NOVEL NEXT 31. Aquatic Flow
Excerpt from Chief Coincounter Myeul’s ‘Numismanoia’.
“Throughout the ages, countless societies have attempted some manner of currency. The archaic Chxkrik traded fragments of meteors as simple stand-ins for an owed good. The Svyelic communities used their shedded feathers to seal promises of exchange. Even the enigmatic Ghl wrote down their trades on massive monoliths, as the immovable stones were both ledger and currency themselves. For a mercy, most of the known world uses some kind of coinage now, though even that varies massively in the exact nature of what is passed around. The values of a land, and even the level of their ability to manufacture certain materials, determines the appearance of these ‘coins’, which in turn represent…”
“Alright, let’s get those bandages off!”
After the magic lesson, Yenna had returned to her tent to rest—before she knew it, it was the following morning, and Mayi had returned to check up on her. The bandages over her burns had served their purpose, and her usually pale skin had darkened slightly as though suntanned. Her skin even felt smooth and soft—Yenna caught herself running her hands over an unbandaged patch of her arm, though she stopped before Mayi could notice. It was even dark under her bracelet—the conjured metal hadn’t spared her from the flame’s heat.
The one bandage that remained was the one where she had been stabbed.
“Why is this one taking so long to heal?” Yenna prodded at it, and winced in pain.
Mayi looked at her, incredulous. “Taking so long? Yenna, you took a spear to the gut barely a few days ago. It’s a blessing that the elemental stabbed you with something so perfectly clean, so there wasn’t much risk of infection, but it was wide and it went straight through you. I don’t know what crazy healing magic there is out there, but a stab wound of this severity would have had you bedridden for weeks if I didn’t have those herbs. Be lucky I’m not taking that out of your pay!”
The mage paused in thought. “Wait, I’m getting paid for this?”
Mayi dropped a thankfully empty vial, cursed loudly and caught it before it could hit the ground. “D-Did you just…wander out of town without even asking about pay?!”
Having the presence of mind to at least blush, Yenna lowered her head like a child being scolded. “I was, erm, too nervous to ask.”
Moments later, Mayi had dragged Yenna out of the tent and nearly down the street. Realising she had dragged the kesh out without letting her put her robes back on, Mayi took her turn to blush. Yenna came back out with her normal outfit back on, her blue caparison and white button-up shirt a comfortable return from bandages and undershirts. Frustrated to have her indignant dragging so rudely interrupted, Mayi grabbed Yenna’s wrist once more and charged off.
In short order, the doctor found the captain. It was quite easy to find Eone—she was enormous, for starters, but also extremely loud. The captain was all smiles to see the pair of them approaching, though Yenna saw the edges of her mouth dip slightly at the scowl on Mayi’s face.
“Is something the matter–”
“Did you forget to pay our mage for her services?” Mayi seemed almost accusatory, like this had happened before.
“Pay…? Oh! Falling skies, I must have forgotten all about it, what with all the fuss. Normally Muut reminds me, but he’s been busy, so–”
Mayi put her hands on her hips and stared the captain down with righteous fury. Yenna pulled down the sides of her hat as though to hide while Eone sputtered. After a moment, the captain sighed and turned to Yenna.
“Mage Yenna, I am deeply sorry. It truly slipped my mind that we hadn’t discussed pay. Let’s see, we’ve had you for nearly two weeks now—feels so much longer!—and the usual pay rate for professionals like yourself is…something like…”
Eone reached into her shirt and pulled out a heavy, ornate coinpurse—Yenna tried not to think about what held the bulging purse in its hiding place, though it didn’t stop her wandering eyes from trying to see. With a gentle snap, Eone opened the purse and bid Yenna hold out a hand. Then, she began to count coins. One, two, three…Yenna’s eyes grew wide as the captain kept counting.
Within Aulpre, the main currency was split into three denominations. All three were made of gold, though this was the least valuable part—mages had figured out how to transmute common materials into gold long before they even called themselves mages, making the material far more readily available than one would expect¹. Instead, each acted as a flashy holder for the truly scarce materials within.
The least expensive was a moon, which held an oval shard of moonliquor crystal—a milky-white gem that seemed to flow like liquid within. A loaf of bread might cost a moon, or two if you had finer tastes. Next was a sun, bearing a cross-shaped fragment of a sundrop crystal—similar to the flowing moonliquor crystal, though with a distinct yellow and orange glow. A sun was worth ten moons, and one could buy their groceries with a handful of suns—one might receive their salary in suns, too. The final coin was a leaf. Despite the simple name, each leaf bore a rectangular slice of livingleaf wood—a shimmering, emerald-green tree that the treasury kept locked away for this singular purpose. A leaf was worth ten suns, and a leaf might constitute a worker’s monthly salary—two might make a mage very happy indeed.
Eone put ten leaves in Yenna’s hand.
“Th-this. Did. Um.” The mage stared down at her hand, as though the emerald glint on the coins might vanish if she looked away. “Did. You mean to, uh. Give me…leaves? Um.”
