Star Song’s Clan Mountain was divided into roughly three sections, like a cake. The bottom section held many public-ish spaces, such as the Gathering Room that Ezekiel had attended a few nights ago, inner disciple dorm rooms which were cramped but not too badly cramped, and many cafeterias and other such ‘public’ spaces that Ezekiel had seen, but not visited. From what he had heard before now and gotten the chance to see only a few times, the inner disciples, located mainly here, were afforded a great deal more prestige and learning than the initiates and outer disciples who lived at other locations inside and around Eralis, at other, smaller locations.
The second layer of Star Song’s mountain held the main classrooms and a few Elder offices, as well as a few operational spaces of varying needs. Rooms full of weapons next to rooms without any weapons; armory and training space. Multiple rooms full of books; personal collections as well as an obvious library. Rooms which were blocked from his mana sense, layered with lead walls. There were also quite a few places in the center of the mountain that were blocked from his mana sense because of magic, instead of being hidden due to anti-magic.
The second layer was also home to many ‘public’ spaces located on the exterior of the mountain. The stone courtyard where Ezekiel handed out the Intelligence ring was on this second level.
The top third of the structure belonged to a few nice gardens and forests, and many smaller, private houses, but was mainly dominated by three wooden pagodas that rose from the three peaks of the carved-out mountain, like grand decorations on an even grander cake. The two smaller pagodas were each roughly twice the size of his own three-story mansion, back in Spur. Each of those pagodas looked exactly the same, with one pagoda located northwest of the central peak, and the other pagoda located south.
The central pagoda resembled the other two pagodas, but larger. It was a minor skyscraper at nine stories tall and half that wide, only decreasing a little in diameter with each subsequent upper floor.
Now that they were closer to the south pagoda, which seemed to be their destination, Ezekiel could mana sense the inside of the structure.
It was nice inside. Everything was made of wood and cloth and was the height of luxury. There were people inside, too. Servants, for sure, but also higher ranking people on the second and third floors. The place certainly had more room for more people than what it currently held, so Ezekiel wasn’t worried about being cramped. Which rooms were his? On the fourth floor?
Ah! And he knew those people on the second and third floor. Well that was interesting, but he’d meet them sooner or later, for sure.
But what was also interesting was the building itself.
Disregarding all the embellishments of wood, and paint, and strengthening wards, and everything that was not actually structural, Clan Star Song’s entire clan mountain was constructed mainly of stone. Probably. It was a dense stone at the bottom, but up here, it got denser. Some parts were incredibly dense, in fact, but up here, that density was made apparent in the structure of the ‘wooden’ pagodas. They were not wood at all; the pillars and rafters, floors, walls, and otherwise, were made of the same super dense stone as the rest of the place.
… But was it stone, at all? Ezekiel saw few anti-[Stoneshape] runes in the place, now that he started to really count and notice them. They were certainly there, but there weren’t many of them. Not enough for a mountain of this size, at any rate. Maybe just to protect the stone that was directly near to them?
Elder Arilitilo had explained most of what Ezekiel had seen, as she guided him through the mountain, and other people got out of their way. She even mentioned, a few times, that his accommodations would be his for as long as he desired. She pointed out her offices, and Xue’s offices, and a few other important locations. She pointed out the location of her house on the edge of the third floor; should Ezekiel need to find her and she wasn’t anywhere else, he could leave a message there with the staff.
But she didn’t mention the density of the stone at all.
As the southern pagoda loomed and the open archway ahead led to the first floor, Ari said, “Southern House is the guest house of Clan Star Song, and as such, we have a few people in residence.”
“I am happy to have neighbors. I wasn’t expecting to see the Scion of Devouring Nightmare again, or here, though.”
They stepped into the first floor of Southern House, and the foyer was exactly as opulent as Ezekiel had already seen. Dark wood floors that were not wood at all. Cream colored plaster that covered a stone-or-maybe-not wall. Red and gold running carpets. Round windows with nice views of the surrounding Alluvial District. Vases on pedestals. Running water in a central fountain that was surrounded by a coiling sculpture of Rozeta that reminded Ezekiel of the Rutherford model of the atom, but more stylized and not very atomic at all. Rozeta was chasing hovering pearls, though, so that was kinda funny in an odd sort of way.
Above the sculpture was open air; a hole in the center of the pagoda that ended at the fifth floor. Staircases to the sides of the fountain coiled up and down through the pagoda, twisting around in a double helix, to landings where bedrooms and other rooms waited.
The top two floors seemed to be relaxation spaces, or something like that, with the top floor completely open to the world, and lounges scattered around for people to sit on.
The main kitchen was down here, beyond the sculpture of Rozeta, and already filled with people who were putting together dinner and otherwise. It was evening already, and the operation inside that kitchen was an undertaking, with at least ten cooks already hard at it.
Looking up, the rooms had kitchens, too, but they seemed small. The kitchens of the current occupants on the second and third floor appeared small, and also in disuse. Nobles weren’t supposed to cook for themselves, and Ezekiel wasn’t comfortable with that, but he was glad his room still held the option.
Ari paused inside the pagoda, and Ezekiel paused beside her.
She said, “As you have seen, Scion Hangzi Devouring Nightmare is currently in residence, as well as his younger brother Warzi, his aunt Yorza, and their attendants and guards. High Clan Devouring Nightmare is in town to oversee our progress with chelation, and so they are rooming here, on the second and third floors. You will have the fourth floor to yourself.”
“Huh.” Ezekiel asked, “That kid who was outside our Healing Magic lesson? Warzi?”
Ari gave a small, polite smile, and said, “You may be as informal with them as you wish, Scion Ezekiel, but most of us would call our betters ‘master’, at the very least. Young Master Warzi was indeed in the hallway during our lesson. Scion Hangzi and his aunt, Mistress Yorza, are often found in our potion houses, or whatever other operations they desire to inspect, as is their right as High Clan.”
