Gavin spent a handful of hours sitting there with the group, happy to have entertainment as he spectated the amateur roleplay, crass in-jokes, and not-so-gentle ribbing that was omnipresent. The sleepiness he'd been dealing with was kept at bay. Hours later the game winded down, and the conversation drifted towards shared stories and discussions that all too frequently flew over Gavin's head.
"Look I'm just saying, if I had an affinity for summoning magic-" said Omar, a middle eastern man that had been playing a bard during the campaign. Omar's bard had, at any moment, even odds of saving the party through some heroic effort or getting them all into completely avoidable danger.
Lars rolled his eyes. "Not this again. The fact you can't do fucking magic's the only reason you're still safe."
Omar leaned forward, grinning, "But what if I don't want to be safe? Ever think of that?" Omar dropped his voice like he was sharing some important secret. "I know a guy who says they tried summoning a succubus once. It put them in a hospital afterwards but you know what he told me? He said the way that thing grips?" he shifted back, spreading his arms like he was preaching some divine truth to an adoring crowd, "Worth every second in the hospital."
Lucas turned to Gavin with an exasperated look, and Omar took the chance to yank Gavin into the conversation. "What do you think Newbie?" He asked as he made a lewd gesture, "You want to do a succubus sometime?
"...I can't say that's on my priority list."
"Ah, I see. More of an incubus guy?"
"...what?"
"Stop harassing him Omar," Lucas swooped in to save Gavin with a gentle admonishment.
"Nah you're right. He's a real wizard. He could probably could help me pull of the summoning sometime. Now there's an idea." Omar laughed off the light glare Lucas leveled at him, leaning back in his chair and clearly already planning something to that effect.
Gavin was curious about that turn of phrase. "A real wizard? What do you mean by that? Isn't everyone a wizard?"
Lars blinked, surprised. "You don't know much, do you?"
"I got introduced to this by dying, and that only happened a day and a half ago remember?" Gavin snapped, a tinge of annoyance bleeding into his voice.
Lucas lifted his hands placatingly, "Sorry, I just expected that whoever recruited you would've given you the basics at least." That was something Gavin was going to be raising promptly with Adrian whenever they met up again there, though Gavin suspected they were just going to shrug and make an argument about the believability of his cover or something equally asinine.
Lucas continued quickly, probably mistaking Gavin's annoyance as directed at him instead of someone else. "The short of it is that not everyone is as magical as everyone else. You've got people like me at the bottom who are sensitive to magic and have a little Aether, but have no affinities. That means we can't do magic like 'real mages,'" he said air quotes, "can, but we can still use magical items, learn magical trades, that kind of thing."
Lars cut in, "It's not a bad thing. Most humans, even in the magical world are like that."
Lucas continued as if he hadn't been interrupted, "I work in engineering and it's a decent gig. Most of us here are also bottom of the barrel magicals, except for Lars here who's a low level mage. He does some work as an apprentice artificer handling most of the simple magical maintenance on the ship."
"Though succubi-"
"Shut the fuck up Omar," snapped Lars, "Leave the succubus thing alone. It was only funny the first time."
"Calm your tits Lars. I was going to say that Succubi like other magical races can have special powers specific to their race. Like how succubi are able to leech nutrients and vitality out of people during sex. Hey Lars, if you used your magic to make us a summoning circle-"
Lars cut him off, clearly done with his nonsense. "If I could summon minor demons I wouldn't be slumming it on a smuggling submarine with a moron like you."
Omar aww'ed sweetly, "Fuck you too Lars."
Lucas ignored more of the familiar banter that Gavin had been forcefully acclimated to during his time here, trying and kind of succeeding in continuing their train of thought. "Sorry about the idiots. But yeah, powerful mages and magical creatures, those are the people with real power. They call the shots and get way more privileges than your average joe."
Gavin frowned. "That's silly. Power isn't the only thing that matters."
