July 24th, 5AC
“Walk with me, Silver?” Silvertongue was too much for everyday use, but it was a good fit for his youngest brother. He snagged James’s arm as he stepped out of their parent's door.
“I don’t suppose you’ll take no for an answer?” He looked rebellious, but already half-defeated. Like a cat after a spray of vinegar water.
“Nope.” Timothy kept his own stare blunt and resolute.
A few moments passed in a silent contest, then James looked down and Timothy held in a hiss of frustration. Stand up dammit! “Fine, where are we headed?”
“Well I need a bath,” Timothy offered, trying to keep his frustration contained. “-but it can wait if you have plans.”
James shrugged and started down the hallway. “I don’t.”
“Good. I didn’t expect to see you here. I’d heard you were out Dorado way.”
“Was and will be again soon. My team rotated back for a triple R.” Rest, Relaxation and Resupply, Timothy translated. “I’ll introduce you, they're probably down in the baths anyway. Still the most happening location in the Hold.” He paused his tone of voice rising beyond mild depression for the first time. “Damn fine idea those baths, Brother.”
Timothy scratched his scraggly beard awkwardly, “I have a hard time taking too much credit for it. I half created it as a way to twit Ma.”
He stared at Timothy in confusion for a few seconds then it clicked together. “...That's why it's clothing optional and unisex? Hahaha, ah, hahahaha. Oh, ouch.” He held his side roaring with laughter. “Ah, I needed that. I think Freud might have some things to say about you bro.”
“Not hardly! The unisex I take credit for, the lack of swimsuits not so much. Though I don't at all mind. The timing led to it. Just between the cracks when cloth was either unavailable or deeply uncomfortable.”
“I was here for part of that. I thought it was because you were too lazy to make an individual bath in each home.”
“Busy, brother. The term is ‘busy’ not lazy but otherwise you're not entirely wrong. Just putting all the damn sewage emptying runes for new construction is a huge time sink. I don’t want to imagine what individual bathing rooms would do to my ‘free’ time.” He gave a comic shudder, but it was only partially exaggerated. It was yet another task he was looking forward to pawning off on some new grads. It would build character, err willpower! He snickered internally.
Hitting the end of the residential hallway, they took a quick right into an innocuously small alcove, pausing a half second for the guards to catch up. James gestured and the back wall rippled like a pond with a pebble tossed in. Barely waiting, James stepped through the now liquid stone followed by Timothy and his guards a second later.
Through the stone and into a familiar-looking 10-foot diameter transit shaft. Hey, if it worked, beat it to death! Timothy had copied the design to Runehold before the paint dried on the original. Not for free either. He paid Treeholm’s Cardea for the idea and the right to use it elsewhere.
The magic lock on the entrance was just to prevent dumb kids or drunk adults from getting themselves killed. It was a rather long drop to the bottom. Over 20 old-world stories at this point, though only 10 actual floors. Building into living stone you had to keep some levels of thickness for stability.
They'd had to grow when the refugees and castoffs started streaming in. The vast majority were norms, either refusing an awakening or refused by the awakeners.
‘Give me your tired, your needy…’ Ya, that wasn’t so much the case. More like we’ll take your rejects and protect them in hope that their kids will be better than they are.
Harsh, but that's why they didn't have Timothy speak in public. It didn't make it untrue.
The kids were a pretty good bet too. They didn't even have to be overt about it. The comforts of life took magic to make them work. Like the doors on the transit shafts, you had to be at least a guardian to play, and the nicer areas were all locked behind such 'defenses.'
It could be a bit awkward when you wanted to take your kids about, but there were purchasable enchantments you could use on your family to get them through the transit shafts.
Still had to have an awakened with them, but that wasn't at all a bad thing.
Not just to keep the norms down either.
Sometimes it went in the other direction. A teenager with magic dragging his parents up to a better life. A nicer home on a higher level with better amenities. Even something as simple as running water required a magician in the family.
On norm floors, they were stuck with irregularly empties communal port-a-potties and a bucket to get drinking water from the fountain.