Ezekiel stepped back, bowed quickly, and said, “Thank you for your guidance.”
Ari glanced outside at the grey skies and the dimming light, then asked, “Do you have plans for dinner?”
“Not yet. Do you have any suggestions?”
“I do.” Ari said, “Our Cooks here are some of the best in the world. If you have anything specific you wish to have, let them know before and they can likely create whatever you wish. The servants in this house are here to see to your mundane needs, at any hour of the day. Please take advantage of our hospitality. It would not be bragging to say that the fare here has satisfied many members of High Clans long before now, and will continue to satisfy all those who come after.” She added, “Besides that, I recommend you try some of the restaurants in Eralis. I am fond of a place called the Open Kitchen, down on Tiralis Road. There is a small guidebook in your room that can direct you to other locations.”
“I look forward to whatever is offered, and whatever I can find.”
“Let me know if I can make something more comfortable for you. Do you have any questions before I go?”
“Yes! What is this dense stone?” Ezekiel tapped the floor with his feet. “It’s layered everywhere, but it’s highly present up here.”
“Ah!” Ari smirked, saying, “This is one of the many secrets of the Clans that I cannot tell an outsider, no matter how much they have assisted us. I can tell you that the stone you are seeing will not warp under [Stoneshape], or any normal application of that line of spells, and that it is much lighter than stone. Many people with a good mana sense say it is dense, but it is merely strong. It is actually rather light. Without it, we would never have been able to build our fortresses as high or as decorative as we have.”
“Oh! That’s… That’s fascinating. Interesting way around that [Stoneshape] problem, isn’t it? Just… Just make a spell that Shapes items that no one else can Shape! That’s some nice lateral thinking. Okay. Well.” Ezekiel said, “Thank you for the guided tour, and the lessons— Ah. What about [Teleport] and such? And [Ward]ing? Are those frowned upon? Inside my rooms?”
Ari smiled softly at Ezekiel’s exuberance. She said, “Now that you are a guest, entering and leaving your rooms is perfectly acceptable, but other than that, please keep the Spatial movements to a minimum. Protecting your rooms is also done at your own discretion. Thank you for coming to Star Song, Ezekiel.” Ari said, “I will be seeing you soon.”
“See you later.”
Ezekiel watched her go, then turned to his people, asking, ‘So that seemed okay?’
Tiffany snorted, then moved ahead, saying, ‘I already know which bed is mine!’
Paul just shrugged, sending, ‘We’re not in any immediate danger.’
Ezekiel smiled at that. Paul’s proclamation was good enough for him!
The three of them went upstairs.
The rooms were great. The neighbors were in their own rooms, but they were all doing their own things behind closed doors, and did not seem to care that other people had moved in above them. Maybe they didn’t hear. The floors and walls were damn solid, and well insulated. They muffled the sound well. Whatever material the walls and floors were made out of was nice.
Ezekiel guessed it was carbon fiber, or some other application of carbon.
Something with great molecular bonding, for sure, since that was one possible answer for how something that looked dense was actually light. Gems and crystals and such were denser than other solids, like wood, because of the structure of the item itself.
But Ezekiel recognized that he might be seeing something that wasn’t there. He wanted someone else to have invented this much Particle Magic long ago, without truly understanding what they had done.
Wouldn’t that be neat!
How would the creator have gone about making such a spell, though?
They’d have to isolate the parts of the 2 kilometer tall trees of the Deep Forest of Glaquin, for sure. Those trees were dense, like this, too.
… And that was where the dragons were.
Huh.
Okay. Shove that thought to the side for a moment.
The walls here were about as dense as trees of the Forest of Glaquin, which might have naturally occurring graphene or carbon nanotubes inside them, as those things were also super dense but able to grow that tall without collapsing under their own weight. Slices of those super large trees were everywhere in Treehome... But… They were heavy as stone. Hm. Okay. Dead line of thought there—
No. Wait.
The slices of trees still had water weight. Which meant that the living trees were still subject to weight concerns. Water was heavy, yo! Did the dried wood weigh less? It likely did. This was something to check out— He could just ask Tiffany.
But those trees were alive, and living things could make themselves lighter through magic, negating their own water weight. Ah. Yes. That’s that mystery solved. Those Deep Forest trees made themselves lighter with magic. Ezekiel saw a lot of magic in those trees all the time.
Gravity was strange on Veird in that once you got below the surface, many things that should collapse, did not collapse. Mountains even floated down there, like they did in the Brightwater, which was 30 kilometers below the surface. But on the surface, things got heavy and sank. Tenebrae’s floating castle was a big deal, because it existed outside of the Underworld. Other large structures on the surface were big deals, too, like this clan mountain under Ezekiel’s feet. Tenebrae’s castle was surely stone, though, wasn’t it?
There were many ways to magic, and many of them were not obvious.
So maybe this stuff here in Star Song’s clan mountain wasn’t carbon nanotubes at all.
Ezekiel discarded that train of thought, and tried another.
The stone here was not ‘stone’, and it probably wasn’t ‘tree’, not exactly, so then it had to be some [Stonetreeshape] spell, or something? ‘Tree’ had to be in there somewhere, since there were ‘root-like’ structures that went through the whole of the mountain… Though they certainly didn’t look like roots. They looked like rebar. But they could be roots, if one were to think outside the box.
Okay. He was getting way off track. And now he had another thought to occupy himself.
Ezekiel had the [Tree of Light] spell and Yggdrasil used that spell on himself all the time. [Tree of Light] made Yggdrasil practically weightless. The large trees of the Forest likely used the same sort of magic, but different. The arbors also used similar magic, for sure.
Yggdrasil was fine for now, as he was underwater, but if he was the same tree, but located outside of water, without [Tree of Light]? He would have collapsed on himself many times over. If Yggdrasil’s [Tree of Light] ever failed, the same thing would happen.
