“It’s not so bad.” Hana explained the next day as she swam circles around Casimir. “The mental link is a little slow, but Loop’s on top of things most of the time. I just need to think ahead.”
The structures beneath the checkpoint were mostly the same kind as there were above the water, with an extra emphasis on warehouses over inns and taverns. “So how much harder is it to coordinate eight arms rather than two legs? Does Loop take care of the translation or was there a learning curve?” Having that many limbs would be pretty neat.
“BIt of both.” Hana conceded as she gestured that they needed to turn a corner. “It was a combination of them learning how to do what I want and me learning how to instruct them unambiguously. They’re not exactly smart.” Suddenly, Hana took on a burst of speed, nearly ramming her head into the nearby wall as they swam throughout the warehouses. She paused for a moment while the arms writhed, eventually calling on her spirit pact to forcefully calm the subordinate spirit, her primary means of locomotion going limp.
“Smart enough to know when he’s being trash talked, I see.” Casimir commented drily… or he would if he was actually speaking rather than using telepathy. He grabbed onto her hand and continued swimming at a leisurely pace.
When she regained control over her bonded partner, she shot across the space between the movement rails and stopped at one of the crystal clusters that dotted the checkpoint’s underwater structures. By the time Casimir caught up to her, she had finished manipulating the crystal magically. “We’re here.” Casimir had never actually seen the complex enchantments the Depths used for their underwater warehouses before, and so he made sure to pay close attention when the coral structure opened up into an air bubble, the barrier nearly imperceptible even as Casimir passed the threshold. That was spirit magic for you.
Hana may be crippled, both physically and magically, but she was still a highly educated example of an archdruid, gifted extraordinarily potent magic from her pact with the local spirit court combined with the knowledge to use them in ways the spirits couldn’t on their own. Most relevantly? She was a dab hand with alchemy. Her warehouse was two thirds filled with crates, each one protected with enchantments that obfuscated their contents. Even Casimir’s keen senses could only tell that they had obfuscation enchantments on the crates, which was a dead giveaway that there was something valuable inside, but there was also a chance that some of the boxes were empty. Well, there would be a chance if half the crates weren’t open and visibly empty, anyway. Instead it was quite apparent which was which.
Hana looked through the cargo manifest she had picked up at the underwater entrance to the checkpoint, picking out a total of four crates with her octopus arms and then setting them down in the center of the room. “These have the ones bottled for individual use.” She explained. Alchemized mana typically came in three “sizes”. Amphorae, which typically had about ten gallons of the stuff, was used for commercial distribution, bought by guilds, retail businesses, and municipalities to refill their enchanted bottles. Barrels, of which the standard in Anima were metal ones 42 gallons in size, were typically bought by militaries and academies, and were used for domain establishment most often, setting the stage for grand works of magic. There wasn’t anything theoretically stopping someone from refilling potion bottles from barrels, but the purchase of such large quantities of alchemized mana typically got the attention of customs officials.
The size of the bottles in the boxes that Hana opened were the last category: potion size. It was the most variable size, with most such examples ranging from two to sixteen ounces of liquid, depending on the quality and intended use of the potion. Most of the bottles were pretty standard four ounce flasks, but one box instead held bulky sixteen ounce jars, made from thick and sturdy crystal instead of the smaller and more delicate containers. “These should help you. The smaller bottles have water, mind, and life mana, and the big ones are force mana.” Ah, the big ones are supposed to be explosives. Casimir already had a few ideas for those.
“Excellent. Your potions are top quality as always.” Casimir complimented as he focused his senses to detect the potency of the mixtures through the bottles. They were well made and thus difficult to do it with, but they weren’t specifically enchanted to obfuscate their contents, so it was just a matter of seconds to scent the strength of the liquids.
After a moment of indecision, Hana ended up removing sixty of the water potions, thirty of the life and mind potions, and ten force potions. The lot was stashed in one of the empty crates, sealed and stuffed for transport, and after finishing with the bureaucratic necessities of such an action, they started swimming up to the surface with a prince’s ransom of magical assistance.
The Depths’ primary export is, of course, potions, because while Anima has higher ambient mana levels than anyplace else on land, over the entirety of the artificial island… the Depths had control over dozens of small areas that had the highest levels in the known world, and thus contained an endless list of potent magical ingredients with which to share that magical wealth with the world… when the Ancient Deepdweller was persuaded to allow it. They weren’t concerned about Hana getting in trouble, as the ban was on selling the military resources of the Depths, not on gifting a small portion of them to a good cause. Legal frameworks that were enforced via spirit pact allowed for very nuanced prohibitions without allowing for chicanery.
