Amegnon was given a special dispensation by the Strong Right Hand of the Queen, loosening his soul oath enough that he could leave the city to help make preparations for the upcoming Dungeon Spirit Conclave. It wasn’t a big dispensation. The grounds where the Conclave was held every year was right outside the city. The grounds were also used for a yearly summer carnival that Amegnon had never attended.

The area was bordered by an unsecured white fence, and laborers bustled about erecting temporary buildings and digging ditches for an unknown purpose. Amegnon walked with his assistant, Steven, and another Magus, Berin, who was ultimate in charge of ensuring things got finished on the grounds. Berin stretched out a hand and pointed at four posts marking out a large rectangular area.

“Arch-magus. Here’s the location for the prime meeting tent. If you think the dimensions are suitable, we can break ground immediately. The rituals provided by the Dungeon Spirits need to be drawn directly into the ground with molten metal, so there’s some trial and error involved, and we need to start as soon as possible.”

“Are the dimensions not the same every year?”

Berin scratched the back of his head with an apologetic expression.

“Sorry, Arch-magus. Your predecessor was always particular about the size and shape of the tent. He modified it every year.”

Amegnon looked to Steven.

“Olivander would often poll the dungeon spirits the previous year, and throughout the year as he ran into them, so he could get an accurate count of attendees. He liked to make the tent cozy, but still able to fit all the spirits and other support staff. This was, I think, purely a stylistic choice.”

“Very well, these dimensions will hold all the dungeon spirits if it’s a full conclave?”

The Magus rocked his head back and forth and Amegnon cut him off.

“Just make it ten percent bigger. Are there any other pressing matters?”

“Ahh, one more. Where are we putting the gift tent? With the main meeting tent this large, the gift tent will have to be moved.”

“Gift tent?”

“I’m handling that,” Steven said. “It doesn’t matter where it goes, just fit it in anywhere, Berin.”

The Magus nodded and moved off.

“I forgot to include the gifts in your informational packet. Sorry for the oversight, Arch-magus. Olivander rarely picked out gifts because he didn’t like the tradition, so I did it every year in his stead.”

“What are the gifts for?”

“The spirits bring them back to their dungeons to use as rewards. This is usually prohibited, but the conclave has special rules.”

“Good work, Steven. What’s the budget for that?”

“It just comes out of our regular discretionary spending fund. It doesn’t take up any official Conclave funding.”

Amegnon would like to repurpose those funds toward his illicit information network, but it would be hard with Steven watching the books. It was hard to get anything by the man, and Amegnon suspected he knew about the other network. His own personal funds were somewhat modest. He had rarely charged for his services before becoming Arch-magus, and while it was easy to make money, he needed freedom of travel and free time to do so. He had a generous stipend and discretionary fund, but it was all tracked. Anything that he wanted off the books, he had to work into his plans, and budget, very carefully.

“I think we’re done here, Steven. Why don’t you head back and I’ll meet you there. I just want to walk the perimeter and make sure everything is secure.”

“Yes, Arch-magus. I’ll have the rest of the Conclave budget numbers drawn up for you when you return.”

Amegnon nodded and the man left.

He did as he said, and walked along the Conclave area perimeter, but he was more focused on the laborer he had seen taking a break. Martha’s bodyguard and go-between man, Jerome.

Amegnon stopped near the man and bent down, pretending to examine the perimeter nearby. He drew out a ritual he was becoming more proficient with every day. Soon an invisible bubble of sound and sight distortion surrounded them. It made an image of whatever they were already doing, so people wouldn’t be able to tell they were talking.

“Do you have a message for me?”

“Martha says the kid she sent hasn’t sent any messages back yet. It was a risk sending him. There was always a chance he was actually more interested in spending time with Olivander than trying to get any actual plans or information out of him.”

“Well, if he’s keeping the man distracted with research and theories, that might be just as good as an informant. I assume you didn’t come here just to tell me that bit of nothing?”

“No…Martha got word that Olivander made a visit to the city yesterday.”

Amegnon snapped into focus.

“Why?”

“He called in an old standing appointment with Professor Zuris Corvin of the Academy.”

“Corvin? Any relation?”

“Her father. Martha doesn’t know what was said at the meeting — naturally it’s hard to eavesdrop on two magicians as powerful as they are — but best guess says Olivander is looking to set up a meeting with the Hammer.”

“Does her father have the influence with his daughter to make that happen?”

“Ordinarily, no, but the fact that it’s Olivander looking for a meeting will probably be enough to pique her curiosity.”

Amegnon considered that. By all accounts, the pair didn’t get along, but Zemena herself had said she respected the man and his council. Now Amegnon needed to balance out and measure his response, if any.

The worst case assumption was that Olivander found out one of his deeper secrets. In that case he would be meeting with the Hammer, then they would be finding him and killing him. Even with all his power, Amegnon was barely a match for Olivander. It was only the element of surprise and the conflicting emotions within Olivander that had led to Amegnon’s easy victory in their duel. With the Hammer in the fight? Amegnon would be smeared across the floor.

