Unknown time of on the 47th day of Winter

"We'll, I'm not dead," I said. "and I know a lot more about the internal structure of a monster core so we'll count this as a win."

Schrodinger was watching me with his tail swishing back and forth. I was wrapping my thumb with a bandage trying to keep pressure on it to prevent it from bleeding too badly.

"Don't look at me like that." I said. "I'm okay. Really."

He seemed unconvinced.

I messed up my thumb poking what I thought would be a tiny hole in the core. My hope was that the pressurized gasses would escape slowly, maybe over the course of a few hours or even days. But I underestimated just how much force would be behind the stream of atoms coming out. The core started throwing out gas like a dam bottle rocket. And the stream was narrow enough it cut straight through my thumb, nail and all. I'm lucky that it was near the tip so it didn't cut through bone. Of course I dropped it. So, after it was done spewing gas, I had to dive down to the bottom of the lake to find it.

When I retrieved it intact I was too excited to wait. After swimming back to my usual spot I stuck my bloody thumb in my mouth and activated the microscope. I peeled the core back layer by layer until I could see the now empty channels. I moved more slowly after that trying to look closely at each structure before dissolving it. It struck me just how much the flow channels looked like blood vessels. I suppose that made sense, even if this was made of diamond it was still a biological structure. Step by step, I eventually got to the structure I thought was a fuel cell. Instead of two parallel plates it was more like a kidney. The organ, for lack of a better word, was covered in tiny capillaries that interwove the hydrogen and oxygen.

I paid close attention to what the separator was made of. As far as I could tell, it was just more diamond. Then I looked really closely and saw that it was porous at an atomic level and littered with the little hairs that allowed me to use death magic. The hairs lead through a structure that looks similar to the channels I had looked at. Eventually those structures ended at the shard of heavy elements at the center of the core. Again I had no idea how the channels worked.

The last and strangest thing I found was an incredibly small yet complicated structure that had thousands of tiny graphene wires leading to the surface of the core. Each wire was connected to something that looked a lot like a logic gate. They were atomic scale diamond transistors that would pull two neutron hairs together if a pulse was applied. They were attached to another structure made almost entirely of carbon-14. It was the magic channels I had looked at in that I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

I finished bandaging my hand and stood. "With this, I think I have everything I need to get the artificial core to work. At least all of the principles" I said with more confidence than I felt. My stomach chose that exact moment to growl loudly. Schrodinger finally seemed satisfied that I wasn't dying and wandered off.

"After lunch." I said.

***

Unknown time of on the 49th day of Winter

SCREEEEEE!! The silence of the tunnel was broken by the rat's cry of pain. Arin and I were hunting. Well, I was hunting and Arin had decided to come along. My handheld laser was up to about a kilowatt in power and so it made short work of the cave rat. Even still, it wasn't exactly a clean death. It was basically like burning to death by way of a white hot scalpel. Gruesome. The now very dead rat was covered in blisters and flaming hair. I could see blackened bone through narrow slits across its face and upper arms. No, this was not a weapon to hunt with. Then the smell hit me and I lost my lunch.

Arin bent down and held my long hair back while she kept an eye on our surroundings. That was nice of her.

"I'm sorry." I said.

"Don't worry about it." she said.

I took out my canteen and tried to clean the fowl taste out of my mouth. Afterwards I felt a bit better. We moved off to avoid the smell. With Arin getting me supplies I didn't have to cook the rat so we could just leave it down here.

"Thank you again." I said. "You really didn't have to come with me. But I am thankful nonetheless."

"Don't mention it." she said casually. "I owe you after… Well, that was a lot of gold you gave me for a pretty simple errand. I mentioned my family runs a bakery. Well, the change from your shopping trip was enough to get my mom a brand new oven."

She was leaning up against the side of the cave with a bit of a slouch. The lights in her hair were blue and purple today. We got moving again and walked in silence for a long while before either of us spoke. She seemed contemplative.

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"Hey Arin," I said cautiously. "I get the sense that something is on your mind. Would you like to talk about it?"

She looked at me with a bit of surprise. I think I had pulled her out of some sort of woolgathering. She didn't answer for a bit. Then she shrugged and spoke.

"I'm being pressured to join a mage house." she said.