Da, with considerable help from a few softhearted, well-intentioned souls, went out of his way to make sure that norms weren’t abused, but they weren’t equals. It wasn’t possible to give them those benefits without an awakened mind to trigger the enchantments, but even beyond that, few awakened were willing to donate their time to even try.
Timothy shrugged, he already did as much as his conscious required. Those who wanted to help, not just to leech, he made sure there were opportunities for them to do so. Even paid them for it, in coin and more importantly access to use it. The better marketplaces were also behind magic doors. Less to be exclusive, though it wasn't avoided, but because most mana heavy goods were poison to norms.
He even put them in the way of an awakening if they showed the right willingness and work ethic. Anyone too wretched, for whatever reason, to do even that? They still received full bellies and a safe place to live.
Am I not kind?
Timothy snorted. He didn't have nearly enough piercings to pull that one off.
There were still a few jobs reserved for the mark 1 human and not just shitty bureaucrats. That would be entirely too cruel. Few were good jobs, it was true. But they were safe jobs. Risking your life was the province of the awakened.
What was left was half make work. Things a guardian with the correct spell could do in moments. That didn't mean they didn't need doing. Things like cleaning, watering the oxy ferns or tending the mushroom farms.
A mage could do them in moments, but it would cost precious mana. A norm who had nothing better to do spending 4 or five hours on it wasn’t seen as a bad trade.
It was also a kindness. Even if you didn’t have the stomach for risk, a bit of self pride wasn’t beyond their reach. Timothy’d never seen something that could kill that pride faster than the combination of no expectations and free food and housing. Even bad free food and housing.
Not all the jobs were so menial of course. There were a few exceptions. A spot in the weaving houses was a highly skilled and privileged position. And most definitely a norm only job.
One he was ecstatic even existed. And one that only did so because a kindly old lady felt she was too old to go galivanting about, but still wanted to contribute. An old lady who was a hobbyist weaver in the Icelandic tradition before the change.
Warp weighted looms were clever uses of sticks and strings. Not anything you could call modern tech. Despite that, magic users couldn't make them work. Weaving required a pattern and that was a way to communicate, even in a primitive form. Mages who tried burnt out the delicate threads nearly as fast as they wove them.
Or in the worst cases, Boom!
That left real woven cloth a slow, expensive luxury.
Timothy shook the thoughts aside, kicking off the back wall towards a marked door on level 5. No reason to think about norms now, there weren't any nonmagical passages above level 6. They had their own, although not nearly as nice, baths on each floor.
Kicking through another liquefied wall, Timothy moved out of the alcove in a hurry, there was a separate in and out wall, but collisions still happened. He dodged out into a large busy hallway where a crowd of men and women, auras retracted as tightly as possible, moved in each direction. He took a moment to get going in the right direction and restart the conversation they’d had to pause in the transit shaft. The stone channel echoed something fierce and it was polite to stay as silent as possible within.
“I’ll be happy to meet them, I’m grateful that you have friends to watch your back. But I also want to talk to you.”
He took several steps keeping an eye on James out of the corner of his eye. “You didn’t speak more than twenty words at dinner. If I hadn’t snagged you as we walked out, Ma likely would’ve. Spill Bro, what’s going on?”
James glances around at the more or less constant trickle of people passing by on the opposite side of the corridor as well as the bodyguards behind them and more people in front.
Timothy snapped his fingers, for presentation more than necessity, and triggered the small stone card carved with privacy runes that was dangling from his belt. It was a bit of a resource hog to use as he hadn’t found any materials that resonated with the concept but it would more than last long enough for this conversation.
A hazy twist of light engulfed the two of them, not a circle by any means, but more of a loose smoke cloud that eddied oddly around them as the geometry of the Flow behind the world shifted.
It didn't muffle noise, the murmur of the crowd came through loud and clear. Nor did it stop the crowd from hearing them. They just heard noise. Meaningless noise. The ward stripped the intent from the words, and in doing so scrambled them into unintelligible pap.
