The next morning, or what I assumed to be the next morning, the Archmagus resumed our lessons on magic, though there simply hadn't been enough time to bring in a new desk and chalkboard. The man had apparently foreseen damage to the chalkboard and other materials and furniture, as he'd ordered three of each, but the others had yet to arrive. Instead, he opted to to trace the arrays in the air, using some manner of magic he'd yet to teach me to make them visible, though he seemed somewhat tired by the task.
Not a spell, then? Or perhaps a somewhat complicated one.
Like the day before, we began with an explanation of various traditions and their benefits and weaknesses. Of the some dozen traditions he offered a basic analysis of, only two caught my attention.
The first was an offshoot, specialized variant of the incantation tradition the magi that brought me here used, focusing on poetry and verse to make their incantations easier to remember and perform. That tradition, or so Callahan told me, was often used on the battlefield, in conjunction with song, since war drums, trumpets, and so on were commonplace in standing militaries, and the structure of the tradition allowed for flexibility in the spells being cast.
The second tradition utilized a physical medium for the spells, such as silk or clay, something relatively tough but malleable, arranged in the proper shape for a given spell to pre-cast a spell to be used at any time, held together by their version of the elemental key-rune, which they called a lynchpin. This allowed a magus of this tradition to prepare a number of spells in advance, limited only by their personal knowledge and skill and the time they had to create their catalysts.
While extremely interesting, none of the offered traditions stood out to me as something beneficial for me to learn, trapped as I was in an immobile body with no hands. The incantation traditions offered little benefit to me, as any manner in which I was forced to fight would be better suited by ritual spells or prepared traps, and the catalyst tradition was simply impossible for me to use in any concrete manner.
So, I opted to continue training in the rune array tradition Callahan had taught me first. I imagine he took into account my situation, and offered me a tradition I could actually use, though I'm sure there was a personal bias at play, as well. Still, even if I'd found another tradition I could use, I would still choose the Archmagus' in order to lean into any personal desire to teach his tradition he may have, and flatter him by having a foreigner indirectly proclaim his the best tradition.
Eventually, though, I needed to learn about my new body and its capabilities, no matter how fascinated I was by arcane theory and practice.
[Callahan,] I started, during a lull in the lessons. [As much as I find the practice and theory invigorating, I do need to understand what a Core is and what they- we can do. I would rather not experiment with enchantments and abilities I know nothing about.]
The Archmagus hummed, and scratched at his beard, nodding absently. "Yes, that is true. Very well," he said, grabbing a somewhat-crude chair to sit down, and spare his aging knees. "As I said the other day, I'm no expert on the subject, but I can tell you about the basics. How about we start with something specific you're curious about?"
[Yes, in that case...] I paused, largely for theatrics, but also to give me a chance to string the words together. [What are... living fortresses as opposed to dungeons?]
"Ah, a good question, my friend," he replied, leaning back in his creaking chair. "For the most part, there isn't really much of a difference at all. A living fortress is a dungeon that's been bound and controlled by someone to create, well, a living fortress, capable of reacting and changing, to some extent, in response to the needs of the person controlling the Core.
"Dungeons, on the other hand, are wild Cores, seeking only to protect themselves and increase their power. Dungeons are, in fact, the primary source of magical Cores. They spring up in areas of high mana concentration, and instinctually use their abilities to create labyrinthine deathtraps, baited with magics and uniquely enchanted objects, so they're quite useful for training specialist troops and knights, as well as researching magic."
[I see... And dungeons aren't sapient at all? I've been told I'm the first Core capable of speech that anyone knows of.]
"That is correct. They seem to all function on roughly the same set of rules and conditions, but none have thus far been observed to understand speech, much less be capable of responding. Some Archmagi and artificers have managed to create more complex, adaptable Cores, but..."
I hummed absently, considering how he described Cores. Magical ANI? But the fact they occur naturally, and have similar, if not identical, behaviors across the world implies they are created by some actor or force in the world...
[That raises many complex questions, but I'll put those aside, for now. I can't say I'll be able to contribute much to a theoretical conversation without understanding more of the basics.]
"You're not wrong. What we know implies a great many things about the nature of magic, some of them... less than pleasant. Anyway, what do you wish to know about next? Golems, perhaps, and other automata?"
I chuckled to myself at his question, hoping the sound was audible to him. [Yes, golems and automata. I'm sure you can guess why I'd like to know.]
