never see again, even as she and Rane passed through.

As she considered the Mistress-Holly-imposed rush, though, she frowned. You know, I don’t know that I’ve ever found her with another person, another client.

-I don’t think she works directly with many?-

That’s true enough, I suppose. Then, she fills her time just by going over schema?

-That’s more likely than most theories.-

Mistress Holly gestured them inside before closing the door behind them. “Alright. I have more than a dozen other things that require my attention, so we’re going to do this quickly. Get all your iron off and away and set it there.” She pointed to a side table in one corner. “In fact, place all your items there, save your clothing. I won’t ask you to strip. You can save that for a more appropriate day.”

Tala frowned even as she complied. What does that mean?

Mistress Holly didn’t give her time to process or ask, “You will also need to cancel any aspect mirroring or any other form of consciously-initiated or maintained magic.”

Tala did so, feeling an almost staggering mental load shift away from her. “Oh!”

Oh, that’s nice.

-Yeah.-

It’s like having a worry I hadn’t realized I was carrying eased and taken away.

-Yeah,- Alat gave off a feeling almost like a cat stretching, -It’s great.-

Mistress Holly nodded once. “Right, so the first thing we’re doing is expanding your mental enhancement scripts. More accurately, we’re compacting them, and then filling in the newly vacated space with compatible variations, to allow for the incremental shifting and deepening of your natural magics without having to try to counteract or scrap them. Secondarily, we’re also going to fill in the missing pieces in your magesight inscriptions to match the voidsight that you’ve been using through aspect mirroring. Do you have a coherent conception of how you will process that?”

“I do.” Tala nodded, deciding not to mention how she’d only fully done so on the walk over.

“Good. Don’t tell me. You might have greater insight than I do, and I have no desire to try to reconstruct my methods of sight. I’m too old and set in my ways for that.”

“Alright.”

“Then, let’s get to this, and get you out of my shop.” Mistress Holly hesitated, then shrugged. “It is lovely to see you, but I really have almost no time today.”

Tala laughed. “I understand, Mistress Holly. Thank you for your help.”

“Of course.”

She slipped Mistress Holly’s auto-inscriber over her head for what felt like the first time in ages. Settling in as it tightened around her entire upper torso, neck, and head.

“Hold your breath, and let’s begin.”

It was… unpleasant, but much less so than the reinscriber within Kit, so that was a plus.

Partway into the process Tala noticed something that should have struck her the first time this machine worked on her.

It was almost entirely silent.

The magical motion of the needles in and out to deliver their precious bits of metal was carried out with basically no noise.

Fascinating.

As usual, the machine built out the inscriptions in their entirety, before connecting them into her others, so that power could flow through properly, all at once.

As the last bit of gold was added within her head, there was a flaring within Tala’s own mind, and Alat gasped.

She felt as if a massive chest she’d been carrying was suddenly unloaded, even as she held it. Though, the feeling was on a mental level.

Next, the last metal was added around her eyes, and Tala suddenly could see more, even as the shroud still enfolded her.

It was even more odd because her eyes were closed, and she still couldn’t see anything, not really, but the darkness was somehow… broader?

There was the sense of magic stoneward, like the sun on her back.

She knew it was there, without really being able to see it at the moment.

Tala also could somehow sense the infinite void between her eyeballs and eyelids.

There was nothing there blocking her sight, her eyelids did that, but for the first time, she felt like she could see the distinction between the orbs that facilitated her sight and the lids the protected them.

The process completed, and Mistress Holly pulled the device off, but before it was fully free, Tala re-mirrored her perspective onto her bloodstars both stoneward and starward.

Information flooded through her mind and… she understood it.

-Oh, wow. It’s like we have perfect vision of every layer of the world surrounding us for… sixty feet? Give or take?-

Yeah, that would be my guess.

Tala could see and parse the assistants in the surrounding rooms working on various inscription schema. She could see Mistress Holly and Rane, both sheathed in their own auras.

The auras blanketed both the Mages stoneward and starward, so she didn’t instantly see every layer of their physiology.

Fascinating. So, auras are more important for privacy than I was really considering.

Alat and Tala focused on their sixteen aspect-mirrored perspectives, watching every direction from both stoneward and starward of her superficial position.

It was like before she’d been blind, and now she was experiencing true sight for the first time.

She felt like she could see each thing in its entirety.

The mug of tea on Mistress Holly’s workbench was completely open to her.

She could see the structure of the earthenware that made it up, the minute flaws plain before her.

Tala and Alat could count the fractured tea leaves still in the strainer.

She could parse the layers of glazing.

They knew exactly how it was compressing the fibers in the wood of the table below it, and how that load—minor though it was—was distributed outward across the boards and supports to the legs.

There were hints of magic swirling stoneward and starward around the tea, indicating that it had been from an arcanous plant.

The existence nodes of the individual components overlapped and were encapsulated by that of the ‘mug of tea’ as a whole, and it was fascinating to see how the tea within seemed near the edge of the node, and the whole was only barely linked as such.

They could perceive how deeply connected things were like never before, and in ways that she’d only guessed at in the past.

She looked to the mug with her mundane sight as well, finding that her oft neglected sight gave details that—in the moment—she hadn’t even realized she was missing.

It was a red-brown, with a matte finish, matching the aesthetic of the room rather beautifully.

I can see everything. All of existence is laid out before me.

-Existencesight?-

That’s probably accurate—if a little cumbersome—when we use all forms of vision available to us on a given target, a three-fold sight to see all.

-But that’s not the default.-

No. So, I think it still makes sense to conceive of it as the three overlapping visions.

-Truesight might be better for using all three?-

A little pretentious, though.

-Fair.-

Mistress Holly turned back, having tucked the auto-inscriber into its cabinet. “So, how do things seem?”

There was latent magic in Mistress Holly’s words that Tala simply hadn’t noticed before.

It didn’t look like it came from an inscription, natural magic, or even just intentional direction of power into the words.

No, it was just the natural extension of having been spoken by someone of a high magical density.

Mages’ words carry more weight just by coming from our mouths. It was obvious in retrospect, but she’d never even considered it.

“Great. It looks like an improvement across the board.”

“Wonderful. Are you certain you won’t grant me continual access to the data collected from you?”

Tala scrunched her face. “To what purpose?”

“So that I can learn from what happens with and to you. So I can be better prepared to assist with future incremental changes.”

She considered for a moment, then sighed. “Fine.”

Mistress Holly grinned widely. “Excellent. Now get out.”

Tala laughed, hugged the inscriptionist and departed with Rane.

Rane said his own goodbye to Mistress Holly as they left.

-We have a message waiting from Mistress Ingrit. It’s not delineated as urgent, and I think we could use some sleep.-

As they stepped out into the late evening streets of Bandfast, Tala turned to Rane, “Sleep first, then start back?”

He thought for a moment, then nodded. “That seems fine with me.”

“Wonderful. I have a message from Mistress Ingrit but it shouldn’t—” She cut off as Alat exclaimed in excitement within her head.

-Oh! It’s about Kit! She and Mistress Elnea have some knowledge about sapient storages that they want to share in person.-

Rane obviously noticed the harsh cut off of Tala’s sentence. “Is everything alright?”

She felt herself grinning. “I think so. I’ll need to go to the Archon Compound, but that will likely be tomorrow morning. Are you up for a bit of a delay?”

He shrugged. “That’s fine with me. I’ll see if I can connect with some people tomorrow morning, then.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

-Appointment set for early tomorrow morning.-

Finally, we’ll get some answers about Kit and what might be involved in us bonding with her.