James grimaced, “Alright! Yes, I’m a bit depressed. But I'm working on it and there’s nothing you can do. Nothing anyone can!”
Timothy didn't respond, just listened as they moved forward a dozen steps. Finally, James continued, frustration dripping from his words. “Whatever I’ve done, I’ve done it at the top of the class. From law school to soccer. I’m good at what I do. Whatever I choose to do and despite what those jealous assholes said, it's not luck or just genetics. Sure, I was born smart, but many people are. Most coast on it and end up nowhere.”
I didn’t coast. I fought and worked my ass off. Much harder than those scrubs who complained about some bull shit talent.” Well, he was a talented little shit too, but this was hardly the time to say that.
“Then I made a mistake. One mistake. No, that's to tame. One massive screw up and now I’m seven years behind the curve. I’m working like the Brotherhood's mascot to catch up and it’s not enough. Not when others have twice as much time in grade. I’m grateful to have the opportunity, I'm angry at me, not the opportunities I have available. But I’m bottom-middle right now. Barely above the time wasters and the ‘cautious.’”
The air quotes were obvious in his tone, nobody liked a coward. “My ‘team’ is a bunch of kids who were in stasis during the change. I’m damn near old enough to be their daddy and it’s obvious to anyone looking.” He sighed, “And now I sound like a whiner. Let’s drop it. I’m grateful that you care enough to ask. But you can’t fix this. It’s my fault, and I'm working on it. It'll just take me a decade.”
“Oh, ye of little faith.” Timothy glanced at his brother. “I can't wave a wand and make it all go away, but if you're willing to work even harder, I can put you in the way of cutting a few years off that estimate.” He smiled in satisfaction as James froze, staring.
Unfortunately, freezing when in the walking lane wasn't conducive to friendly relations. Several people crashed into them, cushioned as they were by the bodyguards, turning it into an old-fashioned traffic snarl. If old-world traffic had pyrotechnic light effects going off as aural manifestations crashed into each other and literal sparks flew.
Timothy darted over to the wall, dragging a very apologetic brother behind him as the disgruntled fellow walkers finally straightened things out and moved on.
Still tossing out apologies, that with the privacy ward active they couldn't hear anyway, and bowing which they could sort of see, James finally got his back against the wall. “The hell do you mean? How can you make me stronger?”
“No one and nothing can make you stronger. Only you can do that. Everything else is an external aid at best, and they all have flaws.” Tiered meat helped, growth potions, mind-enhancing teas. They were all things.
But all of them had drawbacks as well. Especially if you didn’t pay for them yourself. Symbols mattered, and self-sufficiency was a powerful one to lose.
Timothy looked sideways and held in a sigh at the naked need on his brother's face. “What does work, is training smarter, not harder. And to do that, you need understanding. And hard work.”
“I’ve been developing a new training method for Guardians. Not just those sworn to my path either. But a generic primer that will provide a stable base for many different paths. On the light end, there's a primer on basic knowledge that you likely already know. Still worth a read-through to see if you missed anything. Things like common terminology, terrain recognition and how to spot optimal harvesting locations.”
“On the heavy end I created a Lexicon of basic symbols. A way to break down concepts into basic building blocks. Each symbol included is written with intent and contains the actual thought construct for the user to experience and reference. Each page is locked until you can reproduce the rune accurately. A guardian’s senses may not be as sharp, but with repetition, you should be able to figure it out.”
The second half of the book is where things get dicey. It contains intent marks from a dozen different paths along with the symbols that can be assembled to create them, and the same test to make sure you ape them correctly.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“...What?” Silver stared at him. “You can do that?”
“Maybe. It works for me at least. But than I’m not exactly a good test subject. It’s why I need a guinea pig. I hope you're ready to repeat the cram sessions you went through for law school.”
“That’s-” He spluttered, looking torn between greed and shame. He took a second to ask. “Why me?” Was this favoritism? Nepotism? The unspoken question loomed.