… Ezekiel needed to invent a [Carbon Nanotube and Graphene Treeshape] spell, or something, just to further reinforce Yggdrasil. As a plus, Ezekiel could use such a spell for cheap, impossible to Shape-and-kill-the-people-inside construction. He had seen that tactic used, once, back when he was facing the Halls of the Dead and their Queen Daydropper and they attacked the temporary stone houses of the Odaali-in-Exile government.
It was considered a war crime to Shape a place with people still inside, with the intent to harm. That crime was on the same level as intentional murder, and laying [Force Trap]s around a town.
Even if the dense and light ‘stone’ he was seeing around him was not stone at all, it was a good idea to make graphene lumber; can’t Shape that shit! Not easily, anyway. Nice lateral thinking, old mage of the Highlands, whoever you are!
Anyway!
This was good construction, here. Ezekiel had once heard Al say that stone buildings could only be built from between 10 to 15 floors tall, and this Clan Mountain was much taller and much more complicated than a simple stone building inside Spur.
Yes.
He needed the [Graphene Treeshape] spell he was thinking of, and he needed whatever spell it was that helped them make these ‘clan mountains’, too.
Ezekiel hadn’t been in their new rooms for ten seconds, scoping the place out, thinking about graphene and trees and stones, before he said, “Okay! Looks great. Let me just set up the defenses…” After another thirty seconds, with dense air filling the rooms and [Alarm Ward]s set here and there, he said, “Let’s go check out with the Sour House.”
Magenta light whisked them away to their previous hotel. Clearing out of the Sour House took less than five minutes. Ensuring the proprietor that nothing was wrong took another five; they had just been offered some rooms in Star Song. After the mention of Star Song, and after some light obsequiousness on the proprietor's part to ensure that Ezekiel was, in fact, not unhappy, Ezekiel departed in another flash of magenta light.
When the proprietor went to clean the rooms, they’d find some extra gold and a thank you note. Ezekiel hoped that was good enough to soothe any hurt feelings.
Reappearing in his new rooms, Ezekiel packed his books and other stuff away in the small bookshelves provided, then went down to the kitchen to find out about dinner.
He got the distinct impression from the kitchen staff that they would prefer to neither be seen, nor heard, and if they had to be, then they’d be more comfortable talking to Ezekiel’s ‘servants’ instead of him.
… He let Tiffany take care of dinner, then. Tiffany gave him a polite nod, as he walked away, and she started talking to the cooks and Cooks, all of whom were suddenly much more relaxed.
Ezekiel went upstairs and made himself tea, then sat down by a window to read about medicine and wait for dinner. Paul settled in on the other side of the room, with his own books.
Soon enough, Tiffany came back, and with a slight smile, proclaimed, “Dinner will be served post haste, master Ezekiel.” In an easier tone, she added, “An hour.”
Ezekiel chuckled, then got back to reading.
Tiffany settled into another chair in the room, and picked up her own book.
- - - -
Ezekiel’s eyes drifted to the small knife he had sitting beside him, in preparation, but he frowned, and looked away again, back to his book, back to reading.
He had grabbed the knife from the kitchen in a spat of whimsy and consideration. But now… He was trying to get over the idea of self mutilation for the sake of magic. It was almost odd how he was having this feeling, now, after everything that had happened to him, and after everything that he had done to himself for the sake of magic. He had even ripped rads right out of his own chest that one time, and that had been no small thing!
That had fucking hurt!
But having unexpected pain from magic creation, while having a spotter, was a lot different than seeing a knife and knowing that the best way to learn healing magic was to stab oneself.
… And then he looked at the knife, again.
Tiffany noticed. She had noticed the knife when she had walked in and then again when Ezekiel had glanced at it, but she didn’t say anything.
She did now. “You gonna stab yourself with that?”
“I am thinking,” Ezekiel said. “It was Ari’s suggestion. But...”
She teased, “You want to stab my arm, instead?”
“Gods no!” Ezekiel exclaimed, “That’s even worse!”
Tiffany laughed. “Want me to stab you?”
Ezekiel considered. “… No.”
Without looking away from his novel, Paul said, “I did not expect you to have this problem.”
“I didn’t expect to have this problem either!” Ezekiel said, “Not the problem of needing to stab myself to have something to heal, nor the problem of being squeamish about it, either.”
Tiffany scoffed, got up, and plucked the small knife from the reading table. The ‘weapon’ wasn’t sized for orcol hands; it was little more than a paring knife. In her hands, it looked like she was holding a box cutter.
She stabbed the meat of her hand.
The knife! Just! Went in!
Ezekiel winced. He shivered. He went, “Erraughhh.”
Tiffany laughed as she retracted the blade and cast a grey magic over her hand. Her wound sealed completely. “Orcols heal better than you small people. It’s really not a big deal if you want to try some healing magic with me.” She held up the knife and exaggerated, “For my next [Strike], I’m gonna try again to drive it all the way through my hand!”
“No no! No.” Ezekiel got up and held out his hand, “Knife please.”
Tiffany smirked, handing him the bloody knife.
First he cast a [Cleanse].
He stared at the gleaming paring knife. Odin twittered on his shoulder, and also on the windowsill and on the back of his chair, unsure. He could do this. He could stab hims—
He stabbed himself. Straight down into his forearm! Full Strength! Wham!
The knife didn’t do jack shit. It skittered off of his magenta [Personal Ward]. The dense air of the room wasn’t a problem, for [Prismatic Ward] didn’t impede the people who were allowed inside. The problem was, he just had a lot more [Personal Ward] than he had the ability to easily damage himself.
Ezekiel said, “Ah. I’m not sure I want to lower my guard, though.”
Tiffany, now serious but playing it off like it was nothing, said, “We are being watched. Have been this whole time. And even before.”
“Yup,” Paul said, flipping the page of his novel.
Ezekiel said, “Kind of an odd person to pick to watch us. Odder still that he’s able to use his mana sense to see through the [Prismatic Ward].”