“Was it not enough? I’m not familiar with how much they pay mages in the capital, I’m afraid!” Eone gave a laugh and unclipped her coinpurse once more.
Yenna closed her hand and frantically shook her head. “N-No, it’s qu-quite enough! Th-thank you!”
Without even thinking about it, the mage ran away. She made it several paces before groaning and clutching her belly—her wound had protested rather fiercely. With shaking hands, Yenna put the extraordinary amount of money into her pack. Double and triple-checking the coin compartment was sealed tight, she put the pack back into her tent. Then, thinking about it, she picked it back up and put it on her back again. Thinking about it more, she put herself in the tent, and sat down to read a book for a while. The entire ordeal made Yenna feel rather silly. Still, she couldn’t help but think—who was Eone?
To have the money to so casually drop ten leaves into someone’s hand—then ask if they wanted more—made Yenna wonder if she was a member of the nobility. A merchant’s daughter would have at least the idea that she had overpaid Yenna quite significantly, and no one got filthy rich from adventuring these days². Aulpre didn’t have nobles—at least in name, as the ruling class were largely the greatest of mages who were ostensibly meant to lead the realm into prosperity through enlightened rule. Eager to stop thinking about the truths of the political landscape of Aulpre, Yenna turned her mind to the most likely candidate—the houses of Milur.
Milur was ruled by representatives from various houses. The houses were in charge of overseeing particular regions, and though Yenna wasn’t the best person to ask about the particulars of how that worked, she knew that the family of any given Miluran house were unfathomably wealthy. Eone as some kind of prodigal daughter of a Miluran house made sense, but then why hadn’t she said anything? Half the point of being a member of the nobility, at least in Yenna’s mind, was that people knew you were a noble and treated you differently. Shaking her head, the mage put it out of her head and went back to her book.
After a few hours, having sufficiently calmed herself down enough to get through a book on poetry she had neglected, Yenna went back out into the world. The excitement of the morning had thrown her for a loop, but now she was ready to do what she had planned to do—understand the deep blue colour of water, Flow. Yenna took herself down to the city centre, stepping past heavy reconstruction work to reach the stream that flowed through the middle of Sumhrell. It wasn’t particularly deep, but its crystal clear waters coursed downstream as though to make up for time lost from when it had been dammed. Yenna hitched up her caparison and stepped into the stream, the cool water almost making her regret her choice as it came up to the upper half of her legs.
Standing there, trying her best to ignore the curious stares of townsfolk, Yenna thought back on the other colours she had internalised. First was the green colour of wind, Joy—resonating with her happy memories of her students. It was the easiest to control, and held little repercussion for failure. After that, she had rather inadvertently discovered the purple colour of lightning, Pride—and the concept of a ‘dark-tinged’ colour, as her pride in her students gave way to fear, both of the lightning crackling up her arm and the fact that Yenna’s new pupils might be harmed.
In the heat of the moment while combating the beast-march, she had discovered the resolve within to utilise the yellow colour of earth, Certainty. Then, in what she hoped wasn’t going to be a pattern, the red colour of fire, Wroth, manifested in its dark-tinged form as she gave in to a terrifying urge to destroy. Still, she had regained some measure of control within her—even though her first experience with Pride and Wroth were so distinctly bad, Yenna could still call upon their power safely.
Walking up the stream, back towards where she had dammed it up, Yenna called upon these powers now. Joy was simple—a gust of wind billowed around her, ruffling her hat and hair. Pride manifested as a crackling series of sparks along her fingers, though she made sure to leave it at that. A hint of Wroth conjured a tiny ball of flame into her hand with alarming efficiency, promising to destroy—though perhaps it could be used to help, too. With a smile on her face, Yenna thought of how to put them to better use—Certainty made the dirt under her hooves turn hard enough to prevent her from stumbling in the soft, spongy stream bed. She was no longer fighting against the sinking ground—but her progress was still impeded by rushing water.
Yenna came to a bridge. It wasn’t a big bridge, which was kind of a problem—a simple walkway that stopped people from having to wade through the stream to get to the other side of town, it was also impossible to pass without getting out of the water. The mage hadn’t intended to just stay in the water—in fact, Yenna realised she hadn’t really intended anything at all. As she looked at the bridge in her way, a rather more philosophical thought passed through her mind.
When one encounters a problem in life, the most obvious solution is to solve it and move on—if the problem was ‘I don’t want to get my feet wet to pass this stream,’ then the obvious solution was to build a bridge. However, what happened when the solution became, from a new angle, its own problem? Thinking about this moment later, Yenna felt incredibly silly—staring at the side of a bridge, musing about its implications while the townsfolk simply walked over. In this moment, the mage had felt like she was on to something.
The problem with the bridge was that it was not a problem—at least, to those people who needed it to work the way it did. They had found their environment wanting and altered it, and putting it back to the way it once was would be pointless destruction. If Yenna wanted to pass without stepping onto dry land, she couldn’t remove the old, valid solution, or interfere with its operation. The mage turned her eyes to the water. The bridge didn’t stop it—the water flowed mostly unhindered around the supports. Yenna wondered to herself—What if I could be like water?