“Don't sell yourself short, brother. You’ve got a strong will, enough to read intent-bearing scripts without killing yourself. You have a decent grounding in mana and intent control and you know how to study. That makes you a pretty good fit for a tester.”
He held up a hand as Silver opened his mouth with an inarticulate protest, “No, those aren't common traits, despite what many think. Even with a simpler methods than what you’ll be following, a good portion of guardians give up on my classes half way through.”
“Too much energy to sit still, or they just plain suck at studying. It works better for them to use and experience the magic instead. I get that that's a thing, but it's not efficient. Even if you discount the mana wastage, repeating a spell the same wrong way just teaches you to do it wrong. You don't have that problem.” He paused, then reemphasized that point. “You don't suffer from those shortcomings.”
He waited a moment, daring Silver to disagree. Then asked, “What are the components of a spell?”
James raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious? That’s kiddie stuff.”
“Then you should have no trouble naming them.”
He snorted. “Fine. Intent and mana.”
“Yes, and intent is?”
“Meaning and willpower. Where are you going with this?”
“Nowhere complicated. I’m just pointing out the obvious. Willpower is the force, meaning is the direction. But easy as that is to say, have you ever really thought about how large of a bucket ‘meaning’ is?”
James stared at him, confusion evident. “Well, that’s a leading question if I’ve ever heard one. I could repeat the mantras from basic training, but I hear a certain fish man calling out a warning.”
Timothy with a wide smile gargled “It’s a trap!” Then in his normal voice continued. “Those mantras are pretty accurate, but most don’t really follow the logic through to its natural end. If we ignore the environmental components like mana aspect density then it all boils down to willpower and meaning.”
Timothy stopped, raising an eyebrow of his own at his brother. A brother who while clearly confused, refused to take the bait. “Ok…”
“Mana regeneration depends on willpower and the truth of the concepts or images that drive your mental constructs. Maximum mana depends on the solidity and depth of meaning in your Aural Manifestation. Truth comes from understanding; solidity comes from understanding and experience. Again, that’s just meaning.”
“So if you want to grow stronger quicker, then you need to grow one or both of these. Now, as far as I know, there is no cheat for willpower.” Timothy’s tricks with sacrifice notwithstanding. “It takes daily discipline and effort. I have a process that works for me as you very well know. You’ve called me a masochist for it often enough. But that process is personal, and what works for me probably won’t work for you.”
“That leaves understanding and here we do have an opportunity. Learning can be augmented. That’s why we have teachers. And as you well know, a good teacher with the right textbook and a bad one with no props are wildly different. It comes with some risk to knowledge contamination. Of swallowing someone else’s understanding that doesn’t quite fit you, but as a guardian that’s a given anyway.”
“Now, I don’t have time to personally tutor you. I wish I did, but it’s just not possible. More, as you don’t follow my path, it wouldn’t be a great fit anyway. What I can do, is offer you a textbook with automatically verified homework. It starts with teaching you my language of runes to better break down and describe magic. Then a set of intent imprints from a large number of Origins, including the Origin of your path, that you will have to match your intent to before proceeding.”
“That… well that sounds amazing. But if it’s that easy, why doesn’t everyone do it?” Jason asked with his eyes squinted. “It sounds a bit too good to be true.”
Timothy shrugged. “I'm not doing infomercials trying to make a quick buck. Quite the opposite. I'm not releasing it to the general public yet. For that matter, I may never do so. It’s always dicey to break things down into little buckets. It’s a human habit, but one that often ignores truth in favor of convenience. Even if I make my peace with that, knowledge is power. Making that path too easy invites abuse. People don’t appreciate it unless they have to work their ass off to get it.
Timothy scratched at his chin. Making people work for power might make them more responsible in its use… but if he set too high a price it could backfire on him. No one would buy it and they might resent him for profiteering. The balancing act wasn't something he wanted to deal with. Now or ever, but he might have to. It would take some careful thought… Or he could dump it off on Da.