“He’s uncommonly skilled, but he’s surely not the only one.” Tiffany said, turning her gaze down, then to the left. “You could put up some actual privacy spells, Ezekiel.”
Ezekiel turned and directly stared at the source of the spying, and said, “It’s possible that he’s as worried about us as we are of him, but I’m not sure.”
Down on the second floor, the same white-skinned young kid who had watched over half of Ezekiel’s lesson with Ari, sat on his knees, with his eyes closed and his mana sense wide open. At Ezekiel’s and Tiffany’s words, and at their down-turned gazes, the kid looked up at them, and startled. His eyes went wide as he flopped out of his seated position and scrambled away, screaming, to touch upon a magical item.
A sphere of magic popped up around him. Other people near the kid, mostly guards, noticed the scream and the scramble, and started moving. Yorza rushed out of a side room, toward the kid, to comfort. Hangzi looked up, scanning around, but seeing nothing. No one down there but the boy had a mana sense, or the people who did were good at pretending to not have that capability, for none of them returned Ezekiel or Tiffany’s gaze.
But it didn’t take long for them to get moving upward, anyway. They had surely seen that new people had moved in, but they hadn’t needed to do anything about it until now.
With a sarcastic tone, Paul set down his book and chided, “Are we scaring children now?”
“Hey now!” Tiffany said, “The little shit was staring at us and probably reading Ezekiel’s books.”
Ezekiel said, “I just need to know if it’s a kid with a mana sense, or if it’s a [Polymorph]ed person, meant to spy on us for darker reasons.”
The Scion of Devouring Nightmare, Hangzi, and his obvious aunt, Yorza, rushed up the stairs, likely to inquire, probably rather strongly, about what Ezekiel had done to the younger one, Warzi, who was probably still inside his bubble. All three of them wore white garb with black ribbing; everyone else in those rooms only wore black.
Paul got up and said, “Let us ask them, then.”
Tiffany smiled, saying, “And it looks like dinner is ready, and the cooks don’t know this is happening up here.”
“Then hopefully the prospect of food will get everyone to calm back down, quickly.” Paul said, walking to the front door. “Hopefully.”
He opened the door just in time to see Hangzi and then Yorza rush onto his fourth floor. The two white-skinned demis glanced at Paul in the doorway, then looked past him, to Ezekiel. There was no recognition in the woman’s eyes, but Hangzi was a different story entirely. Hangzi stopped in front of Yorza, eyes wide, his heart suddenly beating hard as a tiny sweat broke out across his forehead. He was completely surprised. Yorza bumped right into him, cutting off whatever it was she was going to say.
Paul stepped to the side of the door, out of the way, and Ezekiel stepped forward, but not out of his room, or out of the dense air of the space.
Yorza ignored whatever was happening with Hangzi, went around him, and came up to Ezekiel. Still two meters away, she demanded, “There will be no spying on my nephew!”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Counterspying,” Ezekiel said. “Not spying.”
Yorza went from mad, to apoplectic.
“You dare!” Yorza spat, “You shouldn’t even be in here! Who are—”
“Big Sister,” Hangzi said, stepping to her side. “This is Scion Ezekiel Phoenix; the one who found Tadashi and who dueled Scion Caina to a draw.”
Yorza glanced at Hangzi. Their black-armored guards had run out of the room with them, but they hung back on the stairs, and behind their masters, while Yorza and Hangzi confronted Ezekiel.
Ezekiel said to Hangzi, “Greetings, Scion Hangzi Devouring Nightmare. I did not expect to see you again so soon.”
Yorza turned back to Ezekiel. “I will not have you spying on my nephew. Do it again and I will have your head.”
Hers was not an empty threat.
And wasn’t this a novel situation! This was strange and new enough that Ezekiel wasn’t quite sure what to do with his sudden anger as that anger turned to rage inside his chest. She had threatened him. Openly. It was not an empty threat, but…
Her and what army?
Okay. She had an army, for sure. Somewhere. Wherever!
But even with her army!
He could destroy anything they sent at hi—
Ezekiel calmed himself, breathing out through his mouth, and deescalated, saying, “I merely wish to know if he is a gifted child or an impostor, and if so, are you a party to the facade, or not.”
Yorza’s eyes went wide. She yell—
“Big Sister!” Hangzi shouted. Yorza calmed, slightly, but also not at all. She was hiding her anger, just like Ezekiel was hiding his own. Something passed between the two people of Devouring Nightmare that was neither word nor telepathy, and Yorza stepped back, letting the boy take center position. Hangzi said to Ezekiel, “My brother is gifted. He has gone through many tests to ensure he is who he is. Do not broach this topic again. Do not scare him again. He is merely curious. Let him be curious and do not provoke him again.”
Hangzi seemed to be telling the truth as though his life depended on it. Ezekiel felt mollified, slightly, but he was still angry that Yorza had truly threatened him. But he had threatened Warzi, first, maybe?
Eh! He hadn’t, but the kid certainly took it that way? Little shit shouldn’t be spying on people. What did he expect to happen? What the fuck was this, happening in front of him right now? Some ploy?
Whatever the case, this reaction was over the top. This anger did not need to happen.
Ezekiel tried to let his anger go.
Ezekiel calmly said, “If one stares into the depths, the depths stare back. If he is not prepared for that, then he should close his eyes, or not use his mana sense in such an unprivate area.”
Yorza silently raged behind Hangzi. She was not willing to let her anger go.
Hangzi merely said, “We are aware, but he is special. He does not always understand what he sees, or who he spies, for he is only seven. I ask you for dispensation due to his youth.”
“Fair enough.” Ezekiel said, “But all we did was look at him.”
Yorza said, “Your [Prismatic Ward] intrigued him, and it is our legitimate right to see whatever we wish to see inside Highland territory! So let Warzi look if he wants.” She spat, “And don’t look back! As you say, dangers hide in the depths, and our depths are much deeper than yours.”
Ezekiel decided to…
Not push her.