That was an unproductive line of reasoning. He could make some small preparations, but he would dedicate his time to more reasonable conclusions. Olivander might just be curious about what Amegnon is up to. That was unlikely since there would be better sources of information than the Hammer. No, the only thing that made sense was that Olivander had, for some reason, made a trip to the northern border and seen the aftermath of the dungeon break there. Olivander would have easily discovered the balancing ritual's involvement and might even have been able to trace the involvement of both Zemena and Amegnon himself.

Olivander would then meet with Zemena and determine that Amegnon had been negligent. What happened after that was up for debate, but they wouldn’t rush into anything. Olivander might try to take back the position of Arch-magus. It would be hard to do it legitimately. The Queen wouldn’t approve Olivander’s request, even if the entire High Magus Council voted to reinstate him. Despite Amegnon’s actions, she was quite happy with their victory over Verenci.

It boiled down to the same end result — Olivander and the Hammer removing him from the position. Asking for forgiveness from the Queen would be easier with her Strong Right Hand to back up his claims. Amegnon guessed after the meeting he would have a day or two to finalize preparations. He would get started on them now, but he wouldn’t assemble anything until he knew Olivander’s intentions.

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All that could be wrong, though. Olivander might be meeting with Zemena for a completely unrelated reason. So either nothing would happen, or Amegnon needed to prepare for the fight of his life. Preparation it was.

“Thank you for bringing this to me, Jerome.”

“Of course, Arch-magus. Martha asks if you need anything from her as far as preparations go?”

“Yes…I think I’ll need some component materials. They shouldn’t be hard to get in the city, but they should be purchased all together. I’ll make up a list and send it along later today.”

“Alright, Arch-magus. I’ll be in touch.”

* * *

When Olivander checked back on Herman, the man had completed a small prototype that could only channel a rudimentary water flow regulation ritual. Olivander pointed out mistakes, and the man spent nearly a week perfecting the prototype, popping out of Olivander’s dimensional space for meals, demos, and occasional chats.

They were still in the woods south of Du’la’melio. Olivander didn’t have a reason to head farther south yet, and he needed a consistent place to run his own experiments and return to when he needed to think. He sat on a conjured stool at a workbench in their forest clearing, Fezzic mixed some compounds nearby, and the doorway to his dimensional space sat open next to them. Inside they could see Herman hard at work at his latest prototype attempt.

Sous sat on the workbench, active, but in a low power state they were experimenting with. It had some drawbacks, unfortunately.

“How long has it been?” Sous asked.

“Since you asked last or since we started?”

“Both?”

“Four minutes since you asked, two hours since we started. Your short term memory is intact and your longer term storage memory is working fine, but you seem to run out of short term memory, and that fails to make it into your long term memory storage. The window seems to be a rolling three and a half minutes.”

“That doesn’t seem great.”

Olivander ignored the comment, since it was around the fiftieth time he’d heard it, but it was still worth walking through the problem out loud.

“Even with the capacity orb, your power draw is too great. We can get you three hours of full functionality without any intervention on my or your part. If we could get your memory working in this low power state then you could swap between them as needed throughout the day. The low power draw is quite sustainable. You’re at around seventy percent reserves after two hours of active time.”

He was working on some other tasks besides Sous power issue, but it was the one he could, in theory, make progress on right now. He was still waiting to hear from Zuris Corvin on the appointment he was supposed to be setting up with his daughter, and he had a week until the Conclave began. If he hadn’t heard from Zuris or Zemena by then, he would have to take more direct action.

That was a risky proposition.

Staging a coup of the throne would get him killed. A coup of the Arch-magus position would probably work out depending on how quickly he managed it, and how generous the Queen was feeling. Still, any solution where Amegnon didn’t do gods knows what to the Dungeon Spirits was a win in his book.

“Finally!” Herman shouted from inside the dimensional space.

He picked up the device he was working on and brought it outside to show the others. Olivander turned expectently, and Fezzic looked excited. Last time Herman had demoed a prototype it had exploded, launching him into a tree. Fezzic had laughed for half an hour. They liked Gregory’s brother, but he could be a little single minded.

“Bet you a silver he blows up again?” Fezzic said.

Olivander eyed the construct, but without being able to see the internals, he didn’t know what it would do. He shrugged and tossed a silver coin between them. Fezzic grinned and did the same.

“I figured out what I was doing wrong! The connections between stages were too small, so power was getting backed up. The build-up, as we all saw, was rather explosive.”

“Definitely not something you should scale up and bury under a city,” Olivander said.

“That would be pretty bad. But! I fixed the issue, and while I was doing it I realized I can do a lot more.”

Fezzic’s smile grew as Herman started listing off potential uses and modifications for the construct. The goblin nodded along and rubbed his hands together.

“Herman,” Olivander interrupted. “You didn’t just want to see if it didn’t blow up again? Before making a bunch of unknown modifications?”

