066 – Haste
***
“Have you been goofing off this whole time, you delinquent?” Hwilla swatted at me with a giant feather.
“Of course not. I’ve been extremely busy. I’ve even decided on my first technique.”
“And have you been practicing it?”
“No. No point in that. Putrizio has to approve my decision first. Practicing now would be a waste of time.”
“And playing with goblins isn’t?”
A half dozen goblins danced around me, eager to exchange items harvested from the valley for shiny beads and sequins. At first they brought me any random junk they could find, but over time we narrowed it down to a list of objects with lunar essences I needed for my projects. The goblins now entered the citadel to trade, because people had grown accustomed to them scurrying underfoot and given up on chasing them away. The little monsters now brought their goods up the mountainside to buy scraps of food and shiny objects at the citadel.
“All right. That’s enough for today, you fiends. Scram. Store’s closed.” I sent the goblins away from my doorstep and went back inside. I didn’t dare to let the thieves in my workshop, because they would pilfer anything they could lay their hands on. I locked the door behind me.
“What are you even doing with all this junk?” Hwilla pointed her feather to the piles of bones, herbs, wood, and rocks littering the area in my foyer.
“With this admittedly ugly stuff, I will craft the gears to my spiritual machines. You wouldn’t turn your nose up at one of Zvidsi’s dresses just because it started out as a pile of loose thread and dye powder. You have to judge by the finished product, not the raw materials.”
“The only product I’ve seen from this toy shop is a grabber and some colored lanterns.”
I had to overcome Hwilla’s skepticism or else she would have me doing some inane drills until I collapsed from exhaustion. Or she might just beat me up again.
“Okay. I’ve also got some new inventions upstairs. Follow me.”
On the third floor, I grabbed a broom and swept clean one of the new arrays. The dust and grit flew away to reveal a meter wide circle of copper and within it two overlapping triangles that formed a six pointed star. Cabochons of glass and quartz were set into the intersections of the lines.
“This is a rough array I’ve experimented on. My idea was to create something like the cold prison but less painful to use. Sort of a magical exercise machine.”
“How can a machine exercise?”
“No, you exercise by using the machine. Like a set of weights or a punching bag or a treadmill. Except this one is for cycling mana instead of building muscles. Observe.”
I stood in the center of the circle and performed the basic meditation for cycling mana. The stones lit up from the floor. The array resisted my attempts to build up mana. It was like trying to walk underwater or climb stairs burdened with a heavy load.
Hwilla took my place in the array and tried it herself. “Ugh. It feels awful.”
“That’s the idea. The added resistance improves training efficiency. It’s great for increasing one’s potential reserves of mana, which someone like you will need to fuel all those costly enhancements.”
“If this star thing is so useful, why didn’t you build it in the Hall of Discipline for everyone to use?”
“Because Putrizio would strangle me. He’s very liberal about the art of swordcraft, but close minded about magic that falls outside that narrow category. Also, by getting the same dose of exercise in half the time, I can jump back to work on my other projects here in the workshop with no delay.”
“Instead of the same amount in half the time, you should get fourfold the exercise in double the time. Stick to your training for once, junior.”
“Try that for yourself and see what happens. It’s very exhausting.”
Hwilla tried to prove me a layabout by conquering the array. She began cycling her mana to overcome the resistance, but like the cold prison, this array increased its power to match that of the person inside. She struggled to perform her routine exercise. I left her to fight against the exercise machine and went to the lower floor of the workshop.
From what I had heard from other disciples, swordsmen traveled to continent’s interior to train at sacred sites located in haunted forests, caverns deep underground, mountain peaks, or impenetrable swamps. The spiritual influence of these remote areas gave swordsmen special insights into the arts of magic and increased young sparks likelihood of enkindling their flames. Training was more efficient there. At sacred sites nearer to civilization, at the edge of the wilds, sects of swordsmen built their temples and schools.
I suspected that these magical spots might function something like my new array. If so, their special qualities could be imitated using the right aetherics. No need to travel through the wastelands to secret grottoes. I could build a magical gymnasium right here at home.
The Void Phantoms had chosen to occupy old Power Station Thirteen, despite the bad neighborhood and loud upstairs neighbors, because it stood over a wellspring of mana. So in fact, I already lived at one of those mysterious sacred sites. The environment here reinvigorated swordsmen as they slept and amplified their mana cycling. A disciple undergoing training here, compared to at a mundane site such as Sandgrave, progressed at a swifter rate.
Not long after starting her workout, Hwilla practically crawled down the stairs. She had gone overboard, taking on too much too quickly.
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“That thing is a monster,” she groaned. “I thought you wanted to make it less like torture.”
“I can only lessen the pain, not remove it entirely.”
She leaned against my work bench and picked up a knife. “What’s this?”
“Those are my tools made from spiritual steel. To help carve rock faster. I might make a full sized pickaxe someday. Then I could do some serious remodeling around here, digging through the mountain like it was a dry biscuit.”
“Spiritual steel! You’re wasting that? On this? You should be making swords out of something so precious.” She waved the knife around, projecting her flame into the short blade.
“I have no experience with making weapons. One of the smiths from Negative One would have to show me how to forge a sword with a good edge and proper balance. Also, I’ve used up the current supply of metal on my new staff.” I lifted it off the workbench and displayed it proudly. “Behold. Staff Version Two.”
“It looks just like your old one.”
“But this one had a thin core of steel to reinforce it. And I’ve attached an improved version of my levitation rod to the end.”