He said, “Fair enough. Apologies, Mistress Devouring Nightmare.” He turned to Hangzi. “Apologies, Scion Devouring Nightmare.”
Yorza narrowed her eyes, searching for a lie. If she found any it would be a result of her seeing shadows where there were none. Hangzi stared at him too, no less searching than his aunt. On one hand, Ezekiel had no reason to antagonize Devouring Nightmare unduly, but on the other, a child with a mana sense like that only had two possible explanations, and while a prodigy was to be nurtured, a cuckoo was to be killed.
Yorza tensed for a moment. Hangzi’s expression turned fractionally harder.
Hangzi spoke, his voice filled with steel, “You have nothing to fear from my brother.”
Ezekiel said, “I believe you, and again, I apologize.”
He certainly had nothing to fear from a boy, even if that boy was an impostor. He also had nothing to fear from Hangzi, even though that was the implied threat given when Hangzi couched his statement with, ‘from my brother’.
On the second floor, the cooks paused as they saw the altercation upstairs.
A guard behind Hangzi whispered about dinner being ready.
Hangzi declared to Ezekiel, “I can overlook some uncouth behavior.” Hangzi decided, “But you will attend dinner at our table, and you will apologize to Warzi yourself.”
“… Eh?”
- - - -
On the fifth floor, in the dining half of the room, dinner was served at a large square table with seats for four people. The table could have fit eight and almost all of the surface was taken up with food. There was no way that Ezekiel could eat all of that which sat before him, but at least this wasn’t some ‘master eating before the help’ scenario, which he feared it could have been, and was how it was over in the Greensoil Republic. Tiffany and Paul were seated at a table behind Ezekiel, already being served by the cooks, while on the other side of the room, Hangzi’s people ate at other tables.
In Clan culture, everyone might not sit at the big table, but everyone ate together. Ezekiel appreciated that. He also appreciated all the food, but this much bounty was more a way for Star Song to show off their fortune, than for any real reason.
If it weren’t for the odd company, sitting at the rest of his table, and the complete silence ever since they sat down and the food went out, Ezekiel likely would have savored every bite of the stewed meats and heavy sauces and rices and breads and all of the rest of the food. But this was not a nice, calm meal with new friends. This was…
Ezekiel wasn’t quite sure what this was.
Yorza, sitting to Ezekiel’s right, imperiously held her nose up as she daintily plucked at her tiny portions. Hangzi, sitting across the table, ate like a normal person who was scheming something.
Warzi, to the left, was trying so very, very hard to eat normally.
Honestly, Ezekiel should have seen this back when he first saw Warzi, back when the kid was spying upon Ezekiel’s lesson with Ari. Ezekiel had been distracted at the time, but now he was not.
Sensing someone else using their own mana sense was not an easy task. There were no markers upon the mana when someone ‘became one with the mana and borrowed how it saw the world’, which was the concise and therefore incorrect way to describe what one did when they used their mana sense. Mostly, when Ezekiel saw that other people were seeing him with their own mana sense, he had to figure that out from a sideways direction.
It was the small things that gave people away. Micro expressions. The increasing beat of the heart. Spontaneous sweat. Staring at someone through a wall and watching as they looked back your way. He was completely sure that he gave himself away all the time when he was mana sensing, for the things he looked for in others, were certainly present in his own reactions.
This was how he saw that Warzi was mana sensing, and also that something was wrong with the boy.
Warzi was seeing everything around him, for a longer range than Ezekiel, no doubt, and he was jumping at all of it. He was fidgety. Flighty. He spilled rice off of his chopsticks and dropped food onto his robes. Back when Warzi had been in that hallway, he had twitched at everything around him, then, too.
It did not take Ezekiel long to see this, now that Warzi was sitting in front of him and Ezekiel could see the boy with his actual eyes, and in a social setting. As a cook dropped a tub of rice downstairs, spilling it everywhere, Warzi turned his head in the direction of the spill, then turned his head back to his meal. When Odins fluttered above the pagoda, playing in the wind, one of them pulled off a daring twist and danced with another and Warzi turned his head that way. His mana sense drew him all over the place, and it seemed to have made him unable to have a normal childhood.
With a slight adjustment, mana sense could lead a person to all the other Sights, too. Like [Future Sight], and [Soul Sight], and even [Witness]. And it didn’t cut off abruptly at a set distance. Beyond Ezekiel’s max of around 40 to 60 meters, his mana sense was a fuzzy thing. This kid was likely subject to all of that confusion, too. The confusion of seeing ribbons of light in people. The confusion of seeing blood in the eyes of a loved one. The confusion of seeing the past and future layered all around.
It might have been because of those extra layers of confusion that Ezekiel hadn’t been able to correctly identify the kid as a kid, but truthfully, it was much easier to see something like this in person than it was to see through the mana. Maybe this was because the human brain was wired to recognize reactions upon faces, as a part of human instincts, but mana sense was something that needed to be developed, and which had no instincts.
So did this little kid grow up with a mana sense this wide? That would have sucked!
Ezekiel frowned a little.
Most people in the room were halfway through the first dishes sitting before them, but no one had spoken yet. Everyone ate in relative silence, though some of the Devouring Nightmare guards were speaking with each other with [Telepathy]. At least some of them were having good talks over dinner.
… Maybe they were talking about how best to kill Ezekiel if needed.
Or. Maybe. The more rational idea here was that they were waiting for him to say something, first. They were waiting for an apology, or something along those lines.
Best not disappoint them!
Ezekiel broke the silence, asking, “Warzi can’t turn it off, can he?”
Warzi fumbled his chopsticks again. They went clattering to the ground.
A pair of servants rushed forward and replaced the boy’s utensils while at the same time they cast a [Cleanse] upon him, erasing the evidence of his most recent fumbles and the small bits of food on the ground. The boy dropped his hands to his knees and sat there, trying to hold back his tears, going utterly still as the servants did what they had already done three times already. Then the servants retreated.
