Talia’s impromptu interrogation ended faster than she’d expected, as she quickly realized there wasn’t much of import to relay to the expedition leaders. Though the salivating chronicler, her pen frantically sprinting across the page of a rapidly filling journal, would probably beg to differ.
Torval’s questions had focused on possible threats to their mission and other such practical concerns. After his initial bout of shock, he’d shown some cursory interest in the Matriarch but had otherwise left the rest of the inquiries to his second.
Calisto, on the other hand, was voracious.
As soon as Talia had made clear the scope of the Matriarch’s knowledge, the usually stern woman had zipped out of the room to gather more writing materials. The young woman thanked the gods that she had a good memory, as the chronicler had demanded what amounted to a word-for-word account of the encounter with the ancient arachnid.
As it was, the young mage was glad she’d kept the Weave-Fragment’s existence to herself. Otherwise, given the chronicler’s expression, she was certain that she’d have been hounded for the rest of the year and longer besides.
Though Talia did have to admit that Calisto’s rabid curiosity had fostered a kinship that hadn’t been there before—a kind of recognition of herself in the older woman.
In the end, Torval had been the one to end the meeting, gently reminding his second-in-command that they all had work to get to. That he had to repeat the reminder twice only served to highlight the extent of Calisto’s thirst for knowledge.
It had taken having her pen pried from her fingers mid-sentence for her to realize that she’d been spoken to. Talia and Torval had exchanged an amused look as the chronicler startled, then straightened out her ruffled robes and cleared her throat awkwardly, setting her notebook on the desk with careful composure.
Talia slipped out before the woman could pry a promise of further ‘discussion’ from her. The young woman would have nonetheless bet good money on an ambush sometime in the future.
As far as ambushes go, that’s probably as good as it gets down here.
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The encampment—if you could call it that, chaotic as it was— was distinctly silent, a direct contrast to the confusing moment when everyone had woken up. Delvers bustled to and fro with quiet efficiency, taking advantage of the unexpected reprieve to clean wagon interiors, and repaint scratched exterior panelling. A few of the drivers, under Hanmul’s direction, had undertaken the task of rearranging the column of wagons into its proper alignment—no mean feat when you considered that the cavern, while spacious, was still a tight fit for the entirety of the expedition.
Beneath it all lurked a palpable feeling of unease, that was nonetheless light compared to what Talia had expected from the thus far superstitious ensemble of delvers. Following the tendrils of her mindsense led her to a construct tucked away in dark corners of the crew’s thoughts that pulsed waves of soothing calm, whose weblike construction left no doubts as to its provenance.
The young psion had no idea where she would even begin to unravel the deceptively subtle spell, especially considering it seemed absent from her own thoughts.
Not sure I want to dispel it, come to think of it. If they’re this tightly wound with it active…
She shuddered.
A frown grew across her features as she realized how widely she’d spread her psionic web without realizing it.
Talia took a moment to pause and restrain her senses before they got out of hand.
I never had this problem before…
Whatever the Matriarch had done—with the help of Talia’s pitiful contribution—didn’t translate to an increase in power, or Capacity, as Zaric called it. That much was certain. Her Core was the same size, her channels hadn’t drastically changed, nor had her Will noticeably improved.
Instead, it seemed to be a series of small tweaks, tiny improvements in efficiency that added up to a greater whole. Mana flowed through her ever so slightly faster, ever so slightly smoother. Something told her that if she were to sit for a cycling session, her mana draw would have increased just a smidge. She hadn’t done much visualization either, but as she brought up the framework for a force net—a spellform she’d been practicing ever since the…incident in the Chasm— it spun into being faster than she’d expected, its lines just a little crisper than she was used to.
By far the most noticeable—and worrisome— change she’d experienced, however, was in her psionics.
The hybrid sense-ability wasn’t stronger, and its range remained unchanged, but it had become more…needy, for lack of a better term. It was almost like it was acting on its own, reaching out to grab at the minds around her of its volition, not to dip into their thoughts and emotions—that seemed to be a side-effect— but simply to be…connected to them.
Almost like what She was talking about when She described the Ancients’ psionic web. No, scratch that, exactly like that.
The realization brought up all sorts of questions that Talia noted for later, when she’d have time to dip into the Weave-Fragment for more snippets of lost knowledge.
