Millennial Mage

Tala listened to Master Nadro’s story with rapt attention, mostly processing what was said as still rather frustratingly vague.

Even so, it was more than she’d expected to learn.

Master Nadro had been born with an unusual deformity, magically speaking.

Mainly, he couldn’t hold power at all.

His density always perfectly matched the environment he found himself in.

He didn’t even disturb the zeme around himself as he moved through it.

That part of his defect had gained the attention of those who needed people to serve them within ascension chambers.

Tala—as Tali—had experienced some of those chambers. They were small, expanded spaces packed with vestiges and scripts to crank the magical density as high as they could manage.

As Master Nadro had indicated, it was a horrifically wasteful process, akin to throwing splinters into a press and then burning a forest for the energy to compress them down into a board.

Master Nadro had been utterly unique. He’d never even heard of anyone else with his malady since. His children hadn’t inherited it either.

He hadn’t even been reborn into those higher magical densities as the power simply passed right through him, unaffected, and unaffecting of him.

Even so, he did somehow benefit from steeping within the power.

He had been found on the street when he was a child, though he didn’t know what age, and by the time he’d served his ‘rescuers’ for a century, he barely seemed to have reached the beginnings of puberty.

Tala had to interject at that point. “Shouldn’t you have aged normally, until you reached maturity, then stopped?”

Master Nadro nodded, “That would have been the standard, but for some reason, I reacted more like a material than a living creature, simply having the aging of my body radically slowed across the board.”

Regardless, Master Nadro’s particular condition made it so that he was highly sought after to work within ascension chambers, and so his time was bought and paid for every hour of the workday.

More than that, he was often paid to sleep in the chambers in order to fit in his work around his other clients.

Needless to say, he spent all but a fraction of his time utterly steeped in the highest levels of power that the upper echelon of his city could create.

He continued in that way for years uncounted, until he had, indeed, reached maturity.

Sometime after that, a powerful man came to the city. He was granted access to one of the rooms that Master Nadro was cleaning and working within, making their meeting inevitable.

The man had hesitated upon seeing Master Nadro, staring at him intently for long minutes.

Master Nadro hadn’t been surprised by the scrutiny, and so he had borne it with patience.

Finally, the man had smiled and said, ‘Ah, I see the problem now.’

He had then spoken a sentence, not a single word of which Master Nadro could hear at the time nor remember now.

Master Nadro had passed out, and when he’d woken up, the man was gone. Master Nadro was left with the certain knowledge that he could keep magic within himself, if he so desired.

From there, he had advanced down the arcane path of magic like a born genius, every test that he’d been subjected to indicated that his lineage was of a high race, magically speaking.

It was decided that he had an ancestor whose bloodline had surged within him, explaining his oddities.

And that was that.

Tala was rocked by even the vague implications of his story, “So, an arcane ‘unlocked’ your ability to use magic like one of them?”

“I don’t think it was that simple, nor that it was something that would work on anyone. I got the sense that he saw something unique in me that day and acted on a whim.”

That made sense, she supposed. Still, it was a lot to consider.

“But, we are very, very far afield of where we should be.”

Tala grimaced. “I suppose we are, yeah.”

“Then, let us get back on track. You have a question you want to ask me, but you are afraid of how I will answer.” It wasn’t a question.

Well, here goes nothing. She sighed, answering the not-question anyways, “Yes.”

There was a long pause.

Tala took several long breaths.

Master Nadro waited patiently, sipping from a mug of tea that she hadn’t seen him acquire.

Hold on… I don’t see even an obscured dimensional storage anywhere around him.

-Focus, Tala.-

…Fine.

Tala groaned, “Fine.”

He smiled, still waiting.

She felt herself smile in response, finally giving in and beginning to speak, “In light of eternity, everything is pointless. This life is basically a silly game that we play before the next world begins.”

“Hmm.”

“So, what’s the point? Isn’t it awful to forcibly stay in the ‘game’ instead of moving on to what really matters? Are we immortals just petulant children who refuse to cross the finish line because we don’t want the race to end?” She felt foolish including herself with other immortals, but that’s what she was, now that she’d Refined.

He tilted his head to the side, clearly listening but remained quiet, sensing that she wasn’t done.

“What’s the point in mourning those who pass on? They are in the real world, right? It’s like those who are asleep pitying those who wake up, or mourning them because they departed the dream.”—she huffed a self-deprecating laugh—”It’s like those running through the wilderness weeping because someone else has reached their own destination. Isn’t that the point? To get to the end? If not, then what is the point? Why mourn anyone? Why do anything? Why shouldn’t we just commit collective suicide and get on with the good stuff?”

If Tala had still been mundane, she would have been breathing heavily. She knew that she had been repetitive, but she just didn’t have the right words to express what she was feeling.

Even so, she didn’t seem to have any more words to say. She felt wrung out from even the quick verbal dump.