“Correct.” Hangzi said, “My brother was born with a wandering soul. That’s what the doctors call his condition.”
… His soul looked fine to Ezekiel.
“A colloquialism?”
Hangzi said, “Yes. The most we can do for him is to not stare back, and to ignore when he looks at us. As he grows, he will learn how to control himself better, but that usually doesn’t happen till ten. He is three years away from that.” He added, “If you have anything that could help him, I demand you do so while we are here.”
Yorza stopped being prim and proper. She openly glared at Hangzi, then turned her gaze at Ezekiel. She stabbed a piece of meat on her plate with a chopstick, and left the stick upright as she glared.
Warzi whined, quietly.
Ezekiel felt compelled to at least ask, “What will I get in return?”
“Devouring Nightmare will solve whatever problems your clan is having out on the edge of the Tempest Forest.” Hangzi said, “That is why you are here. To return home with forces at your back, as a conquering Patriarch. We will help you with this.”
Ezekiel let that line of questioning go, and instead asked, “How long are you going to be here? Until they figure out the cure to the Elixir?”
Yorza harrumphed, then said, “They better invent the proper treatment soon if even barbarian trash knows about this breakthrough!”
Ignoring his aunt, Hangzi said, “We are here to grant Star Song assistance defending against those who would see this miracle destroyed before it can be used against them.” He asked, “I thought you would have salivated for my offer, but you aren’t. So why are you here, Ezekiel?”
Ezekiel said, “I’m here to learn, and to make allies and friends.”
Hangzi inclined his head, slightly, as though reappraising.
Yorza sneered, “How is that going for you?”
“It’s going really well.” Ezekiel said, “So far, I can count several high-class people who seem friendly, and who I can work with. So far, very few people seem to be against me.” He added, “And I have no idea how to help Warzi, but Phagar is right there in the mana. Has Warzi ever tried to contact him?”
Warzi spilled his chopsticks again.
Hangzi sighed softly, but said nothing.
Yorza, however, lost some of her malice. After a moment, after glancing toward Warzi, and then away, she said, “The God of Death and Time is not an option.”
Warzi did not drop his food this time, but it was a close thing.
“Why not?” Ezekiel said, “Phagar is a fine god.”
If this aura control training didn’t work out, he’d ask for Phagar’s guidance, himself. It wasn’t his first backup plan, but it was high up there.
“Warzi is unwilling to speak to the ‘boy in the mana’.” Yorza said, “Therefore, Phagar is not an option.”
“Ahh.” Ezekiel said, “I think I understand. This is more a fear problem, than a mana sense problem.”
Yorza frowned, putting on false anger into her voice as she said, “Devouring Nightmare is not scared of anything. Fear is not the problem. Getting his mana sense under control is the problem.”
Clearly a lie meant to bolster, but this was not a helpful lie. Warzi was terrified of everything and ignoring that fact would not make it go away. It would only break the boy further.
Ezekiel said, “My next suggestion would be for Warzi to talk to some Mind Mages, for some therapy to help combat these fears.”
Yorza glanced longingly toward Warzi, then turned toward Hangzi.
Hangzi declared to her, “No.” He declared to Ezekiel, “Fear is a part of the Nightmare. One day, Warzi will use the fear he has now to make him a true terror on the battlefield, and he will never feel that fear himself, ever again. The only true problem we have is that Warzi is unable to turn off his mana sense.”
Yorza picked at her food, saying, “It is as Scion Hangzi says.”
A systemic issue, then.
“I have no solutions for that. But you already have spells that block mana sense. And he seemed calmer during the day when he watched my magic lesson?” Ezekiel asked, “Why not extend those solutions? A ring enchanted to block mana sense would do well.”
Hangzi frowned, angrily, saying nothing.
Yorza said, “We have potions for use in the day that assist with calming, but the side effects demand he only have one. It doesn’t last a whole day.” With a tiny hope in her voice, she said, “We’ve never had any luck with anyone enchanting a transparent shield that blocks mana sense, only. As the ultimate Sight sense, you need to block all the rest before you can block a mana sense.”
… Ezekiel’s [Sealed Privacy Ward] blocked mana sense, but did not block sight. Yorza was just plain wrong in that last statement.
But Ezekiel was a rare case, wasn’t he? But! Surely someone else was able to do what he could do.
Or maybe Devouring Nightmare had no one that could? What an odd problem. They were a High Clan, were they not? Were their resources truly this poor?
Ezekiel considered.
Backing up a bit, Hangzi had been startled to see Ezekiel was their temporary upstairs neighbor. Yorza hadn’t cared, because she didn’t know him; she just knew he was the guy who spied on her nephew. There had been a rough little conversation, and then Hangzi pivoted to inviting him to dinner. And now he was here! Eating dinner, and talking over Warzi’s problems. Surely they would have seen the [Sealed Privacy Ward]s that Ezekiel had occasionally put up in his rooms at the Sour House? But then again, those rooms always had [Prismatic Ward]s in them, too, which made it near impossible for someone to see that there was no one in there when both spells were active. Someone with a well refined mana sense could do it, but even people with mana senses couldn’t easily see through [Prismatic Ward].
Felair, the previous [Witness]er of Spur, couldn’t do it.
And yet… here was Warzi, and he could mana sense through that dense air.
And another thing! Did these people know how much help he had given to Star Song with the chelation treatment? Hangzi might know. But did they know his true identity? Likely not.
Or was this whole conversation only happening because Ezekiel had made it quite obvious that he had a very well tuned mana sense, back when he had called Hangzi a ‘child, with barely fused growth plates on his bones’? Maybe they guessed that Ezekiel had a solution that they wanted? Were they just fishing, hoping to catch a prize? Possibly. It cost them nothing, not even time, for everyone had to eat, so might as well invite the stranger to dinner, right?
Or!
Maybe the Worldly Path put all of them here, in the same pagoda.
Eh!