Herman shook his head and waved his hands violently, as if to batter the idea out of the air.

“No, no, no! I didn’t make a bunch of modifications, I made two simple modifications that enable all the customization I just mentioned. Instead of being a water flow control module, I customized the construct to accept a ritual or script ring.”

He pulled a tab on the top of the metal device and pulled out a ring with a ritual etched into the surface — the water flow modulation ritual.

Olivander opened his mouth and Herman cut him off.

“And before you ask, no, we don’t need to swap out all the downstream nodes with every new ritual — that was my second modification. I changed the node ritual to be generic enough that it can simply request and measure whatever element or subject of the greater ritual.”

Olivander shut his mouth. That was a great idea, actually. They were just measuring output and sending signals back to modulate flow, they didn’t actually need to know what they were sending through to figure out that flow.

“An inspired idea. I appreciate the ingenuity, but I do have a question. Why bother if these devices are going to be installed for specific tasks. Drawing the rituals to match the type isn’t much, but it is a very slight efficiency increase.”

“That’s the thing! With the new configuration, we’re no longer limited to using this device in large scale water management scenarios. Let’s say, for example, you have a new, state of the art home built that has a wide array of different magically powered devices. In theory there could be a single line of magical input for an entire neighborhood. One of these devices could modulate power flow to a given home, and another inside the home could modulate power to each individual effect. The savings versus the rechargeable mana stone lattices that most homes currently use would be staggering!”

The idea wasn’t new. Olivander had seen proposals for several. But the fact that, using a device like Herman was proposing, they could do all the different infrastructure managment elements with a single mass produced construct? That was revolutionary.

“Yes…this could work. This has the makings of a very important discovery, Herman. Now, let’s see if it works.”

Herman nodded. He slotted the ritual back in and connected the construct to a small water source. While, in theory, the construct could be used for just about anything, in practice, water was the single most straightforward application.

Herman fed a trickle of mana into the construct and it started to glow. It had four arms that lead to the child nodes. Herman opened a valve in front of one, then finished powering the construct.

A slow whine built, and Fezzic moved to the other side of the workbench for cover. Olivander double checked and, yes, his deflection ward was active.

When the whine reached a crescendo, and Olivander thought the machine would break again, the water started to move. It flowed out of the spigot Herman had opened. He cheered and played around with the other configurations. It wasn’t powerful, and it needed a lot of refinement, but for a prototype, it did what he wanted.

Olivander smiled at Fezzic and pocketed the coins from the table. The goblin scowled, but he still congratulated Herman.

“Good job, Herman. I don’t know about all the stuff you guys said this might do, but it seems to work.”

“Indeed it does,” Olivander said. “Should we test it out with another ritual? If we’re going to spot issues early, that’s probably where we’ll see some.”

“I would love to, but I haven’t made any more ritual inserts yet.”

“Not a problem. Here.”

Olivander conjured a metal ring with a ritual inlaid on it. One for air manipulation. It was, in some ways, even simpler than the water manipulation, but had a few quirks. Air could compress, while water, generally speaking, couldn’t. It might expose some faults.

“Oh, that is handy…could you have been helping me the whole time?”

“Me? No, I’m too busy to help with this kind of research.”

“I saw you reading a book out here earlier.”

“Research.”

“You’re researching romance novels?”

Olivander didn’t reply, and after a moment, Herman shook his head and took the ritual ring.

Herman inserted it into the device and powered it on. Air started moving immediately. Not much, and very gently, but it was definitely working.

As the power ramped up, Olivander closed all the outflow valves. The construct continued running, sucking in air. Herman frowned at it.

“It should stop while nothing is consuming the flow.”

“I suspect it can’t tell the difference between increasing pressure and flow slowing. You may need to measure the pressure just beyond the controllers, unless you’re trying to build an air cannon.”

Olivander released the valve and it let out a blast of air before slowly powering off as Herman cut off his mana.

“That’s a good point. Are there any other faults you see right now?”

“Nothing that we can’t refine later. I don’t think we need to worry about passing lava through it right now.”

“Do you have some lava?” Fezzic asked.

“Why would I have lava?”

The goblin shrugged. “You carry around weird stuff sometimes. Lava could be useful though. I haven’t experimented with it before, I bet there’s some interesting alchemical properties.

“And you just think I have lava in my pocket?”

“Honestly?”

Fezzic thought about it for a long moment, studying Olivander.

“With the way you’re dragging this out, yes, definitely. Why are you carrying around lava?”

“I’m not! That’s what I asked. You’re just stealing my own words!”

Herman looked between the pair and slowly backed away. “I’m just going to head back in…”

“Fine. Sorry. Can I get back to work now?”

“Apology accepted. Of course you may. Oh, I almost forgot. Here, I got you this.”

Olivander held out an enchanted flask filled with a red glowing material.

“Really?”

“I heard it could be useful for alchemy.”