He snapped back realizing he might have missed a few words while lost in his thoughts. “...pride, Brother. I don't want handouts. I take more than I should already. It’s not like you haven't noticed Ma always seems to have High Tier beast meat on for dinner when I visit.”
“Who said it’s free?” Timothy grabbed his now much taller brother's arm and started walking again towards the bath’s entrance.
Silver's mouth opened and closed like a fish, stuck between gratitude and shock. Charging family for help? Outrageous! But then, he’d just complained about the opposite. Timothy was highly amused at the dichotomy and the emotional war it kicked off across his face. He tried to hide it. Tried and apparently failed as James gave up his indecision in favor of indignation.
Suddenly serious, Timothy broke it down. “It's not safe to be the first to test a new method, brother. I need to know if the process and runes I've created are as 'universal' and applicable as I think they are. Beyond that, will the additional time spent learning what amounts to a new language be faster than just ramming forward traditionally? If it doesn't work, will it just leave them with a headache or will it harm their foundation? Will it backlash?”
He shook his head. “Reward comes with risk, brother. Oh yes, do be worried. And be damn careful every step along the way. Magic is not safe and nothing is free.”
James gulped, looking a bit green around the edges suddenly.
Timothy snorted, “Oh, you’re still my brother. I wouldn’t let you test it if I thought it would harm you. I might be wrong, but I’m confident enough to let you try. And considering what Ma would do to me if it goes badly, I think that says a lot.”
That startled a laugh and a nod of agreement out of James.
“Even if the runes don’t work for you, just having the imprints as a reference will be invaluable to you.”
“And it's dumbed down enough that you shouldn't have any problems with constructing the necessary mental connections.” He continued with a sly smile over his brother's squawk of outrage. “Now here's the second catch. You’re my guenea pig, that means I need reports on what works and what doesn’t. Every time you match an imprint well enough to unlock the next page, I want to see it. Can you fix it in stone?” He looked at his brother with a raised eyebrow, only to get a negative head shake. Damn.
“Ah well, then you will have to demo them for me. Either the next time you come back for triple R or if it drags on I’ll come to you.”
“And Silver?” Timothy gave his brother a deadeye’d stare. “I need you to get a move on with it. You will be using my only grimoire.” Mere words made a book. Embedded intent made a grimoire. It also represented a massive outlay of capital just in materials. A fact James's bulging eyes betrayed.
“If you take too long I'll have to take it back.” He warned. Though without any real angst. “And while I'd appreciate you paying attention to its safety, I wouldn't worry too much about someone trying to steal it. The curses and protections I’ve wrapped it in will deal with any such fool.”
“Curses?” The question was a bit higher pitch then normal, and james was looking a bit worried again.
“Not to worry, they’re keyed to our bloodline.” Timothy waved it aside. Best not to get into details. Curses could be fairly skeevy in how they worked. But they did work.
“You are in for a miserable year or two brother. You need to make sufficient progress to satisfy me and do it without affecting your team's time in the field. You’ll get your special treatment for being my brother, but I can damn near guarantee no one will be envious of the privilege.” Excessive favoritism could ruin relationships and he didn't want to put his brother in that position. The only way he knew to avoid it was to make that favoritism severely unpleasant.
Sorry James.
Conversation lagged as they kept walking forward. James lost in thought and Timothy content to take in the sights. That and try very hard not to jump every time someone got a little too close.
Soon enough they passed through a large archway and into a massive room graced with gently wafting clouds of steam and an aura of comfort and even joy. James stripped off his house robe, tossed it into a bin and dove into the steaming pool while Timothy and his bodyguards headed over to the smaller male-only cleaning pool. A small compromise for Ma's sake here in Runehold.
Timothy, paused and redirected his steps over to one of the many vendors lining the outer wall.
The booth was a small overhead cover over a narrow table, with chests of food beneath it and a half dozen kegs of different makes piled in back. Timothy haggled briefly with the man, finally settling on a mixed platter of drinks and pickled vegetables. Healthy and quite tasty, they were an improvement on old-world bar snacks in Timothy’s opinion. He passed over 5 stone coins and his metal chit, hiding a smile as the shopkeeper’s eyes bulged at the opulence, then paled at the well known symbol that graced it.