Master Nadro nodded, seeming to pick up on her state. “Why, may I ask, do you think the next world is better?”

She grunted at that, feeling a bit of life come back into her, allowing her to answer, “On an experiential level, I’ve seen deeply into the next world.”

“When you helped a fount pass on?”

She nodded. “Yes. It was…” she shuddered, “It was like having my every flaw exposed. I felt like tinder before the flame, water before the sun, dust before the wind. There was no malice, but by its very nature, I would be wiped away before it.”

He nodded, continuing to listen.

“But beyond that, I felt like there was peace there. Not the peace of nothingness, or stillness, or stagnation, that is peace to such an extreme that it is an evil in its own right. No, it was peace in the sense of rightness. Everything in proper balance, everything as it should be, moving and progressing, growing and resonating in perfect harmony. Not uniformity of action or result, but uniformity in purpose and motivation…” She shook her head. “I’m not describing it well, but it was… it made me both lose my fear of being dead and utterly terrified of dying.”

“Because…?”

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“Because to be there would be more than anyone could ever wish, but to fit in there would require a scouring of my being. To be worthy of that place…? I don’t think I ever will be, but somehow I am to go there. I don’t understand at all how that will be possible.”

“It is a great mystery. I doubt any, this side of death, will ever fully comprehend it.” His eyes were sad, his expression consoling. “But you said that that was on an experiential level. What about beside that? What other way of thinking are you pulling from?”

“Well, on a cognitive level, if it’s worse than here, then we’re all destined for eternal torment, regardless, and I don’t know that I could handle that, especially not right now.”

He waggled his head from side to side, “Well, worse doesn’t have to mean torment, does it?”

“The smallest degradation, over the course of eternity, ends with the greatest of suffering.”

“And the smallest steady improvement, over the course of eternity, ends in the greatest of bliss,” he finished the quote, “So, you’ve been reading philosophers in search of answers?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time…”

-It made her sad.-

…Are you talking with him?

-Indirectly. I’m just letting you in on it, because he’ll likely respond to me.-

True to Alat’s guess, Master Nadro nodded, seemingly listening to something Tala couldn’t hear. “When we are in a place of distress, we see distress everywhere, and the vaguer words of the wise can drive us further down. That isn’t always the case, but it is a danger. I am sorry that it was true for you.”

Tala grunted. “But, is it true?”

“That life is meaningless?”

“Yes.”

He huffed a laugh and smiled, “Would I still be here if I believed that it was?”

“Maybe you stayed to help people get through life quicker?”

“Hmm.”

She weakly threw her hands up. “What do you mean, ‘hmm?’”

“I mean, it sounds like you are suffering, Mistress Tala. You lost someone whom you knew well and whom you didn’t want to lose, who you would have saved if you could have. Is that true?”

She nodded, looking down to her lap, the feeling of pressure in her face and tears in her eyes beginning to build. “Yes, Mistress Odera. We’ve talked about her before.”

He nodded. This wasn’t news to him. Even so, he inquired further, “Why don’t you tell me more about her.”

And so Tala did. For the next hour she just talked, and Master Nadro listened.

* * *

At the end of her hour-long, semi-monologue, Tala felt much better.

She’d railed and rambled, pouring out her frustrations.

Master Nadro had listened and responded with kindness and interest.

It helped.

It helped even more than venting to her unit-mates or Rane had. She thought that was likely because it was a full reprocessing.

She was starkly reminded of Master Girt, and how he’d seemed to both advance and be helped by talking with her about his wife.

Before she could check, Alat gave her the answer, -One percent closer to Paragon.-

Processing the loss of the temporary helps with my view of eternity, I guess?

-I suppose. That among other things. The advancement seems pretty random to me.-

Yeah… I guess we’ll figure it out eventually.

Neither of them commented on how few Refined actually made it all the way to Paragon.

They might not ever figure it out and advance to the next stage.

If that was the case, it would be alright.

She was herself, and that wasn’t going to change.

Regardless, she would do her best.

Only one thing really stood out as more important than the rest from her diatribe and Master Nadro’s responses.

He had only truly pushed back at one point, when she had expressed that it felt like relationships with mortals were worse than useless as they caused pain and would barely last.

He had firmly, simply stated, “You know that isn’t true better than most, Mistress Tala. We form connections with those we care for. Those are not cut off, just because one party dies. Marriage bonds are the most extreme example, and you know that among the gateless, a soul can choose to linger with his or her spouse. Even if you conclude that most of this life is meaningless, relationships would be the greatest exception. Those we love affect us down to our soul, and that is eternal.”

That had actually helped her as she considered it.

He had been right.

She could see the connections made between people, and she knew of the power contained within.

She didn’t know if those persisted beyond death, but something deep within her told her that they did, in one form or other.

Regardless, since her waxing on about Mistress Odera had finished, the two of them sat in silence.