"It's true though," he shrugged, "And I've seen why myself. I'll never forget the first time I saw a fight between powerful mages." He whistled lowly, looking up at the ceiling recollecting the event, "Fucking terrifying. It was like watching footage of a nuclear bomb test. Power that was never meant to be harnessed. Hell, I'm pretty sure the two could've leveled a city if either of them wanted to."
Ser's memories whispered fragmented memories into his ears, telling Gavin that was far from the limit of what could be done with magic. Another time he would've listened, but he'd been fighting his exhaustion for a few hours now and couldn't suppress the jaw cracking yawn that popped his ears and told him he needed to be asleep already. "Well thanks a lot guys. I think that's my signal to head to bed."
"I'll go with you," said Lucas, standing as he moved to follow, "I should probably try and get some sleep before my next shift too."
Omar waggled his eyebrows. "Not bad, incubus boy."
Lucas' desert-dry expression presented a far better threat than anything Gavin could manage in his half-asleep state, so he left Lucas to it and ignored the jab as he left. Lucas jogged after Gavin a few seconds later. "He doesn't mean any harm," Lucas apologized on Omar's behalf, "He's just bored."
"It's fine. He's just saying shit to be funny, I get it."
Lucas clapped Gavin on the shoulder. "You're right, but if it starts to bother you I'll ask him to stop. Not that you're likely to see any of us again after we surface."
They walked in silence down the tight metal hallways of the submarine, ducking through round hatchways on the way to Gavin's room. He pulled open the cheap fake wood door, nodding to Lucas before walking inside and locking the deadbolt behind him. He kicked off his shoes and collapsed onto the cot, pulling the thin sheets over himself.
Not exactly a luxury experience, he thought blearily as he struggled to maneuver into a comfortable position with a single pillow and too short a blanket that wasn't quite warm or soft enough. He was still out in seconds.
----------------------------------------
Sometime later he came to with the vague impression of something being wrong. His eyelids ached like heavy weights were clipped on, pulling them closed as he lay there. Then he heard it- the faint metal slide of a deadbolt against the inside of a door, drawn out and slow in an attempt to keep it quiet, followed by the faint creak of the door being eased open by a silhouetted figure.
They slipped in through the door sideways, keeping the light of the hallway to a thin sliver on the wall. Once the door closed again and Gavin's eyes had readjusted back down to the nearly pitch black room, he could pick out the hint of gray light that cast the room behind the figure's back in a dull monochrome. A quick prod that his Aether sense identified as from one of the magical lifting aids he'd seen earlier moving cargo.
Gavin faked stirring, shifting to sit up. Blood starting to pump in a rapid battle-rhythm but he kept up a façade of barely being awake. He would've liked to pretend to be asleep and only sat up and revealed he was awake because Ser's memories told him that laying down before a fight was moronic.
The person got closer, and in the dim light Gavin could pick out just enough features to guess at who had woken him up. "Lucas? That you?"
Lucas's apologetic smile was hard to see, cast in unfriendly shadows by the dim and uneven lighting that left him a silhouette. "Hey Gavin, sorry to wake you. We're going to be arriving soon and Carlos wants you awake for something."
"Already?" Gavin kicked off his blanket- it was dangerous, could trip him up in a fight- and shifted to the edge of his bed. He rubbed at his eyes.
"Yeah. Sorry, I know you're probably still tired. He's a slave driver I swear," Lucas kept talking as he approached, stopping just out of arm's reach. "I didn't want to-" Gavin heard the woosh of displaced air as Lucas swung a metal pole thicker than his leg and the length of a baseball bat down at his head. Ser's instincts moved Gavin immediately, and he called Norithand to hand and braced to block.
Gavin felt the strength of Lucas' reckless strike bear down on him like a mountain. His palms stung with the blow and he shifted to the side, letting go with his left hand and allowing the club to smash the sharp end of his spear into the floor. There was a clear 'ping' sound as supernatural crystal and dull metal collided, then a horrible loud scrunching and tearing noise as the steel gave.