Transmuting oneself to water was either a very silly way to destroy one’s body or an extremely complicated process involving all kinds of high level spells that Yenna didn’t have access to or the confidence to execute. If not literally becoming the water, why not acting like it? Water flowed around things—it filled the space available, passed through the cracks and then went around what it couldn’t go through. Her thoughts turned to the water elemental’s mind—the water had filled the space of her memories and taken their shape. More importantly, the water had obeyed her when she had the guidance to work with it.
Two thoughts immediately occurred to Yenna. First, she knew how to walk on water—theoretically. Second, she knew how to convince water to flow a different way.
“Alright. I can walk on water. I can walk on water.” Curious townsfolk had come out to watch a kesh mage stand in the stream and stare knowingly at the bridge, but they all looked to agree that the muttering was somehow weirder. As Yenna mumbled words of encouragement to herself, she lifted up a front hoof. Her first attempt to stand on the surface was met with a disappointing splash, until Yenna realised what she was doing wrong—she was still thinking it might not work. Why else would she attempt it with just a singular foot?
Yenna let out a breath and focused. She couldn’t theoretically stand on water, the mage told herself, she definitely could do so. With some supreme mental effort, Yenna quashed her own doubts, locked them deep away, powerless but to observe and either be vindicated or proven horribly wrong. Now completely certain that she could, in fact, walk on water, Yenna jumped. It wasn’t a little hop—she had to get out of the water to stand on it, so she called upon the Joyful winds to propel her up into the air. Frankly, she could have leapt over the bridge with this much height—but that thought was forcefully ejected from her mind as she landed on a surprisingly hard surface.
Stumbling for a moment, her legs splayed out wide for balance, Yenna looked down to see that she was, in fact, standing on water. The mage got the feeling that she should be surprised about this, but couldn’t—she had no doubts that it would work, so this was so predictable as to feel mundane. A kind of cognitive dissonance swirled through her as those locked-away doubts tried to become feelings of excitement and shock, but she stayed stable—standing on the slightly rippling surface of the water. Someone nearby clapped at the performance, but Yenna was too focused on her task to let it bother her.
The next part was rather more complicated, somehow. Concentrating was made slightly more tricky by the fact that the ‘ground’ she was standing on was trying to move—Yenna had to constantly walk forward in place to remain by the bridge. Right now, she needed to convince the water that the true form of the stream-bed was actually a loop over the bridge—a temporary bridge-over-the-bridge that she could walk on without blocking the walkway. Yenna began to calculate spells that would allow her to redirect the water, only for a frustrated part of her mind to shout, no, you fool! Go with the flow! Tell the flow where to go!
It felt obvious. Again, she felt silly. Yenna was a chronic overthinker—sometimes this helped. At that moment, she had needed to stop thinking about it and just do it. So, she did. With her hands outstretched, Yenna gestured—simple arcane gestures that controlled the flow of magic came out like second nature, her fingertips bearing messages like this way and that way and no, over here, please. The water in front of her churned in response as, to the mindless perspective of a flowing stream, the riverbed became an upside-down loop over the top of the bridge. The water went with the flow defined by Yenna’s will, the truth of her desires made real with magic, and created an archway. Yenna stepped onto it and calmly walked over the bridge.
“I did it!” As she threw her hands up into the air with a shout, the complicated magical conveyor collapsed—dumping a pile of water all over the bridge, and a couple of curious kids who had run out to stand under it. They laughed hysterically, now drenched to the bone, distracting Yenna so much that she forgot she could stand on water. With an embarrassing squeal, the mage tripped over and fell straight into the stream. The children laughed even louder, and a few adults chuckled as well.
She pulled herself to her feet, her clothes absolutely drenched and her cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. Yenna pulled her hat over her face as she departed the scene of the crime—she couldn’t wait to leave the town, along with her slew of bad water-related memories. At the very least, she understood a fifth of the six colours—just one more to go.
¹ - In fact, an alarming constant of magic users is a desire to turn things into gold. Some researchers posit that gold has a kind of neuromagical property that causes it to appear more valuable than other materials. The main determinant on gold’s actual value is how easy it is to transmute—Aulprean mages have long held a tradition of converting clay to stone, stone to iron, iron to lead, and lead to gold. The process is sufficiently advanced enough to require an experienced mage, but many students at least dabble in enough transmutation study to perform this conversion process.
² - Yenna doesn’t elaborate on this, but there is evidence to suggest that there was something of an adventurer’s golden age a century or two before Yenna’s birth. A plethora of discoveries were made—ancient tombs, hidden caches, mysterious fortresses carved into remote mountainsides and other oddities filled with rare and exotic treasures. Adventuring around this time apparently became so lucrative that it spawned all sorts of weird social issues, including the sudden appearance of extremely wealthy people who didn’t understand the economic consequences of buying up every goat in town for a practical joke.