Elder Arilitilo put them all here in the same pagoda, which is why she wouldn’t be available tomorrow, because if she had been available, then Ezekiel would be directly asking her if, by doing this, she had some sort of goal. Oh. Yes. That sounded right.
Ha!
Wasn’t that something. Cunning lady, that. If anyone had the capability of setting this up, she (or someone in Star Song) did, for she was the only one who knew all of the facts, for sure. She likely knew that Ezekiel would gaze back at the kid who was gazing at him, and then all this, here, would happen, more or less how it was happening.
Hmm. Well. Knowing all that, Ezekiel could go down any of those conversational paths and ‘solve’ Warzi’s problem. But. That would be the bad solution.
Instead, he went in a better direction.
Ezekiel calmly said, “There’s more than enough fearful things in this world to go around, therefore I don’t think it is right that you are encouraging the growth of fears in a little boy. With his mana sense, he’ll see more terrible things than almost anyone else ever will. He likely already has.” He said to Warzi, “Sorry I scared you, Warzi. I did not mean to do that. I was not aware that you are truly what you appear to be, and I got scared, myself.”
Warzi stilled, but did not drop his chopsticks. He just looked down at his plate. Tiny tears fell from his face, but he did not make a sound.
A lot of people had likely said the same thing to the boy over the years, and if Ezekiel knew kids, and he thought he did, such an action would just further cement Warzi’s status as an outsider, and as a weirdo. Did he have friends his own age? There were none here that Ezekiel could see.
A lot of people probably never apologized to Warzi at all, and that would have been worse than apologizing.
Ah! Wasn’t that shitty. Poor kid.
Yorza ignored the men at the table, and looked to the boy sitting across from her. She wanted to speak, to comfort, but Ezekiel could tell that she could not. Tradition, culture, propriety, an eye toward the future; something held her back and that force was stronger than her desire to shield and protect.
Hangzi breathed out through his nose, and said, “Spoken like a man who has never known true terror.”
…
… What?
Ezekiel turned toward Hangzi, blinking.
The white boy’s pitying face was squarely directed forward, at Ezekiel.
“Ha.” Ezekiel laughed, once. And then again. “Ha? Ha!”
And then the laughter came out like a flood, into the perfectly silent room. And then a second burst of laughter came out from Tiffany, sitting at the table behind them. Paul chuckled, but he schooled that away, mostly. He would not be laughing right now, no sir! Or at least not so openly.
Ezekiel laughed for the both of them.
Hangzi’s face flushed with anger. The guards on their side of the room were not laughing at all. They were staring. Some guard slammed their mug of beer on their table. Tiffany and Paul’s laughter cut out, instantly, as the two of them stared at the offending guard.
Yorza whispered to Hangzi, “Don’t do it in front of Warzi.”
Ezekiel stopped laughing at whatever that meant.
Ezekiel happily declared, “Sorry! Once again; sorry! It seems I blunder about, don’t I?” He fully taunted, “I don’t need to be ‘shown any true terror’ while your brother is here.” He stared across the way, and smiled. “How about tomorrow? After lunch?”
Hangzi waved a hand backward, at his guards. They settled down. The boy Scion stared down his nose at Ezekiel, then leveled his gaze, and said, “A test of talents, tomorrow. After lunch.”
“Sounds fun!” Ezekiel said to Warzi, “And the man in the mana is not a bad guy. I’ve met Phagar tons of times. Almost became like a priest to him, but then it didn’t work out, and that was okay, too.”
Hangzi narrowed his eyes, suddenly wary, like he wasn’t sure if he had seen a monster in the dark, or not.
Yorza had a different reaction. She straightened at Ezekiel's words. She glanced at him with narrowed eyes, then turned back toward Warzi, looking hopeful.
Warzi met Ezekiel’s eyes with his own. He was fearful, but also something else. And then the boy startled as the first drops of an evening rain pattered against the pagoda and rushed across the land outside, filling the air with the sounds of millions of tiny taps.
The rest of dinner was quiet except for the small moments when something unexpected happened outside, or downstairs, or upstairs, or elsewhere, and Warzi startled. He managed to hold himself together through three distractions, but then the fourth distraction came, and he spilled his food over himself and dropped his chopsticks. He didn’t cry when his servants helped him, though.
Either the kid was a fantastic actor, or a kid. After sharing a meal with him, Ezekiel was leaning hard toward the second option.
Poor kid.
- - - -
Ezekiel laid in bed, reading medical texts and Blood Magic notes, when a thought touched his mind.
‘Hey, dad!’
He smiled, sending back, ‘How’s it going out there? Kill any large monsters?’
‘We razed an infestation of Moon Reachers, actually! 45 of them. They’re over here on Nelboor, too. Been plaguing a whole mess of Border Clans for months now.’
Ezekiel sighed, worried for a moment, then banished that fear for it was completely illogical. He put his smile back on, and sent, ‘If anyone is qualified to kill them, it’s you. What was your final count in the culling over in the Forest? Almost four thousand, right?’
‘3,940!’
‘I’ll put up an Imaging for those kinds of monsters if Sikali or whoever can guarantee no one else can see it.’
‘We considered asking you, but they decided against it.’ Julia sent, ‘They’re saving your obligation for something larger, no doubt. So how was your day?’
‘Oh! You know. Met Grand Elder Lingxing Void Song for lunch at the Void Temple, and Scion Devouring Nightmare for dinner, and I learned all about aura control and healing magic. You could Remake all of that right now, I bet. I met a scared kid who was born with a mana sense to rival Tiffany; the younger brother of the Scion, in fact. He’s only seven, and I’m pretty sure this is neither a cuckoo situation, nor a [Polymorph]ed infiltrator situation. He’s just a kid with a massive mana sense.’
‘… Huh.’ Julia said, ‘I got no idea about that, but tell me more about this healing stuff? I tried to remake most of that, but it didn’t work right. I don’t have an Elemental Body for Healing, so I kinda gave up on that.’
