What We Do to Survive

I decided to arrive at our chosen meeting place early. Very early. Though we weren’t supposed to meet up until the mid-afternoon, I was ready to go before the artificial sun that lit Avalon had even begun to rise. It had been moderately annoying to reserve a meeting room for so long on relatively short notice, I wouldn’t be able to rent one again until next semester in fact, but I felt it was worth it. After all, ambushing me in the hallway while I transported her friend would neatly eliminate the need for any negotiations and I couldn’t imagine the thought had not crossed Clarient’s mind. Better to leave things up in the air on when I would be doing the transporting.

Miranda met me outside my room, where she had clearly been waiting for some time. She was under a very impressive illusion, some sort of perception filter combined with an invisibility spell, that made me feel much better about recruiting her for this part of the plan. I didn’t have much of a talent for that sort of thing, I could cast many of the same spells of course, but without the flair a more narrowly specialized mage could put into their casting.

Miranda bowed her head in greeting and immediately got to work, layering prepared spells over Kwesta’s prone form. I kept a wary eye on our surroundings, this was also an excellent place to prepare an ambush, but kept half an eye on what Miranda was casting as well. I’d always thought she was a rather underwhelming mage, decent but not really living up to her potential abilities, but I was starting to rethink that notion. She was rather skilled, especially compared to the failures that existed outside of Avalon, she just focused primarily on disciplines I had never given much attention to.

I had a feeling that, given a few more years to develop, she would be a fearsome mage in her own right. I would have to finish figuring out her future soon, I decided. That would be my next priority once this entire mess with Clarient was figured out. I’d recently realized that I didn’t necessarily have to use any sort of ‘classical’ slave binding on the girl at all. Her current binding was rather weak on the compulsion side all things considered, and she was doing a mostly excellent job outside a few hiccups. Perhaps I could figure out something like a very tightly worded oath of loyalty? Having her swear it ‘willingly’, without any overt torture or similar would result in a much more powerful binding than what could be easily managed with more dubious forms of consent. I pushed the thought out of my mind. Now was not the time.

I blinked when, between one instant and the next, Kwesta simply… vanished. My muscles tensed, ready to move at a moment's notice, and my mana flared briefly before I noticed how unconcerned Miranda looked. I relaxed and tried to sense what sort of magic was hiding the girl, but failed. It was as though there was nothing there, though I could clearly see something pressed up against Miranda’s palm. Very impressive

Miranda turned to look at me and I decided to tell her as much. I rarely gave compliments, but that really was impressive. I didn’t actually know any spells that could evade my own observational skills and it was a rather scary skill to see from someone in my own year. If someone tried to assassinate me under such a cloak…

“Very nice,” I said after a short pause. “What did you do?”

“Thank you Orion. I, um, I layered several forms of invisibility and then anchored them to a phasing ritual I prepared ahead of time and imbued into a keystone.” She opened her hand, showing me the unadorned ring of unpolished gold hanging from a short chain that she was holding. “I had to add an extra stasis spell so her body would register as mostly inanimate to the magic, but this way it should last for at least an hour or two. Plenty of time.”

Phasing? Damn, that was much more impressive than I had thought, though it did abate some of my worries about hidden assassins. Phased objects couldn’t interact with the material world without certain very high circle magics getting involved. That did however raise its own issue. “Wait, how are we going to move her then?”

“It’s not a problem. The phased space is spatially locked to the ring and will move with it.”

I nodded slowly. “Good thinking then.”

With Kwesta thoroughly hidden, Miranda and I cast our own spells and began to make our way towards the annoyingly distant meeting hall Liam had chosen. We moved slowly, both of us cycling through a flurry of detection and scrying spells to look for any hidden attackers waiting in ambush.

At one point, I thought our caution had been warranted when I sensed a pair of people hidden at the bottom of a stairwell, but it turned out to have been a false alarm. It was simply a young couple, a pair of first years, engaging in some early morning fun-times. I had no idea why they’d chosen such a vulnerable location to be so, well, vulnerable, but was content to ignore them. I wouldn’t have been caught dead doing something so suicidal, but it wasn’t my problem.

In the end, it seemed like my caution was unfounded this time, or, more likely I felt, maybe my precautions had simply been good enough this time. It was hard to know and the question certainly didn’t help my ever present anxiety, but I still let out a huge sigh of relief when we stepped through the warded door and into the relative safety of the meeting hall.