Poor guy. Changing colors that fast couldn’t be comfortable.
He was quite willing, eager even, to have the platter delivered in 15 minutes. Timothy’d have to work a small spell of attraction on the token as the man didn’t have the skills to do so, but that wasn’t a problem.
Arrangements made, Timothy dodged around the other customers and headed over to a set of stacked wooden lockers. Stripping down he shoved his new robe and belt into the first available. He’d left his staff upstairs in Ma’s stave case at least, but the rest was too valuable to leave lying around.
He dug out and equipped his usual bath jewelry before shutting and tossing a temporary ward onto the locker.
The jewelry wasn’t especially potent, but along with his bodyguards, it was enough for the baths.
No way in hell would he risk facing the likes of Donald or Regi with these toys. But then, he wouldn’t risk facing either of them straight up with his full battle rattle. That sort of battle was their forte. If Timothy ever had that need then his win conditions would involve a daylong ritual and a set of particularly nasty curses. Preferably from miles away.
No, if a threat of that scale showed up, he'd leverage the wards that extended over the entire hold and his bodyguards to buy time to run. Then retaliate from the safety and prepared spells embedded in his tower.
The routes he could take and the potential ambush spots along them slid to the front of his thoughts. Arthurs's drills were thorough!
Timothy shook his head before checking the mana charge in the polished bone pieces. Not quite full, but they were close. More than enough for a few hours in the bath.
He snagged a scrub brush of hog hair and hopped into the cleaning pool. It took a few minutes to get the day's sweat and less pleasant detritus off. Not to mention the ubiquitous black sludge of purged impurities.
It sounded like bad fiction but that didn’t stop it from being true. Reality was affected by perception and matter followed suite. Or phrased a different way, Mana and reality were shaped by belief, and how you couldn’t see something without impressing your own viewpoint on it.
He considered them impurities, and in the process of identifying and expelling them, he’d also changed them to fit his expectations. No matter what sort of toxin they’d started as, they were now impurities, and the matter that mana type was paired with was a gritty, black, foul foul-smelling sludge.
At least it was a minor contamination. Enough to leave his sweat grayish and thoroughly disgusting, but nothing compared to the poor bastard a dozen feet over. He looked like he'd been rolling in tar.
That amount wasn't healthy. Concerned Timothy gave the poor bastard another look. Ah. There was a dense web of mana twisting over and across his lower left abdomen. A healing injury. And a very bad one at that.
Unhealthy was better than dead.
Timotthy shook his head but kept scrubbing till every last spec of it was gone. Then half a minute more just in case!
He took a moment to look around happily before noticing he had a bit more space now than before. Looking down he winced. The filth had to go somewhere and between him and the other guy, the water was no longer transparent. Frankly, looking at the black and gray clouds turned his stomach, much less touching. His nose must have acclimated during the day or it too would be complaining.
With a sigh and a few words of apology, he slid over to the side and tapped together the wooden clackers hanging beside the cleaning runes. Those who hadn't already noticed, which wasn't very many frankly, quickly left the pool. The tar-dipped fellow from earlier also made his way out gratefully. He wasn't clean yet and probably felt bad about asking everyone else to leave the pool more than once.
Or that he had the personal mana available to run the runes twice. Timothy hid a sigh. He was a bit spoiled in that regard.
Standing on the side of the pool, the rising steam began to burn through his acclimation. Amplifying the smells to a truly disgusting degree. His eyes were beginning to water. Good grief.
Timothy waited a few more miserable moments for the last stragglers to escape, then triggered the cleaning enchantment. Mana snapped out along prepared channels. Visible to his half-lidded inner eyes as a white spider net across the bottom of the pool. The tethers flexed for a few moments, checking for live humans, then faded away as the real enchantment went to work. A wide-mouthed and impossibly large spectral fish slid up through the floor to swallow the pool. Then sank back down leaving the water sparkling a light turquoise and the rune work on the bottom of the pool clearly visible.