‘Oh! I read about that. Hold on.’ Ezekiel sat up, excited. That had been one of his questions for Ari, for tomorrow or the next day, and he had found the answer in his books. Flipping through his books with multiple tendrils of light, he read as he sent, ‘Yes. Elemental Healing. I asked Elder Arilitilo twice about Remaking the healing spells, and she never mentioned it, so I was confused, too, but I saw a note on that in one of these books— Here it is! Okay. This is actually a multilayered problem that stumped me for a while. Part of the problem is translation-based. They call the joining of Elemental Water and Light, ‘Healing’. But Healing Magic is more nuanced than the simple Healing Element. With Elemental Healing, you could probably Remake the healing spells as they are truly meant to be remade, but you’d have to be careful not to make cancers along the way. Healing Magic is actually a lot more nuanced than simple Elemental Healing.
‘This is also something I read, that Ari didn’t go over, exactly: Healing spells are one of the few spells that you can queue ahead of time; that you can cast into a glow on your hand, or something, and then tap a person with when needed. There is no need to directly cast the spell on a person.
‘So in this way, you can shape the healing spell properly before then applying it directly to the wound in the best way to overheal Health in an area and allow the body to remake what had been broken. And that was a complicated sentence, but you got it.
‘That’s all it takes to Remake the healing spells.’ He paused. He sent, ‘But it’s a lot more complicated than one sentence from me. Don’t try pure Elemental Healing on yourself; you’ll just get cancer. [Cleanse] clears out cancers, but if you get them in a bad spot, like a pancreas, you could screw yourself up very, very fast.
‘Looks like it’s gonna take me a few weeks to learn what she has to teach. Are you getting lessons with Loremaster Riri, or something? I didn’t hear anything about that today. Is that working out like how we bargained?’ He added, ‘And tell me about your day!’
Julia seemed happy on the other side of the call, as she sent, ‘No lessons yet, but I talked to her. Lessons soon, but not yet. Tomorrow we’re going to kill some rivergrieves that are terrorizing some of the northernmost border cities, up past Holorulo, and then we’re going to…’
Ezekiel listened to his daughter speak of her joy.
Eventually, Julia signed off.
Ezekiel laid in bed, the conversation with his daughter swirling in his mind. He flicked on his mana sense, to check up on the rest of the world.
Paul was asleep. Tiffany was on first watch, sipping tea as she read her novel.
Odins flitted about outside, also on watch. They sat on the sills of the windows and on the branches of trees; bright pink birds hanging out in the dark and the rain without care for either. The one behind Ezekiel, hanging out on his headboard, was there to watch over Ezekiel while he slept. Ezekiel reached a hand up and patted the little guy. Odin twittered in happy violins.
Hangzi was doing paperwork down in his office. His guards were half asleep, with the others stationed here and there around his apartments. Hangzi’s office was almost directly below Ezekiel’s bedroom, but not directly below his bed.
Two floors down, Yorza tucked Warzi into bed and then activated a magical night light nearby. As rainbow glows touched the room, and the world rained outside his windows, an opaque bubble of magic surrounded Warzi. Ezekiel couldn’t see through the bubble, but he could tell that, after a minute, the bed stopped shaking under the boy’s constant fidgeting. Maybe Warzi was finally able to relax inside that bubble.
Ezekiel got to thinking.
How could you turn off someone’s mana sense? The obvious ‘solution’ to him was to take [Sealed Privacy Ward] and flatten it, then wrap it around the outside of the body, likely combining it with [Personal Ward]. Or something like that. Then you’d enchant that into a ring. Would that work?
He cast a [Sealed Privacy Ward] into the air beside his chair, making it a flat, curved and closed surface. It was a bubble shape with nothing but outsides; even the inside was technically still ‘outside’ of the spell’s area of influence. The spell appeared like a barely-visible flex in the air.
To his mana sense, it was a solid sphere; impenetrable.
He got up out of bed and stuck his hand in.
In the exact edge of the sphere, where the spell effect actually was, his arm vanished. He could still see his hand and arm on the other side of the thin bubble, though, just in the way that he could look through a normal [Sealed Privacy Ward] and see what was happening on the other side.
Huh. Okay. That worked.
Well. No. It did not. This version of his [Sealed Privacy Ward] blocked all sound, too. Which meant that if this was made into a [Personal Ward], then the person inside could see out, but they couldn’t hear, so this was a failure.
Maybe he could make a simple tier 2 version of a [Personal Ward] that just blocked mana sense. That seemed easy enough. Probably.
… But anyway, there was still the enchanting problem. How could he put this spell into an item that Warzi could—
Ah. Julia had spoken of charms that could break to reestablish a [Personal Ward] whenever her first ones broke. This was a good idea! He could make a ton of those and hand the charms to the boy.
He held his hand up and channeled the sound of [Persona—
He stopped. It was late. He could do this in the morning, after he considered the problem a bit more. Besides that, he needed to experiment more with [Personal Ward]. Maybe, if he had an aura-permeable one, he could keep his [Personal Ward] up and continue to work on his aura control.
Ezekiel hadn’t experimented much with [Personal Ward]s because it was near impossible to make a better defensive [Personal Ward] than the base spell, and you could only have one [Personal Ward] active at a time. It was easy to attach other effects to [Personal Ward]s, though, like flight. Ezekiel had almost gone in that direction back when he first dropped on Veird. It should be easy enough to make a [Personal Ward] which stopped mana sense, but which allowed light through, as normal.
… Which, thinking about it, made Yorza’s earlier statement about this being a ‘difficult magic’, rather odd.
Meh.
A lie to get him to help her? Likely.
And he still needed to stab himself to learn healing magic, too!
… He’d do that in the morning, too, after lessons with Kaffi.
Ezekiel got back into bed, threw the covers over himself, and closed his eyes.
If he had (devouring) nightmares tonight, at least he knew who to blame!