Miranda slumped down onto the floor, not even bothering to make it to one of the chairs, and let the illusion spells she had been maintaining drop with a soft gasp. “Everything good?” I asked, a hint of concern creeping into my voice.

“Yes… Orion…” she all but gasped out between deep breaths, “I just, just overtaxed… overtaxed my core… a little.” She dug into a pocket and withdrew an ever-full flask, a small bottle enchanted to automatically transmute air into water. Taking short sips so the bottle had time to do its work, she continued, “I should… be fine soon. Just… took a lot… out of me. Never tried that on… two people… before.”

I nodded slowly, deciding not to say anything about it now. She had been maintaining quite a few spells, but it shouldn’t have been enough to put her out like this after less than half an hour. I would have to tell her to practice that sort of thing, it was deeply unpleasant but a necessary skill nonetheless

Instead, I dug into my bag and grabbed one of the small potion vials I kept on me at all times, passing the thimble-sized container to her. “Drink,” I ordered. It was somewhat annoying, I had only the one vial imbued with the correct sort of preservation spells, but ideally I would not need it later. It was more important for Miranda to be in top form when Clarient finally arrived than for me to keep it in reserve. Rapidly depleting your mana reserves could cause very unpleasant headaches, which would be rather detrimental in her role as my advisor.

Miranda took the vial, eying the tiny runes I’d shaped into the metal suspiciously, then wrinkled her nose, unscrewed the cap, and threw it back like a shot. She gasped, her back straightening and the empty vial falling from her fingers and clattering across the floor. She blinked rapidly several times, then took a deep breath and slumped back against the wall. “Was that…” I nodded. “Verdan?” I nodded again. “Wow. Thanks Orion.”

“Better?”

“A lot. Should be good by lunch time.”

“Good. Kwesta?”

“She will stay phased out for at least a few more hours, or until I bring her back. Could I wait to do that until my mana has a bit more time to regenerate?”

“Not an issue.”

I set my things down on the large, round table at the center of the room and took a look around. The meeting room looked a lot like one of the larger study rooms in the library, though even with my lacking knowledge of wards I could tell the protections on the room were noticeably more impressive. It was a simple but well appointed room of medium size. The walls and floor were made from the same fine white marble as most of Avalon, but heavy, brightly colored tapestries depicting notable alumni and scenes from the Academy’s history gave the room a slightly more intimate feel.

At the center of the room was a large table of dark wood polished to a nearly mirror finish and inlaid with intricate patterns of precious metals. Even without looking, I was pretty sure it was some sort of horrifically expensive hardwood, the sort that couldn’t be manufactured with alchemy and had to be harvested and processed by hand. According to the books I’d read, the third Myrddin had apparently loved that sort of thing and had filled the Academy with that sort of ostentatious nonsense. Thanks to preservation spells, and a lack of any real desire to change things, most of that excess remained to this day.

Ignoring the rather uncomfortable looking straight-backed chairs surrounding the table, I sat down on one of the small rugs that lined the perimeter of the room and closed my eyes. I hadn’t brought very many things with me, particularly my notebooks and reference materials, so I wouldn’t be able to get much work done, but that was no excuse to just waste the day away.

I didn’t want to burn too much mana in case things got ugly, but that just meant it was a perfect time to revisit my basics. Advanced magic, particularly pure magic, was built on the fundamentals and perfecting them was a constant struggle that had paid dividends so far. Additionally, if I was going to be teaching Lea how to do things properly, it was always a good idea to refamiliarize myself with what I was going to be doing.

Breathing slowly and evenly, I sank into my soul, letting the currents of mana flowing through my being rise to the surface of my attention. Typically, I would start this sort of exercise by stripping away my circulations by spinning my core until it reabsorbed every bit of my internal mana, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing that outside the much more absolute safety of my private room. That exercise was very important, it was key in ensuring your core grew and compacted properly, but I would just spend some extra time on it later to compensate.

Instead, I simply nudged my circulations apart slightly, opening a ‘gap’ in the web of mana channels that typically crisscrossed through my belly. I winced internally as I instantly felt a severe drop in the efficiency of my augmentations, that never got less unpleasant, but it was a necessary evil. It was much faster to fix things if the strands were still there, just moved out of place, than rebuilding everything from scratch, and I didn’t want to risk screwing something up while I practiced.

Then, I began in earnest. A tiny droplet of mana elongated into a single gossamer thread, perfectly straight and of even thickness. I carefully shaped it further, until it was so thin as to be nearly invisible to my internal senses, then held it that way for a few moments before I let it collapse back into a droplet.