Were we all supposed to be psionic somehow? The way the Matriarch explained it made it seem so, but then why aren’t there more mages?
Some light mathematics based on the figures she’d gotten from Zaric what felt like years ago added up to around three percent of Karzgorad’s population being mages. Even generously assuming that some had the Gift, but simply hadn’t awakened, that was an incredibly low number. Then there was the fact that not all mages were Gifted with psionics, which led Talia to think that maybe psions were meant to act as relays in a network, nodes that would connect the whole of society together like a decentralized, empathic tapestry.
Or maybe we were all supposed to have the full breadth of magic at our disposal, and something just went wrong…
Talia rolled her eyes as she shimmied her way through the throng toward where she sensed Osra’s mind.
Her mindsense fizzed oddly, momentarily reporting more minds than could possibly be in the cavern, thousands upon thousands of them, above and below, like a swarm of tiny creatures all around them. Talia frowned, but the sensation passed as quickly as it had appeared.
Dismissing the odd moment, the young woman returned to her prior train of thought.
Once again Tals, speculating on things we will probably never have answers for gets us…where exactly? Oh, that’s right— nowhere. Also, no shit, things went wrong, did you forget the part where the Matriarch basically overloaded your brain with every awful event that led to the collapse of the Ancients’ golden age? Now, focus back on the present, please.
The young woman caught herself before she could grumble angrily at the snarky voice in her own head. At herself.
I thought fixing my brain was supposed to make me less crazy, not more so.
Her subconscious giggled as if taunting her. Shaking her head, she quashed the nagging thought that whispered questions. Questions that led to dark places. Questions about how trustworthy the Matriarch truly was, and why Talia had felt so comfortable allowing her to meddle in her mind. She reexamined the construct she’d found in her fellow delvers’ heads consideringly…
Ugh. Too much thinking.
With a violent tug, Talia reigned in her mindsense as it strove to layer itself over the delvers’ minds. She’d resolved to keep an eye on it even before the changes. Much as it had been a useful tool, she’d promised herself back in the Chasm to refrain from diving too deeply into that can of worms. That road had already been trodden. At the end of the day, people’s thoughts and feelings were their own.
Just because she had the power to meddle with them, didn’t mean she should.
Right?
Shaking her head at the jumbled mess that was her thoughts, Talia narrowly dodged a beastkin heavily laden with foodstuffs and made her way to where she saw Osra had already half-erected a cook-pit.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
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The apprentice glanced at the increasingly crimson-haired woman as she approached, humming a greeting.
The circle of liquid stone rippled under the stone shaper’s hands, rapidly shedding its near-liquid qualities as it settled into a wide circle about two metres across, with several brackets protruding out from the edges to hold grills and pots.
“All done?” Talia whispered.
Osra clenched a fist—an entirely unnecessary gesture that nonetheless helped her focus her Will— and the stone ring crackled slightly as it solidified.
“Done,” the mage apprentice whispered back, sagging from the strain.
“Wonderful, I guess it’s my turn now.”
Talia crouched down by the ring and reached for her belt where a chisel usually sat, only to realize that she didn’t have the belt in question with her.
“Shit,” she muttered.
Osra turned back, a questioning look on her face. Talia rolled her eyes self-deprecatingly.
“Forgot my chisel in my bunk,” she explained.
The girl nodded slowly before beginning to walk off. She stood there, half-turned away, and hesitated.
“Would you like my help? You can just draw out the runes, and we can do it like we did your wand.”
Talia narrowed her eyes at her.
“Avoiding work?” she asked.
The usually reserved apprentice looked stricken, and Talia felt a pang of shame.
Welp, there you go again, Tals.
Scrambling to recover, she forced out a chuckle.
“Just pulling your leg! Sure, I’d love the help. Should be faster too. Old Dwarvish is much easier,” she said.
Osra chuckled back awkwardly, still looking unsure, but shrugged and sat to watch the arcanist work.
Talia traced out the squared script with a practiced hand. Old Dwarvish was almost always the first script taught to beginner arcanists, given its forgiving nature, and its ability to be inscribed directly onto disposable stone. Hence Talia’s familiarity with it.
One might even say she was an old hand at it.
She giggled as the intrusive pun slipped through her mind.
Osra gave her a puzzled look.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, perplexed.