I whirled the staff around to demonstrate its new functionality. The lev rod was built at the tip, just behind the lumestone, but I could activate it by touching any point of the staff. A tendril of fire lashed out a stack of devil-bird feathers and sent them shooting through the air.
“Ridiculous,” she said. “What did you with the old device?”
“Yurk ran off with it.”
“No wonder I haven’t seen him today. He must be playing with his new toy,” she pouted. “Junior, your craziness is distracting everyone from their duties. As punishment for your misbehavior, I want you to spend an extra hour in that contraption upstairs.”
“As you command, senior disciple.”
“Now I’m going to track down Yurk and make him pay attention to me.”
I smiled as she left the workshop. The senior disciple was too easy to understand. All I had to do was mention Yurk a few times and she would quickly lose focus on whatever we were talking about. Then she’d rush off to find him shortly after. Finally her obsessive personality was turned to my benefit. I laughed and continued to work on my runes in peace.
***
Its students had all but abandoned the Hall of Discipline. Zambulon and Yurk had graduated. I labored in my workshop for days at a time. Hwilla had more or less moved into Yurk’s new apartment on the upper levels of the citadel. The old schoolhouse was left quiet and empty. But we knew to be ready in the main hall on those rare occasions the fightmaster came to review our progress. Missing an appointment with Putrizio would have been deadly to our new freedoms.
The fightmaster showed up an hour late, which for him was about half an hour early.
“So, young ones. You’ve had time to read through my book of observations. And time to consider what techniques appeal to you. What have you decided to pursue? Hwilla?”
Hwilla bowed. “Fightmaster. I’m drawn most of all to the enhancement method of fighting. Because of that, I want to develop several enhancement techniques. They should be diverse, for use in different situations, but also complimentary for use at the same time in extreme battles. Later techniques can increase power, but I believe the first one should focus on speed. The Fractured Vagabond Sect’s technique of Unlimited Delirium Tempo will be my model.”
“I see. A hastening enhancement is a solid choice for a first technique. While it lacks offensive power, it increases your survivability. Retreating when outmatched is a wise tactic for young swordsmen.” Putrizio looked to me and sighed. “And what have you come up with, Disciple Strythe?”
“Fightmaster. My thoughts were similar to the senior disciple’s. I also wish to increase my speed through enhancements.”
“Really? That’s a surprise. You didn’t choose a projection technique to match your specialization.”
“I wanted something immediately useful and which would continue to help me in the future. Because I want to specialize in projection, my techniques from other methods can never progress past the first rank. So the best way is to develop a highly focused technique, limited in scope but powerful.”
“What do you mean highly focused?”
“Well, from reviewing the compendium, it seems to me that the hastening techniques combine two separate parts. A swordsman gains the ability to move with superhuman speed, and to effectively use that speed, they also learn to observe and think just as quickly. My intent is to disentangle these two and focus on the mental half. I will give up on physical haste and increase my quick thinking to a higher degree.”
“And how did you come to this strange idea?”
“Ah. On our last mission, we disciples fought a four on one battle. That gave me plenty of time to watch our opponent and guess his weaknesses. But in the future, I will not always have that luxury. So this technique will let my eyes follow an enemy’s blade and let my brain devise a plan in a few short seconds. Out-thinking an opponent is the crux of my style.”
Putrizio frowned, seemingly unconvinced by my words. “There’s nothing inherently wrong with your proposal, Strythe. It’s theoretically possible to learn. It would be helpful for a projector. And it does reinforce your greatest strength, which is your oddly broken brain and the queer things it produces. However, that is the sort of ability that improves the effective use of one’s other techniques. And you don’t have any others yet. By itself, as your first technique, it doesn’t increase your offense or your defense. Thinking fast won’t help you run away fast. You can’t plan to win a fight without having any tools to win a fight.”
I nodded my head in understanding.
“With serious reservations, I will approve of your choice. For now. But know this: if your technique proves too weak, you must remain a disciple. In that case, you’ll need to perfect a second technique before graduating to an office in the cult. Our young swordsmen are too valuable to send out unprepared. I don’t want my students dying on their first solo mission.”
“I understand, fightmaster. Thank you,” I said with relief.
I understood the need to develop strong abilities for fighting, but my nature rebelled against specializing in murder. It was a waste of magic. I couldn’t stand it. So my true aim was to develop techniques with applications in self defense and also in other areas. A quick thinking technique would benefit me in all sorts of situations, including working on time sensitive runes which tended to collapse unless completed within a few seconds.
One thing I noted from perusing Putrizio’s compendium was that he hadn’t recorded many ‘psychic’ techniques, which is to say abilities that improved one’s perceptions, comprehension, imagination, memory, intuition, or other purely mental powers. This could be because those feats were largely invisible. You can’t observe a person thinking. Furthermore, Swordsmen probably didn’t announce the names of those techniques as they used them. Yelling ‘Advanced Accountancy’ didn’t impress the crowds in an arena. But even considering that, it seemed to me that swordsmen largely ignored intellectual powers in favor of physical ones.
As a wizard-in-training, I intended to further explore this underappreciated branch of magic. Instead of enhancing my body, I wanted to expand my mind.
Maybe that would stall my training, but my current situation as a lowly disciple had some advantages. I had no responsibilities and lots of free time. I did not have to go on perilous solo missions on behalf of the Void Cult. Soon, when Hwilla graduated, I would be the senior most disciple with no one left to give me orders. Perhaps some of the sparks would enkindle their flames, giving me flunkies to boss around and run errands for me.
I had plenty of time. And once I mastered my new technique, time itself would become flexible.