I moved on to the next exercise, first forming a single thread of mana and then shaping it into the desired form and making it as perfectly even and thin as possible. Curves were easy as always, circles barely a step up after that. Spirals were slightly more difficult, requiring me to spend some of my attention to ensure the perfectly even loops did not intersect with one another, but the shape was naturally inclined to allow the mana to flow without attempting to reform into a single mass.

The next four were comparatively much more difficult, and I was as of yet unable to execute them properly with strands as fine as I had been using before. Twists were not too hard, simply requiring the mana to form a sort of knot-like shape where strands folded over and through each other like a pretzel. Parallels looked easier but in practice required much finer control. Running two threads of mana, even ones flowing in opposite directions, so close to one another without them joining into a single strand was tricky to manage.

Crossovers were similarly annoying and challenging in a different way. In this case, the mana strands only passed each other in one spot, but since they were flowing at a ninety degree angle instead of in opposite directions, the attraction between the strands was even stronger.

Finally, for the last of the basic eight I ended up using a pair of strands that looked much like the ones I had started the first exercise with. Forcing the mana to move smoothly down two intersecting paths was hard enough on its own without the paths themselves being all but invisible to my senses. I was very thankful that none of the circulations I had attempted so far required this particular skill, because I doubted I could manage it for any appreciable length of time yet. It was actually one of the major hold-ups with some of my long-term circulation research. I could do it, but not as well as the other seven.

After completing them once, I started over, running through the entire set five times before moving on to something more specialized. I was currently working on an exercise the book I’d found it in called ‘band stacking’, and it consisted of forming a sphere made up of many layers of wide, thin circles of mana. The first few layers were very easy, but once I passed the thirtieth band it became more and more difficult until I could sustain the structure no longer. In my last attempt, I’d managed forty-four layers before it collapsed into a messy ball. I would try to push for forty-five today.

I opened my eyes nearly four hours later, feeling mentally drained but very satisfied with my progress. I hadn’t managed to add any more layers, it got exponentially more difficult each time and I had last attempted the exercises just a few days earlier, but I had felt like I was making good progress and the two other exercises I had attempted had both gone rather well.

I stood up smoothly and stretched, then walked over and sat down beside Miranda, who was mumbling quietly over the illusionary diagram of an alchemical spell matrix. At some point while I’d been busy, she’d deactivated the phasing ritual, and Kwesta was now ‘kneeling’ on one of the nearby chairs, her body held rigidly by the stasis spell I’d used.

“What are you working on?”

Miranda almost fell out of her seat, jumping in surprise and spinning around to face me. She blushed brightly and looked away a moment later and I chuckled quietly at the look on her face. She adjusted her dress slightly and gestured to the illusory spell matrix. “Alchemy homework. I have no idea how you do all those transmutations so smoothly, it takes me forever to adjust everything so it works properly.”

I hummed quietly, looking over her work, then pointed at two spots in the spell matrix. “Rotate these slightly, like five degrees I think. The core axis of All-Form should typically be in line with both the start and end definitions of All-Material.” I paused, tilting my head as I examined the part that defined what the spell could use as its starting material, “You could probably make this more general if you wanted to. I know we only really have to make it work on the cubes, but it's a little clunky if you do it like this.”

Miranda frowned, lips moving silently as she considered what I was saying, then made some minor modifications to the illusion.

“That’s better I think. Still a little clunky, but you’re getting there.”

“Thanks Orion. It just… doesn’t really come to me very well. I’m probably going to have to drop it after this semester, it’s useful magic, but… not my thing.” She bit her lip and glanced over towards me, “As long as that’s ok with you, I mean. I know you were planning to take the next one with her in the spring and–”

I raised a hand, stopping her before she could get too worked up. “It’s fine. As long as you are keeping up a full set of classes and doing well, I’m content to let you make those choices for yourself. I trust you to make adequate choices. What are you thinking of taking instead?”

“Thanks, Orion,” she said earnestly as she turned back to the diagram. “I think I’ll probably take Entrancements and Allures with Professor Diatee, she only offers it once every other year, so…” she trailed off awkwardly.

“A good choice,” I said simply, ignoring the worry I could make out in her voice for the time being, “We can discuss our schedules in more depth closer to the end of the semester.”

“Of course.”

“Now, I was hoping to go over our strategy again. I know we talked about this yesterday, but it’s always good to review. Liam should be here at four and Clarient and whoever she is bringing should show up half an hour after him. They’ll probably want to examine Kwesta before we begin, so…”