“Do you have something in mind for those water potions?” Hana asked. “I provided them because there were plenty to spare, but…”
“I brought some enchantment books from my Master’s library to teach Illivere out of, I’ll set her to turning them into domain bombs.” It was the best option to interfere with Magnus now that they didn’t have military wizards fighting his control over nearby stone directly. Water mana was exceptionally good at interfering with most other mana types, so there might even be an more complex alternative in that advanced enchantment tome that could erode or wash away other kinds of spell matrixes on top of soaking into the area and disrupting any attempt to establish a mana domain.
“Good idea.” Hana replied. After a peaceful moment of navigating the checkpoint’s labyrinthine underwater routes, she perked up. “We’re almost to the surface.”
One of the common side effects of curses or enchantments that protect you from things like heat, cold, deep water pressure and related issues is that your ability to sense the things that would otherwise hurt you was diminished. So while Casimir just nodded as if he already knew, he had actually lost track of the depth way back before they got to her personal warehouse.
As promised, they emerged to the sea-soaked air in less than a minute, climbing a set of stairs to the exit. Hana dried Casimir with a wave of her hand, causing the water to just fall off and go back into the ocean as her octopus arms slowly maneuvered her across the ground. “I think this is the first time I’ve breathed surface air in over a year.” Hana said idly as she took a deep breath. “Overrated.”
“That’s fair.” Casimir said, chuckling. “Come on, we need to get this to the ship, Captain Coralblade will know where my students are.”
Hana snorted. “You mean you don’t already know exactly where they are?” Hana had a bit of an incredulous tone in her voice.
Right, she was used to his old habits. “I can’t use mind magic that freely anymore.” Casimir explained. “It screwed me up hard, Hana.” That said, he could use a little for this… a quick attune sense curse allowed his magical senses to pick out the very distinctive smell of Hanna’s life attunement. Come to think of it, he never did figure out exactly what subset of life spirit she was spirit-blooded from. Illivere’s mother was a memory spirit…
“Really?” Hana asked, concerned. “...I suppose I forget sometimes that wizards don’t have spirits watching their backs, magically.” When looked at objectively, spirit magic had many advantages over more manual manipulation of magic. Very few spirits allow one of their pact holders to do dangerous things with the mana, while a wizard could easily kill themselves if they weren’t careful. “So you really don’t know where they are?”
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“I do now.” Casimir said confidently. “Hanna’s over there.” He pointed towards where they were headed anyway.
“I still think it’s amusing that your student has a similar name to mine.” Hana said as they slowly ambled along.
“Eh.” Casimir replied, shrugging. “It happens. Completely different base language, incidentally. She’s from some forest near the Great Plains.” Her accent is also impossible to place, so it’s probably a language spoken by less than a couple thousand people. There were hundreds of those scattered around. “Come to think of it, I do recall Professor Giltblade mentioning that she’s from a place where the government’s a druid conclave, so maybe it’s a spirit tongue?”
Hana hummed. “Maybe. Spirit courts develop their own language as part of their formation, so it’s not going to be the same language as the one created by the Ancient Deepdweller, but similarities would make sense. I wasn’t born here though, so my name’s entirely Elven.”
“Just a coincidence, as I thought.” Casimir said. Social status in the Depths was not something Casimir even pretended to understand. Knowing Hana, she probably avoided becoming well-known, but he noticed that all of the locals they passed seemed to notice Hana’s status as an Archdruid, immediately whispering and pointing to each other as news of her passage traveled in waves.
Light conversation continued as they walked across the docks.
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Casimir didn’t really expect anything in particular from his students as he left them to their own devices overnight. He had a few vague ideas of the kind of trouble unsupervised sixteen year olds could get up to in a port, but Illivere was pretty capable of keeping Peter’s impetuousness reined in.
“This is your fault, you pay up.” Captain Coralblade argued as they both looked over the holding cells that contained half of the elf’s crew on top of all four of Casimir’s students.
“What happened?” Casimir asked the bored-looking guard who led them inside.
The dwarven guard hummed at the question, as if deciding whether or not to answer. After a glance at Hana’s curious face, he obliged. “Well, the boys who picked up these rabble rousers said there was a bar fight.”
“...A bar fight.” Casimir repeated.
“Ayup.”