Terry had joined her quietly sometime during the telling, and Tala was currently scratching him in her lap as he quietly trilled in contentment.

She didn’t want to spend any more time discussing Mistress Odera, even though she wasn’t feeling as raw about her passing as she had before. Therefore, Tala decided to change the subject, “Master Nadro?”

“Yes, Mistress Tala?”

“How difficult is it to breach dimensional storages, disregarding their entrance?”

The man leaned back, considering for a long, long moment. “I would say it is effectively impossible, if they have an entrance. Whatever keeps us from opening a second entrance into any dimensional storage seems absolute, even if we don’t really understand why. For those that have had their entrance destroyed?” He shrugged. “Assuming you either have a way of keying into them, or catch them before they slip into the void, it is a fairly simple—if intensive—process. Why do you ask?”

“I wanted to know how careful I should be about others finding their way in here.”

“Ahh, now, that is a bit of a different question. I apologize for my misunderstanding. I understood ‘breach’ as creating another entrance. If you wanted to simply step from zeme into a dimensional storage, you would just need a means of traversing the spatial dimension of magic. Then, there would be the remaining matter of enduring or overcoming any locks on the space as a whole.”

When she looked confused, he continued.

“In here, for example, you can move almost anyone around. I think even I would have trouble resisting if you were truly set on shifting me.”

She felt a smile pull at her lips at the knowledge that she could move even him.

“Because of that, what would happen if I tried to stick just my hand in here, and you didn’t want me inside?”

She nodded. “I could move your hand away?”

“That would be a bit harder, but you could move it back toward where I was entering from. The effect would be indistinguishable from a repulsive force, keeping me—or anyone you didn’t want inside—out. That is the preferred method because it is easier to move items as a whole, rather than ripping them apart.”

She felt quite a bit better with that knowledge. It also lined up with what she’d experienced in the Arcane lands.

The two of them chatted a bit longer, but both she and Master Nadro seemed to realize that Tala wasn’t going to be making any more progress on her issues at the moment.

Additionally, Master Nadro had his dinner with the Feshua family, and Tala was not about to make him late for that.

They said goodbye and parted ways, Tala remaining in the sanctum, her thoughts heavy but not as heavy as they had been.

* * *

Tala was still thinking about what she and Master Nadro had discussed, even more than a full day after they’d parted ways.

At the moment, she was sitting in a watch tower along the wall, a few hours into their night-shift.

Her unit was all playing cards together to help pass the time.

As each of them was eliminated, they would do their own practice and training until the next game started.

Even so, Tala was incredibly grateful when her threefold sight detected creatures closing in on the walls.

These attacks are becoming more frequent, Alat.

-Yeah, this is the third one this week, by reports.-

And by the match recordings. Those were some fun fights to watch.

-True enough.-

They would have been more fun to participate in…

-Yeah, but you do get to fight more often than most.-

She grunted internally, even as she looked closer at the incoming threat before blinking in surprise.

It was a pack of hocken.

She would call them shadow wolves, but the texts made it clear that they weren’t in any way associated with the Pack.

Tala and Alat had looked rather deeply into the wolves of the north after her encounter the month before.

As to the hocken, they were large, dark canines that looked to be composed of hairy shadows.

Even what she could see of their insides with her threefold sight didn’t look to be organs so much as more fuzzy shadows.

They would almost have been cute, if not for the pure white, oddly glowing eyes.

They were odd, because while they did look to be glowing, they cast no light around themselves.

So, somewhat cute except for the eyes.

Well, and the teeth.

Their mouths in general didn’t lend themselves to cuteness either.

The jaws were drooling black spittle around razor-like teeth, making the creatures look rabid in the worst way.

“There’s a pack of hocken incoming.” Tala spoke basically as soon as she noticed the creatures.

Everyone turned over their cards, setting them down and standing up.

Master Girt was the slowest to stand, and he stretched back. “I assume you’d like this one? You’re still working through some stuff, right?”

He smiled her way, but Tala could still see echoes of the pain within him.

She hesitated.

She really, really did want to punch something.

To tear apart an enemy and destroy the tangible threat in her life.

But Master Girt was hurting too, and his wound, while older, was deeper than hers.

Almost to her own surprise, she shook her head, “You know what? How about you take these? There are only eight that I can see, but they should still be a good fight.”

He gave her a long look, before a grin split his face. “Really?”

She nodded.

He looked around at the others, and they all nodded agreement as well. “Alright, then!”

Tala could see Master Girt relaxing, mentally settling into a ready state for the coming clash, and the look in his eyes seemed less burdened than his features had in a while.

I’ve been rather selfish, hoarding the fights that our unit has had, haven’t I?

-I mean, you are the front-line fighter for the group, and they were always involved, acting in support, but yeah, you could have shared a bit more.-

Help me remember to be better about that, alright?

-Will do.-

Master Girt twisted, popping his back first one way, then the other. “Let’s do this.”