They both winced slightly at the awful cacophony that reverberated through the metal room and the frame of the sub that was sure to wake the rest of the ship, but neither paused as Lucas swung his newly dented club without hesitation. Gavin tugged on the spear, instantly realized that the head of the spear was hooked in the metal ground beneath the splintered fake wood, and that he wouldn't be able to free it quickly.
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He shifted the haft into the way of the next blow, leaning back and away from it to get his torso out of the way too. Ser's instincts screamed at him for being a moron, and he realized why when the club crashed back into the haft of the spear. Metal screeched beneath one end, pulverizing the flooring further, but the angle levered the force to crush Gavin flat. His spear was torn out of his hand taking little bits of his uncalloused grip with it and smashed into his upper thigh.
Gavin's thigh went numb instantly in a wash of paresthesiac prickles. He grunted, as Lucas hefted the hundred and something pound baseball bat again. He couldn't unsummon and re-summon his Spiritbind fast enough to block. His pulse thundered in his ears like a tsunami as his heart thumped faster than it ever had before..
Lunging up off the cot he took Lucas to the floor. His weakened leg gave out as he tried, slowing him and making him take a hit to his shoulder blade with a crack that sent agony racing through his nervous system. Lucas snarled at him, trying to get another swing in but Gavin gripped his forearm, correctly guessing that the pseudo superstrength didn't extend to where his wrist was. He leaned low and out to avoid his arm getting caught by the flailing club and caught a knee to the stomach that winded him as a reward.
"Die already!" Lucas screamed at him, and in Gavin's addled and agonized mind it melded with the chaos and mutated into the growl of some hungry demon. Lucas got an arm free and nailed Gavin in the nose with a wet crunch that put stars in his eyes and rocked his head back that Gavin returned in kind with a blind elbow that connected on the side of Lucas' head with a nasty wet sound.
Gavin tasted blood. Dark spots swam in and out of his vision. He'd never been in this much pain in his life, and was fighting through it with a blurry conscience that straddled the line between him and Ser. He could hear the shouting of other crewmembers elsewhere in the ship muffled by the metal medium and distance; distantly noted the panicked and furious voice in the room below screaming expletives up at them.
Lucas got a hand on Gavin's side. Hiss-thunk. Magical energy surged into his body in an imperfect binding. Another piece of gray lit the chaotic dimness as Gavin felt an overwhelming force lift and hurl him across the room.
His back collided with the metal plating of the wall, crushing a shitty generic picture frame before he dropped to the floor with a groan. "Shitty excuse for a Spiritbound," Lucas spat, slurring the words as he stumbled to his feet. Gavin coughed as he forced himself to move, forcing his eyes open through the pain to watch the chaotic shadows dancing in the room and playing hell on his perception and concentration. Still unable to muster the focus needed to call his Spiritbind back to hand, he didn't have many options. "Remember what I said? I wasn't being honest. Being at the bottom is fucked. I can't wait to take that spear off your corpse."
Gavin needed to think of a way to handle this. If he could get his spear back he knew he would win, but a quick glance confirmed that it was buried firmly in the mangled scar in the floor. He ducked a wild baseball swing, barely avoiding tumbling to the floor as his numb leg nearly gave out again. It was burning now, and he knew he would be sporting a gross bruise there soon.
His shoulder sent screaming complaints to his brain every time he moved, and while Lucas was unsteadied by his temple blow he was still in much better shape than Gavin. And even if they were both in perfect condition, Lucas had 4 inches, 50 pounds and a weapon on him.
Gavin's real problem was that he still didn't know how to cast magic. Ser's memories was slowly feeding him the basics, but knowing how to recognize Aether types and the differences between Artifactual Sigilry and Physical Chimerism wasn't going to save him here.
Arcanistry was hopeless here. He didn't know any Systematized Spellforms, and lacked the control and knowledge of his affinities necessary to perform Willed Arcanism. Artifactual Magic was even worse, he didn't know enough Sigils to create a proper Form and hadn't the time to create an Object as a focus either.