Casimir looked over at his students. Bloodshot eyes, holding their ears shut, more concerned over their own suffering rather than the wrath of their teacher… They were clearly hung over. “Which one of you sailors thought it was a good idea to let them buy alcohol?” He asked the collected elves.
“We didn’t let them do shit.” Argued one. “We’re not their babysitters.”
“Yes you were!” Casimir retorted. They weren’t, but he was too annoyed to let that stop him.
The still-drunk sailor took another swig from their flask. “Oh. Yeah that was our bad then.” The other sailors argued against their culpability, but half were hung over and the other half were still pickled.
“You said you’d pay the fees.” Captain Coralblade argued. “Pay up.”
“Docking fees, Captain.” Casimir replied. “Not legal fees.” Does this place even fine the sailors they throw in the drunk tank?
Hana cleared her through. “Ah, Sir Seahammer?” Was that really his name? “Their ship is going to be undergoing a task for me, so if they could get to leaving without too much trouble, I would appreciate it.”
The dwarven guard became even more sullen as he listened to Hana’s instructions. “Alright, I’ll get the Chief.”
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After a brief exchange, everyone was swiftly relocated back to the ship. As the agreements with the local law enforcement included an understanding that they would be leaving immediately, Hana just stuck around on the ship as they sailed off.
“Students, this is my old friend, Hana Beachstrider.” Casimir said as they relaxed on the back of the ship.
“The Enveloping Wave…” Hanna whispered with awe. “Even back home we’ve heard of her. She’s one of the most famous adventuring druids in the world.” Really, that was more because druids typically didn’t join the adventurer’s guild and venture forth into the world. The ones that do frequently end up on the outs from their spirit court and have to spend years getting back in their good graces, which precludes adventuring. Casimir was never really clear how Hana avoided that fate.
Hana’s octopus arms switched colors several times as Loop gushed about their bonded partner, in their own way. “Well, I’m afraid I’ve had to retire from adventuring. I’ve had a good run, but I can’t leave the Depths anymore.” Hana wasn’t the leader of their group, there really wasn’t a clear leader, but she had the most experience. In fact, she was the one who founded the team, personally recruiting Luci, Magnus, and Casimir for the initial group. David came later.
“Your tentacles are cool!” Peter exclaimed. Two of the arms wrapped around his arms as he examined them from close up. “Wow…”
“Ah, tentacles only have suckers on the ends.” Hana said, correcting him. “These are just arms, as they have suckers along the whole length.”
“Eh?” Peter replied, tilting his head. “But… tentacles.” He said eloquently. Loop immediately tossed him into the water behind the ship.
Peter flew back onto the ship, with Hanna drying him as he glared at Hana’s legs.
Conversation was light, as Hana was introduced to Casimir’s students more thoroughly. He finally got a name for the spirit court Hanna was from, the Sleeping Forest, headed by a spirit known as the Forest Father. He hadn’t heard of it before, but while he probably already had enough detail to track it down, now he could probably do it quickly.
“-and that’s why reading natural philosophy is important when it comes to making the most of your magic.” Hana said to conclude her story.
“Fascinating.” Illivere said, her interest in the complex geophysics clear.
“She left out the part where we had to go to the magistrate to get the client to pay up, he was so pissed at the collateral damage.” Casimir said. “Yeah, it was a lucky set of circumstances she used to set off that geyser, did ten times as much damage as the mana we put in, but word gets around if you collapse visible chunks of mountain to finish your quests.”
“It saved our lives!” Hana argued.
“I’m not saying it didn’t;” Casimir deflected. “But I’m not going to go over our many other options that would have left us just as alive as yours, again.”
Hana pouted with a harumph, suppressing her smile from the old argument. She stilled. “We’re approaching the borders of the Depths. I have to go.”
“It was nice seeing you again.” Casimir said honestly.
“It was an honor.” Hanna said in agreement.
“We’ve got to come back sometime! This was great.” Peter shouted, smiling broadly.
Faron nodded decisively, and even Illivere was smiling. “Your lectures are fascinating. I’d love to continue in correspondence.”
“Casimir knows how to get letters to me, kid!” Hana said, before saying one of the more complexly conjugated goodbyes in Elven. Casimir didn’t quite recognize it, but resolved to ask Faron what he missed later. She then launched herself off the ship, swimming off at speeds that were no doubt far faster than anything Casimir had ever traveled at for long distances.
“So…” Faron said, the first one to break the companionable silence. “What’s in the box?”