Xangô POV: Day 61

Current Wealth: 2 gold 11 silver 41 copper

I’d expected to have quite an easy time selling our new explosive powder, and I’d been wrong. It was a ridiculously easy one.

As it turns out, in a pre-industrial society, there’s quite a strong demand for a magic powder that can blow a troll’s legs off at close range. A quick demonstration with the meagre amount I brought with me left the very first person I asked about it eager to purchase. He was a mercenary, of course, and one of the wealthier ones. A level 22 man in his mid-40s, clearly experienced and hardened by decades of practice. He’d probably have beaten the vampire we’d fought back in Rinchester even without the set of solid steel plate armour I’d seen him with.

Fortunately, he wasn’t so powerful that a 300 year anachronism would fail to benefit him. We did our business quickly, and I left with a deal secured.

We’d trekked quite a ways across the city, and it took us some time to get back to the warehouse. Almost an hour. By the time we did, though, things had changed.

Solitaire was seated in one corner, looking smugly at Argar and I as we walked in, gesturing to his workspace with a big grin splitting his face from one ear to the other.

“Black powder.” He declared. “About thirty kilos’ worth, enough for two genuine, certified war crimes. Hope you found a buyer.”

I told him about the events, giving the details as quickly as I could, hard though it was to speak clearly. This was big, very, very big. We’d been planning on the assumption that every reasonable portion of explosives would be hours of effort for us, Solitaire had moved our schemes along very far with this new revelation.

“He wants them in grenade form, like the sample I showed him.” I finished, having demonstrated about a quarter-kilogram’s worth of the stuff. “Offered to pay two silver for each portion.”

Solitaire did the maths faster than I could even notice.

“It costs us about 1 silver for 2 kilos.” He explained. “And this would let us sell those 2 kilos for 16 silver, making a profit of 15. So we have enough right now for 4 gold and 24 silver.”

4 gold and 24 silver, for a single day of shopping and work. I almost started jumping up and down on the spot, and turning around I saw broad grins plastered across everyone else.

“I’ll take the powder to him right now, then.” I announced. “After that we’ll start looking into equipment, we’re still on plate armour right?”

“We are.” Beam nodded. “But I thought you were learning magic?”

That snapped me back into it, and I nodded.

“Right…”

“I’ll sell it.” Solitaire assured me. “You go and become Gandalf. God knows we have enough time to do whatever, now, we’re never gonna starve again.”

Despite the instinctual urge for us all to just stay and celebrate, we ended up moving out anyway, and I was soon at the magus’ shop. I entered to see the woman Solitaire had described, already eying me expectantly. She was prettier than I’d thought, and taller, too. I supposed magi tended to be better fed here, not as withered and shrunken.

“I’m Xangô Belahont.” I told her, with a smile, and she just nodded.

“Right, Solitaire’s brother, my new student. Apparently. He seemed confident you’d be as gifted as him.”

I wasn’t so sure, in truth, but Solitaire tended to have a way of intuiting things like that. I just shrugged.

“Only one way to find out, right?”

“Right, sit down.”

I did, and she administered the test quickly. Neither of us was particularly surprised to find that I passed, what we were really waiting for- me more than her- was to see how much of the gift I’d been fortunate enough to enter this world with.

As it happened, quite a lot.

I knew something odd was happening when the woman remained visibly surprised within a short span into our lessons, but it wasn’t until I’d already finished the few hours of practice that I got the chance to ask her about it.

“You’ve made more progress than your brother.” She choked, seeming disbelieving even as the sentence left her mouth. I enjoyed a smile to myself before replying.

“You’re sure?”

“Of course.” She snapped, seeming affronted. Odd that. I suppose it mustn’t have been pleasant to meet someone so innately good at a craft you’d spent years on honing.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Alright.” I soothed. “Sorry, I just wanted to check.”

“You just wanted to hear me say it again.” She accused, glaring daggers. “To stroke your ego.”

I hesitated, then nodded. She was right about that much. Right, and more than a little clever to have seen it.

“Well, congratulations.” The magus continued, with a sigh. “You’ve supplanted your brother for position of most gifted user of magic in recorded history. Do break the news to him lightly, will you?”

“I’m sorry if I seemed smug.” I cut in, forcing myself to be serious. “I just…Got some very good news, I’m sure you can understand why it might have left me in a good mood.”

The woman sighed.

“Yes, I can, please forgive my attitude. I’ve just had quite a lot of foundational magical theory shaken right in front of me. Twice. You’ll want lessons alongside your brother then?”

“I will.” I concurred. “And for our other brother, Beam, if his gift is comparable.”

She shrugged.