Damn he loved that spell. So flexible when you realized you could specify what it could eat, or just what it couldn't. In this case it wouldn't eat water, anything else was fair game. Thus, the second enchantment to check for people.
He habitually checked the runes, but the wear was mild and the lines clean and sharp. It was a good habit to have though. Especially when impurities were involved. The damn things were a symbol of impediment. Blocking advancement. Blocking clear sight. Blocking good health.
It made them a pain in the ass to deal with, including cleaning up afterwards. They wouldn’t decay naturally outside a host either. They had to be burned and in a very hot fire at that when the traps were emptied later.
Timothy wasn't sure who had that particular job today, it rotated between guardians as a punishment assignment as it wasn't safe for norms to even touch!
Nodding in gratitude to the others, many of whom were already climbing back into the pool, he made his way back over to the main pool. A football field of vine wrapped towering irregular white marble pillars rose between the heaven and the earth.
And by that, he meant that the vaulted ceilings overhead were painted, and illusioned into showing the sky above, with the pillars arching up to support the very clouds, while in the depths of the pool below their bases spread out like massive roots. Spreading out in a fan to mimic the branch like vaults above.
They were wreathed in magics that were more than illusion, but perhaps less then fully real while steam vents and a mild amount of sulfur bubbled up giving the water that heavy mineral feel of a true hot spring.
Timothy just took it in for a few moments. This was the truth. The gold standard that spawned 90 lesser imitations. And he could honestly claim credit for it.
It was a point of well-founded pride.
It was also not why he was here. James! Now where was James. He had enough of a head start that he’d easily disappeared into the forest of columns and the pleasant little nooks that they created.
No problem. Timothy focused for a moment, building a mental construct from scratch. He started with a drop of blood, his own. Focused on the concept of hereditary connection and the way this particular drop went up to his parents, then back down to a sibling. Then added in bits and pieces of James Garfield Mason. His habits, his history and how he appeared to mana senses. The construct grew, then snapped into something more. Suddenly gaining color and metaphysical weight as the information supplied pushed past some subliminal threshold and became a small truth. Verified by the minor amount of mana that trickled in.
Knowledge, familiarity, connection and blood. No one could hide when he held all four. It pulsed slightly, resonating with its James and pointing the way. If James had the sense of a Pathfinder, he would have felt it. But he didn’t.
Timothy noted the direction, picked a mostly open section and neatly dived into the pool with the construct floating along above his head.
Ahh, bliss. The water was crystal clear but made slightly opaque by a thousand tiny bubles rising in streams from the ground below while the heavy mineral water felt like silk against his skin. With the light drifting towards sunset, even the bubbles were awash in a hundred shades of red and orange.
Timothy dolphin kicked slowly beneath the surface while those colors shifted and split at the waters surface into a prismatic shower that left his senses realing in overload.
It was almost enough to make him try the gillman enchantment and stay down here for hours. Alone even while surrounded by hundreds. Peaceful and quiet even while talk and intent sprayed everywhere above the surface.
Free.
Alas, he had things to do and places to be. Timothy shifted his form. Rising his arms above his head to form a plow and kicking, his legs held together, with a purpose. Cutting through the waters now with considerable speed, but holding his breath. Refusing to surface, enjoying the quiet for a bit longer, till at last his lungs screaming he surfaced, gasping for air.
Flinging his head back in an arc to get his wet and sticking hair out of his face he transitioned into a modified breaststroke. He wasn’t rushing now, but still moving forward at a reasonable clip. Hands never breaking the surface and head barely bobbing with each stroke.
He had to be a bit more careful because while had had plenty of room six feet below it was quite a bit more crowded on the surface. He slid through gradual s-turns around the massive looming pillars and the crowds that gathered to them. Moving ever forward towards the resonance and the pleasant, if distant sound of music.