Claimance, then, would be his magic by necessity. Gavin was being back into a corner by Lucas' steady advance, but he'd managed to orient himself so that he was backing towards his spear in the process. Without knowledge of a proper Form and thus lacking any way to structure his magic, he reached into his Aether pool and flooded his body with the raw energy. Most of it slipped away without accomplishing anything, leaking out into the space around them and clouding the room in a heavy invisible fog.
Lucas laughed harshly, recognizing what Gavin was trying and failing to do. "Can't-" a downwards swing that smashed aside the chair Gavin kicked into his way, "-even control your Aether right. Why does someone like you deserve a Spiritbind?"
Despite the outpouring of wasted Aether, small portions of it suffused his body properly out of sheer luck. Dodging became slightly easier as he sped up by a few degrees, and the gray blur of metal Lucas waved around resolved into a less blurry shape as he bought himself a physical edge. He feinted a move to grapple Lucas, and took the opportunity it bought him to go for Norithand and try to yank it out of the floor.
Lucas continued his relentless offensive as he tried to crater Gavin's skull, forcing him to abandon his attempt and go for his wrist to wrestle the club away. He snagged the blanket he'd kicked off at the start of the fight, trying to wrap it around Lucas and bind him. Hiss-thunk. Lucas grabbed Norithand with his other hand, gray light reemerging as Gavin felt through his connection to the weapon the foreign magic run down it.
Norithand was stuck too firmly in the floor for either of them to yank it out quickly, and the enchantment didn't actually make Lucas stronger. If Gavin was wiser, he would have ignored it and committed to trying to wrestle Lucas' weapon away and remove the threat, but as he felt the foreign Aether run along something connected to his soul he felt a furious rejection that boiled up from the part of his soul that wasn't fully himself.
His hand went to the spear, focusing all his Aether into it as he shoved away at the enchantment trying to find connect to it. He felt the Truth woven into the fabric activate, purifying and amplifying the power he shoved into it. Liquid Aether like melted droplets of prismatic crystal traced wet trails of light down the weapon and lit the room with fractured rainbow gradients. His bloody palm left small smears of blood on the haft that mixed with the Aether to paint the room red.
Lucas' eyes sparkled with red and brilliant rainbows as his anger bled into naked greed. "Liquid Aether," he breathed reverently, like the treasure would disappear if he was too loud. The inertial enchantment on his wrists buzzed with energy, crackling whenever the Aether made contact, and drinking in whatever Lucas could feed into it with his paltry Aether pool.
The Spellform failed to lock into place over the Spiritbind that rejected it. Metal groaned as the spear grew heavy and slick, starting to slide down into the room below. Gavin needed to shape his Aether into something quickly before his spear fell out of the room entirely, and there was a spell right in front of him to copy.
Lucas' enchanted item utilized runic inscriptions to create a relatively basic effect, reducing the mass of the object relative to the enchantment's user, effectively creating a form of super strength. Gavin willed his Aether to change, bending it until it was the same inertial aspect that ran up and down the Spiritbind which, supercharged with liquid Aether, created heatwave-like distortions.
He slammed it all into Norithand. It was messy. It was ugly. It barely counted as a spell. It was the magical equivalent of throwing a bucket of paint at a wall and hoping it would make art, but it worked because of what Norithand was. It was a weapon woven with a Truth, crafted to be able to channel the power of the Void in combat, forged in the Gap with crystal from the heart of a world.
Gavin tossed the Aether at a perfect canvas and it stuck. The vines of black crystal in the spear glowed gray, shifting slowly through the material as Gavin yanked. Metal and thin flooring split like water as he twirled the spear and sent the bat careening off the wall. Ser's lifetime of combat experience guided him easily; minimize use of the left arm and shoulder, it's likely broken. Damage to my left thigh will weaken thrusts.