“Oh, uhm— just a—uh bad joke. Nothing important…”
The apprentice nodded again, shifting uncomfortably and tugging at her cloak.
The silence stretched out as Talia drew on the stone with steady fingers.
And stretched.
And stretched.
And stretched, pulling at the young women’s nerves, goading them into seeing who would break it first.
A glance to the side told Talia that Osra was on the edge of succumbing first. The girl was biting her lip and staring intently at the runework with curiosity in her eyes.
Hazarding a guess as to her confusion, no telepathy required, Talia spoke up.
“So uh, you’re probably wondering why it looks different right?”
Osra jolted, pulled from inscrutable thoughts at the question.
“Oh—uhm—yes. I guess I was wondering why the other runes were all…” she paused, waving a finger in squiggly lines through the air, “Flowy? And these are…square-ish.”
Talia barked a laugh at the other girl’s earnest phrasing.
“Well, the scriptwork on my wand was in Runic, which is a derivative of Ancient Runic—actually, more like a descendant many times removed, whereas this is Old Dwarvish, kind of a true derivative. It takes the original runes and bends them somewhat. Like this, see?”
Picking a blank spot well away from the rest of the enchantment-in-progress, Talia drew out the Old Dwarvish rune for flame alongside the Runic version. While there were similarities, the contrast was made readily apparent to anyone with eyes. Like placing a worm next to a wyrm.
“See how much simpler it was to do the Old Dwarvish? What that means in practice is that Old Dwarvish is weaker in most respects—hence why I can carve it on stone without issues— and also a little less reliable.” Talia explained, raising her pencil in the air, “But! But, as a tradeoff, it’s simpler to hand out to a bunch of labourers and expect decent results. Also makes it a great teaching tool, and a great language to use in a pinch, like say, when you need an aspiration enchantment in a hurry. There’s a whole host of academic essays on the topic if you’re curious. I remember this particularly controversial one by Mas…” Talia trailed off as she noticed the glassy look in the apprentice’s eyes.
“So—er yea,” she finished lamely, returning to her work and feeling self-conscious.
Osra seemed to pick up on that at least, and a blush rose to her cheeks.
“Oh, sorry! I was just thinking about…I don’t know if you knew, but arcanistry is a heavily debated topic at the Temple. Some of the Primarchs say that we should leave the language of the gods to the gods, that we’re meddling with things not meant for us. Others say that we should treat it like the Gift of Magic and…” she trailed off in a parodic parallel of Talia just moments ago, as she noticed the vacant stare that had slowly crept across the arcanist’s face.
“Right, sorry, I’ll just let you work…” she muttered dejectedly.
It was at that moment that Talia was struck by an epiphany so blatantly obvious that she wished she could go back and smack herself in the back of the head.
Osra is just as bad at this as I am.
Mulling over the revelation as she put the finishing touches on the simple enchantment, Talia banished the swirling of contradictory thoughts and resolved to default to her usual directness.
Don’t overcomplicate it, just be honest. What’s the worst that could happen?
Mustering up the courage that had been sapped from her as a child, Talia set her pencil down and met the other girl’s verdant gaze with her own artificially grey.
“Look. I know we kind of got off on the wrong foot, and the truth of it is, I’m really bad with people. I never really had any—er… Well, let’s just say that after my adoptive father, my master is the closest person to me in my life and his three-year-old daughter is a close second.”
Osra’s eyes widened a fraction and she froze, but Talia pushed on anyway.
“So—er— what I’m saying is, I’d like to be your friend. If you’ll have me. If you want, that is,” she finished, already cringing at how desperate she sounded.
The silence that followed pulled her stare back to the outline of the enchantment traced out on the stone, pushing her to fiddle with a non-existent imperfection.
“Sure. I mean, yes. I’d like that,” Osra said.
“I know we have our differences, and maybe they’re irreconcilable, but I’ve been talking to Lazarus about being more social and—Oh. You would? Er—Great!”
The pair sat there for a moment, one fiddling with drawings on the rock and the other twisting her hands in the sleeves of her robes. Neither looked at the other. The tension rose at a steady clip until it came to a head. Osra let out a giggle, slapping her hand to her reddened face like it had surprised her, the effect so comical that it pulled a chuckle from Talia as well.
The laughter was infectious, spreading faster than a stone tumbling down the side of a chasm, until they were both drawing reproachful looks from the surrounding crew.
