A Jaded Life

Picking alchemical gunk out of Silva’s fur and helping her wash up afterwards provided an adequate method of keeping my hands, and parts of my mind, busy and occupied while we talked about my experience crossing the second divide. Given that it would come up fairly soon for the others, with different magnitudes of ‘soon’, I felt letting them know in advance how the process had played out for me was a good thing, especially once I began to include descriptions of the way I had seen crossings of that divide on Mundus as I wasn’t completely certain my own experience was all that representative. Somehow, I doubted it was, at least when it came to the larger scale of things, but then, I also had a feeling that none of the others was operating on an average level.

Once that part of the conversation wound down, it seamlessly switched into questions and ideas regarding the idea I could create my own wings and breath, even if we all bemoaned a distinct lack of hard information. What were the boundaries within which my wings had to exist and what conditions did an attack have to meet to be considered my breath? Or was there some sort of predetermination going on, which had already decided what those draconic features would look like and I was now challenged to ‘find’ them, maybe quite literally? If so, would I have to search the sky to find my wings and maybe try to create a maximally destructive magical attack to find my breath? Or maybe face a foe guarding my breath and destroy it with such a maximally destructive attack?

The longer we all talked, the less confident I became in my original idea that I needed to design the specific attacks. Not because I felt it became less plausible but because with each additional idea, I felt like the probability of my initial assumption being correct lessened, though I wasn’t sure if that sensation simply came because of some sort of ingrained idea that all hypothesis without any actual supporting evidence were equally unlikely or if there was something else going on.

Luckily, there was no need to come up with a conclusion at this point in time, especially as it was entirely possible there was no such conclusion to be found. It might simply be a case of any result I ended up finding to be ‘good enough’ to satisfy the current status of my class but, depending on the result I found, I might find myself curtailed in the future. As in, if I didn’t find a breath suitable for a powerful dragon, I might be unable to become that powerful dragon or if I failed to find my wings, I might become nothing more than a lindworm or something along those lines, a terrestrial dragon, unable to soar into the sky.

The mere idea of becoming landbound sent an unpleasant shiver down my spine, memories of soaring through the sky within the safety of my Hallow, back on Mundus, of the few visions I had experienced in which I had been a dragon and flying around, even of my current ability to fly thanks to my cloak all swam through my mind, beckoning me to return to the sky. Maybe to conquer the skies for myself, to rule them as the Dragon of the Frozen Sky, bringing the northern wind with me wherever I may roam. It was quite the pleasant image and generally a wonderful idea, one I could see myself pursuing, though I would have to make sure to find some way to allow Sigmir to join me, once I managed to bring her back. Maybe have her ride me, as deliciously naughty as that sounded.

But before I could consider anything of that sort, we had things to deal with in the present, which, presently, were the people who had entered the area around the tower. My abilities to create alarm wards were getting better and better, ever since I had learned the Rune for Space, allowing me to incorporate the runic magic into the original, fairly arcane, wards I had taken from the Grandmother’s Grimoire. It was quite interesting just how different the magical styles were, to the point that I needed a lot of time to try to figure out how the protections actually worked. If I wanted to try altering their function or make my own versions of them, I would have to resort to starting from first principles, likely getting something fundamentally different from what I now had.

This would probably be a good thing, depending on how widespread the style of wards in the grimoire actually was. If it was considered common, there’d likely be numerous ways of circumventing these types of wards out there, granted, they would be widespread in a different world, but I wasn’t confident how many legacies were out there and how many of those would be able to recreate the magic they had experienced on Mundus, especially when it came to teaching others. It might be that there was little to no transference of knowledge, with people learning to make their own way from the legacies who had experienced Mundus or it might be that the other legacies taught the locals exactly what they had learned, with little deviation from their inherited style. Or, more likely, that there was a mix of both, with some people teaching from first principles, as I was trying to, and others teaching them exactly what they, themself, knew, without any deviation. Both styles had their advantages and disadvantages, but I was fairly confident that using first principles to teach others to find their own path would be the better solution. It was not that I could use the other style simply because my path was my own and utterly dependent on my affinities, some of my traits, and even my attributes, but that was an entirely different story. It hadn’t been taught to me, so I doubted I’d be able to teach anybody else how to tread my path.

Either way, I had a feeling our new students might have arrived, so we should go downstairs, into the library with its attached shrine and greet them. Amusingly, Lia immediately jumped up the moment I told her that my wards had been tripped, quickly moving over to the stairs as if she was completely unable to pace herself.

Tragically, at least for dear Lia, there was no sign of our original visitors. No Samantha, no Daniel, none of them, instead, there was a different group of five, all of them male, all of them lightly armoured and sufficiently well-armed to deal with anything that might crop up in the immediate area. A quick, and very well-concealed Observe informed me that these five were all fairly low-level, at least for explorative groups who might run into unexpected trouble, especially further up in the mountains where the foes were generally tougher. Down here, in the city, the five people in their forties could roam fairly unimpeded, at least as long as they were cautious and carefully circumvented some of the hot-spots we had come across, but up in the mountains, they’d likely be turned into food for some critter they didn’t even see coming in short order.

Maybe giving them a little scare to drive that point home would be a good idea, but from the looks of it, Lia was already considering just that, or maybe my dear daughter was simply annoyed that her high spirits had been shattered by an acute lack of Samantha.

“And who might you be?” I asked, letting myself fade into easy visibility in the middle of the library, getting a few amusing exclamations of surprise when I did.

“I’m Trevor, we were just looking around the area,” one of them introduced himself after their initial surprise had worn off, “Care telling us what this is?” he prodded, while two of his companions started to move around the room, staying near the walls.

“This, as in, ‘this world’, this, as in, ‘this tower’ or this, as in, ‘this situation’,” I asked, not completely at ease with their behaviour. It felt slightly predatory, making me reach for my Mind Magic, just in case I needed an immediate way to take all five of them down at once. Mind Magic, while lacking in lethality when used on its own, was incredible when it came to incapacitating foes, which worked just as well as killing them. Maybe even better, as an incapacitated foe could be killed easily while getting information from a dead foe could be a serious hassle.

“This shit, why is some blue bird sitting in some giant ass tower,” one of the leader’s companions growled, moving around the room, too, joining his buddies in what I could only call an encirclement. That was the moment in which I decided that enough was enough and lashed out with my Mind Magic, sending four of the five into immediate unconsciousness. To my surprise, the last one was only staggered, making me wonder just how he had managed that. A moment later, before my own surprise had fully worn off or he could recover from my attack, Lia appeared behind him, an arm wrapped around his neck and choked him out, leaving him absolutely no chance to fight back.

“Well, I guess this happened,” I shook my head, already considering how to deal with these fools. Killing them would be so incredibly easy, as would using them as test subjects. But maybe there was a better way, I would have to think about it. For now, we had a few nicely appointed cells, complete with bare stone furniture and soundproof walls. Sitting in those with nothing but water for a day or three wouldn’t kill these five and it gave me more than enough time to make a decision.