I had heard that many of the larger mage houses actively recruited new blood mages. The methods varied but the way she said it made it sound like one of the less savory ones. I stayed silent but listened in case she wanted to say more.

"The real problem is that I can't tell if they are setting me up or just so powerful that they put pressure on people like me just by existing." she said with a bit of exasperation. "They want me to sign a vassal contract and it looks like a good deal to me. I even showed it to my dad who handles the business side of things and he also thinks it looks good."

She paused for a measure as we both walked in silence. She didn't seem to know how to say more. Like it was on the tip of her tongue but she couldn't quite put it into words. I tried to remember what I knew about vassal contracts. They were generally made to tie a new mage to a house without any specific emotional entanglements. So, it would generally come with a stipend, a specific rank in the family structure, and duties like fidelity. Very formal and dry. Entirely unlike what I had seen of Arin.

"Do you feel that the contract would tie you down or limit your freedom in some unspecified way?" I asked.

Her face lit up at that.

"Exactly!" she said. "But that's the hard part. The money and everything else is so good that it would make a lot of things easier too. It doesn't help that my parents' bakery got a bunch of city inspections just as all this was happening. I can't tell if it's them or just a system designed to screw people over unless they have connections."

I considered what she said for a bit before replying.

"That is certainly a hard problem with no simple solution." I said with genuine sympathy. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

"I don't know the details of your situation but I have an idea you may not have considered yet, if you'd like to hear it." I said.

"Yes, please." she said. "I have been going around in circles in my head about this all season."

I smiled at that.

"Have you thought about starting your own mage house?" I said.

She stopped walking so suddenly that I passed her by several steps before coming to a stop myself and turning to look at her. Her face was screwed up in thought.

"No, there's no way." she said. "I'd need a ton of money and power before I could start a house. Heck, I'd need a house to start a house. Isn't there a rule about owning land?"

I shrugged.

"Cinder has that rule for local house registration but not the kingdom." I said. "Normally, that would mean you would have to mail your paperwork to the capital but with the capital in ruins the city offices here have to accept them on the king's behalf. Then the king's representative in Cinder would be the one to review it and I just so happen to know that he commonly supports new blood mages in forming their own houses."

“Who are you talking about?” she asked.

“Donarad Aegis.” I said.

“The viscount?” she asked. “A viscount shouldn't have the power to elevate new nobility.”

“He is the voice of the king in the city and so technically his word is law.” I said. “However Cinder was made a free city by royal decree. So, try and follow the logic, if Viscount Aegis were to actually exercise his authority, he would be going against the king's stated word. Hence the position is both all powerful and entirely superfluous.”

She just raised her eyebrows at me.

“The point is that yes, at least until they tell us who the new king is, he has that power,” I said. “and, back in the day, he formed his own mage house and so he has supported a half dozen others to do that same over the years.”

She looked at me in stunned disbelief. She just stared at me for a bit before getting a thoughtful expression.

"But, how would that solve the problem? That would be the same as saying no. Right?" she said.

"Maybe, maybe not." I said. "You could of course tell them no. As a house you could approach other houses for better terms or just people that you actually trust and want to work with. Or, if you didn't want to tell them no, then it could be a way to renegotiate the terms of the existing contract. Mage houses don't normally sign vassal contracts. You could tell them to change it to a service contract for a limited period. Maybe put in some exit clauses for if they tried to exert too much control over you. You'd have to talk to a solicitor to get the details worked out but you would have more power than you do now."

These were the very basics you learn growing up in a mage house. Maybe I was slipping in a bit of experience from working for a defense contractor on Earth but not much. Our customers were always from different military branches of the same government so it wasn't like we could shop around for better terms without committing treason.

Now she was incredulous.

"You know, I think that was the best advice I heard from a man with puke on his shirt." she said, her face twisting into a wry grin. I immediately looked down and yes, I had a puke stain on my shirt. Damn, well whatever. She can take it or leave it. Huffing and blushing furiously I turned to walk away.

After a minute Arin caught back up to me.

"Thanks." she said.

"Even being a mage, very few people take me seriously. So, thanks."

Still a bit embarrassed, I didn't reply. We walked in companionable silence all the way back to the lake.