Reining in her mirth, Talia let out a satisfied breath.
“Right, now that that’s out of the way, how about we get on with this so that the cooks can get started on tonight’s feast?”
Osra nodded, a befuddled smile splitting her face like a ray from the sun Talia had only ever seen in dreams and stolen memories.
It wasn’t quite a friendship yet, just the seed, of a seed, of the beginning of one, but it still felt good. A little spark of lightness amid a dark and heavy month.
The young woman couldn’t help her own giddy smile as it rose to the surface, twisting her lips into a shape she’d almost forgotten.
Alright, now don’t fuck it up, Tals.
Even her snarky inner monologue couldn’t tear the moment away from her, as she began instructing Osra on where to start etching the stone.
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The work was done quickly, and soon enough, a lively fire had been set and heavenly smells began permeating the cavern. Talia saw a few dwarves hauling over untapped casks as the delvers settled in for some well-deserved rest.
As she stood, she noticed that her fellow mage was staring in consternation at the work they’d just done, a speculative look on her face.
“Copper for your thoughts?” she asked.
Osra’s confused look almost sent her chuckling again.
“Why would you…? Oh, an idiom. How…quaint,” she said, hiding an embarrassed blush.
Talia rolled her eyes and grinned.
I can’t believe I never noticed just how bad she is at this. Worse than me, for sure.
“So?” Talia prodded.
“Oh, well,” Osra began, looking around before shaking her head, “not here. Walk with me, I have to go find Master Zaric anyway.”
Curiosity piqued, Talia acquiesced, pointing to the direction her mindsense told her they’d find the mage-commandrum.
Once they’d gotten clear of the other crew milling about the fire-pit, Talia verbally prodded at her new friend again.
“Sooo…?”
“Right, I was thinking, is there a reason you don’t use your own affinity to etch runes? It seems to me that with fine enough control, you could probably get similar if not better results. Kinetics aren’t as powerful as the rest of the affinities, but what it lacks in raw power, it makes up for in versatility.”
Talia furrowed her brow, dropping her chin in one hand and giving the proposal some serious thought.
“I don’t know… My Will isn’t strong enough for that kind of precision I don’t think. Much as you might say I lack in raw power, so far, that seems to be all that my kinetics are good for.”
Osra hummed pensively.
“Hmmm. We’re opposites, that’s true. My Gift is skewed toward precision, and I’ve never struggled with Will constructs. On the flip side, compared to you, my Capacity is pitiful. I’d hazard a guess and say that you’re the more well-rounded of the two of us.”
Talia frowned.
“That may be, but you’re working on it. I see all the exercises Zaric has you do. Those cycling techniques can be torture at times, but you’re handling them like a champion.”
Osra blushed, averting her eyes.
“Oh, thanks…”
The two fell into a pensive silence for a while. But it was a good silence, kilometres away from the tense, forced nature of their previous interactions. Despite the sudden urge, Talia resisted the impulse to take a peek at what the other girl was thinking.
“Why couldn’t you do the same?” Osra suddenly asked.
“Huh?”
“Well, I’m training my Capacity, mostly emittance, almost exclusively these days. Meanwhile, the exercises Master Zaric has given you are broader, with a little spread out everywhere, no true focus,” Osra explained, “What if you took the opposite approach to mine, and dedicated most of your time to honing precision? The miracle of the gods’ Gift is that it can do almost anything, with the right amount of effort. Just because you lack fine control now, doesn’t mean you will forever.”
Softening her gaze out in the distance, Talia gave the idea another run-through, not just in its feasibility, but in its potential. She saw herself using her kinetics not just for brute force, but for guile and tactics.
The possibilities were endless.
Runework inscribed on walls in the midst of combat, powered with but a touch to create effects she could never hope to achieve on her own.
Never being at the mercy of her arcanist’s tools again.
Large-scale enchantments, created in but a fraction of the time, and in places that would otherwise be impractical.
It was enticing, and if Osra was right…
Entirely in the realm of the possible. All it would take is a concerted effort to get there. And lots of practice. Lots and lots of practice.
The young woman turned to her companion, eyes aglow with excitement, and a dozen questions already spilling off the tip of her tongue.
Their journey to find the mage-commandrum lasted much longer than it had any right to.