It was a basic move. Spin the spear like a staff to knock away the strike, then thrust. His body flowed through the motion effortlessly, sinking the tip of Norithand deep into Lucas' gut, punching through intestines and out through his spine. Lucas dropped wheezing and heaving, stomach tensing around the wide hole the spear left in him. The spear- slick now with both of their blood- falls from Gavin's fingers as Lucas falls back, weighed down by the magic flowing through Norithand. It dragged him down, punching into the floor beneath him and holding him flat on his back.
"Bastard," he forces out between pained grunts. His hands scrabble against the spear, failing to latch on before he lets them fall to his sides, recognizing the futility of it. The light in the spear died down. Other people started pouring in, shouting as they cleared the room with raised pistols and readied magical weapons.
Carlos followed them in after a moment, raising his eyebrows as he took in the mess of the room. Shattered glass and splintered fake wood lined jagged rents in the floor. Blood pooled around Lucas and dripped down and out of Gavin's nose, riding along the top of his lips and off his chin onto the floor.
"Bring Gavin to a healer," Carlos nodded to two of the men before walking over to Lucas and crouching, feet kept carefully out of the blood as he gripped near where the spear vanished into Lucas' guts. He pulled up and Lucas' back followed it up, arching as he screamed.
Carlos had just braced a foot on a dry section of Lucas' clothes when Gavin finally broke out of a strange apathy. "Stop."
Carlos, to his credit, did. "Why? This needs out."
"You're killing him."
"You're the one that stabbed him. Through the spine, even."
Gavin blinked. It was like he had already put out of his mind and forgotten that yes, he had been the one to run Lucas through. It didn't bother him as much as he felt it should have. The smell of blood and guts with hints of piss were familiar, and it was hard to muster the horror and anger he knew he should be feeling beyond thin scraps that came from somewhere deep within.
He took the embers of those emotions, blowing on them and stoking them as best he could until they burned in his chest like he knew they should, but still not as hot as he hoped they would. "I'll dismiss it soon. I just want to make sure we have a way to stop the blood loss."
"No need."
"No need? Excuse me?"
Carlos looked at Gavin like he was a particularly dull child, letting out a frustrated sigh. "Order. Do you remember what I said about it?"
Gavin glared at Carlos, reminded that Lucas was still bleeding out with each weakening cough. "Remind me."
"Order put the Fieravanti family on top. What I didn't say, is that order requires maintenance. Everyone has to work together to ensure everything happens smoothly. Lucas was too greedy. He tried to reach above his station and failed. These are just natural consequences."
"You can't just leave him to die!"
"I absolutely can." Carlos' expression hardened, "You severed his spine. Fixing that would be difficult, and even if we did he could never work with us again. No one would trust him." Gavin stared back at him regardless, challenging him. He hadn't meant to hurt Lucas nearly this badly, and he'd "Oh for fucks sake," Carlos complained. He summoned a shard of ice and flicked it down into Lance's head faster than Gavin could react too.
Lucas' pained breathing stopped instantly as the ice shard exploded, filling the pool of red with white and grey chunks. Gavin gaped. Norithand vanished from the corpse a few moments later before reappearing in his hand glowing gray with magic once again.
Carlos shifted, just enough to tell Gavin that he noticed what Gavin was doing and welcomed him to try. Utter confidence. If he was angrier, maybe he would've been upset enough to try it, but as he was now he could tell this wasn't a fight he would win. He dismissed Norithand and Carlos nodded, accepting his decision. "Head to the infirmary they'll get you fixed up quickly. I doubt you're going to get much sleep after this, but you need to get fixed up before you meet with the heirs."
He looked to the guys that came in with him. "We're running quiet now. Double check that we're in ENCOM and our anti-divination measures are online. That was loud, and while there's probably no passive radar or sonar detection around I'd rather not get surprised," his nose wrinkled when he looked back down. "And get Hannah and Raj in here to clean this up."