“Three of you. Of course there are. Very well, I’ll do what I can, but I expect a castle all to myself once you’re all ruling the country.”

By her tone, I couldn’t tell if she was even joking. There’d certainly be less predictable shifts throughout Redacle’s history, the ability to use magic in the highest orders was something that could do a lot of military heavy lifting for a nation. Could, and had. And if one threw an army behind that much power…Well, there wasn’t much that would stop it.

Even an army that didn’t have guns as standard-issue.

I was getting ahead of myself, though. I gave the magus my thanks and headed from her shop, moving quickly back to the warehouse. Solitaire and Beam were awaiting me as I returned.

“We’ve been talking.” Solitaire began, unnecessarily. I knew they’d been talking, both of them had been far too anticipatory to have just been waiting around doing nothing until I met them. “About our next base of operations.”

Weird way to phrase it, but I caught his meaning.

“You’re about to ask that we splurge on a higher class inn?” I grinned. He didn’t smile back.

“No.” Solitaire replied, paused, and gave Beam chance to cut in.

“He’s about to suggest we let him build his dream schizo bunker to set up shop in.”

I blinked, eying both of my friends while Solitaire glared at the swordsman.

“In less assholish terms than that,” The Revolutionary sighed, “Yes, I was. I don’t want to just live in some random inn now that we know there’s a mad magus after us- particularly when we’re about to basically broadcast our current location to him.”

“So you want to build a house instead?” No, of course he didn’t. I corrected my question before he could. “You want to build a fortress?”

Solitaire smiled.

“Finally, someone who understands my genius-”

“We can’t though.” I snapped. “Can we? No, we can’t. What are you…”

Oh, but we were learning magic. And magi could do lots of things.

It’s about time I explained how their powers work, right? Basically, in Redacle, the world is made out of sort of…Passages, you might say. The written word kind. Yes, I know, I know. Anyway, magi could tweak these a bit, reshape and rethread. The less obvious the change, the more reliably they could make it, and the more powerful the magus the more overt they could afford to be.

That was why it was a lot easier and safer for Corvan to knit Beam’s ribs back together than, say, growing him a new set entirely. They also tended to specialise. Healing was relatively rare, but not that much.

Stone and earth, though, that was fairly commonplace. It was the reason after all that even the shitty mediaeval towns we’d been encountering had walls stretching dozens of feet up from the ground. Hell, it was the reason people had full plate armour centuries before gunpowder.

For us, the writers, magic had been a cheap convenience to explain all the anachronisms that came with a pop-cultural depiction of mediaeval times. For us the survivors…

For us the survivors, and us the magical geniuses, it might be much, much more.

“It depends on how quickly we can learn to master our powers.” I replied at last, not even bothering to hide the considering note from my voice. I’d barely spent half a second thinking about matters, but for Solitaire that would’ve felt like an agonisingly long stretch. He didn’t let whatever neurotic irritation was currently tormenting him show, though, only grinned.

“We shouldn’t take that long, right? Zhariak took…What, half a month to become a novice? And he was less talented than the best in history.”

Zhariak, the main character from our book. A budding magus and overall arrogant bastard. An odd thought occurred to me then, as I realised that he was very possibly wandering around somewhere out there, sharing a planet with me, breathing in the same atmosphere. Somehow that smashed the gap between my reality and Redacle’s fantasy more than any of the undeniably concrete pain or pleasure I’d felt here.

Not enough to distract me from Solitaire's words though.

“Half a month is still probably longer than we’ll have, it’ll take Corvan less than half that time to reach us, and we’ll still have to actually build.”

“I can take Corvan.” Beam cut in, confidently. We both stared at him.

“No the fuck you can’t.” Solitaire gaped.

“And you’re not trying to, either, he’d destroy you.” I added, feeling a migraine suddenly growing.

Before the swordsman could quote a certain white-haired Jujutsu Kaisen character, and thus force my hand into strangling him, Helena piped up.

“You’re scared of a magus chasing you down, but won’t you be wealthy enough to hire your own soon? If only for a day.”

That gave all of us something to consider for a moment.

“Not necessarily.” Solitaire sighed at last. “We’re still limited in our production by the actual ingredients to gunpowder, we’ll be racking up more than a share of wealth, no doubt, but I don’t want to bet on having enough to hire multiple magi. And I don’t like the idea of trusting in only one to get the better of Corvan. Even if they’re his superior, they might have a stroke of poor luck.”

“So what do we do then?” Beam frowned. “Mercenary work?”

Solitaire and I shared a look, and nodded. We’d been putting it off for long enough, I supposed, we were always going to have gotten into another fight eventually. Might as well hurry it along.

“Mercenary work.” I agreed. “Let’s get a hurry on gearing up.”