"Of course. It would be one of the first things I asked about, as well, were I in your position," he said, nodding with somewhat sad expression painted on his features. Colors were still beyond me, but my practice with controlling my mana had improved my 'vision' to some extent, and I could make out more subtle details now.
"The Cores of golems and automata are structurally identical to dungeon Cores, and hunting naturally forming golems and elementals is the second most common source of Cores, followed by manual creation of them, by a wide margin. When a Core is taken from its dungeon or golem, they're generally stripped of enchantments, and re-enchanted depending on the intended role for the Core.
"A golems Core is enchanted with various effects, but the most prominent is the ability to move material connected to it by mana circuits. Unfortunately, the enchantments have a minimum size requirement, and we've so far been unable to reduce that size to that of an average person. At the moment, the smallest golem in the kingdom is eight and a half feet tall, and weighs nearly a ton."
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[I can see incredible siege and construction applications for it, but... Yes, that's much too large to act as a replacement body for me. I wouldn't be able to fit anywhere.]
"You're not wrong. It's common to have a number of siege golems attached to a regiment of soldiers. Let me ask you a question, though," he said, leaning forward in his chair and eyeing me. "We've been assuming that your minimum size is about that of this room, but the cult that did this to you aims to turn themselves into demons. What was the smallest range of your senses when you regained consciousness?"
[Ah. I... am not sure. When I first awoke, I couldn't sense anything. Not even sound.]
The Archmagus blinked a few times, and leaned back in his chair, exhaling sharply as his gaze drifted to the ceiling. "That... Your minimum size should be about the size of your Core, then. I... Gods, they truly did manage it. They created a sapient, artificial demonheart."
A... demonheart? [Archmagus, what... what are you talking about? What's a demon?]
"Ah... You don't have demons where you're from? No, I suppose that makes sense, if your people only discovered magic a few decades ago..." He sighed, sitting straight again, but casting his eyes towards the floor as he thought. For a few minutes, he opened his mouth to speak but stopped and returned to his thoughts several times.
"Right. Cores are also sometimes called dragonhearts or demonhearts, as it's said that dragons and demons have Cores in place of hearts. At least in the case of dragons, this isn't true. They do have Cores in their bodies, but they also have a normal heart, much as anything dragon related can be considered 'normal'...
"Demons, on the other hand... It's unknown for certain if they genuinely have a Core instead of a heart, as it's been centuries since one was slain without destroying everything around it, including the body. Demons are... beings of pure malice, and incredible power," he said, shaking his head, and pushing his hair back from his forehead as he stood up and began to pace.
"The Queen will need to hear of this... Tesha," he said, the name louder than the rest of the sentence as he whirled around to look for the girl. I hadn't even noticed her in the room, focused as I was on the conversation.
Her eyes were wide with something akin to shock or fear, and she started sharply when Callahan called her name. "Er, yes, Archmagus?"
"Write a report about this to the Queen, and inform Captain Markus of the situation. Include his recommendations for defenses and reinforcements in the report, and request a squad of warmagi to be deployed," he ordered, and the young magus immediately hurried out of the room and into the imperceptible hallway beyond.
"I'm sorry, my friend, but... don't worry. We won't let that cult take you back, not while we still breathe. We assumed they would return in force to retrieve you, but... This information means they will be substantially more aggressive in their attempts," he explained, taking his seat again.
[I... see. All the more reason for me to understand what I'm capable of, then. So, if my minimum size is about equivalent to that of my Core, then I could feasibly be put into a Human-sized golem, yes?]
Callahan chewed his beard for a moment, but eventually nodded. "Yes, that's correct. Unfortunately, any golem we used at that size would be exceedingly fragile, or phenomenally expensive. Stone, clay, even iron and steel would be too brittle or too heavy to function, and more apt materials... The ideal is adamantine, but I don't think there's enough adamantine in the whole of the kingdom to make a human-sized golem out of," he said, shaking his head, a bitter grimace on his lips. "Besides, we have no idea how that might affect your soul."
[Yes, I... would rather not lose even more of my memories, even if it would get me a more able body.]
Even if I was willing to risk that damage, I knew little of arcane automata, after all, and had no choice but to trust the man in his assessment. The Imperium had its own kind of automata, and though I wasn't an engineer, even I knew that using a material too heavy would increase power draw drastically, as well as present transportation issues, and a brittle one would simply result in the thing being shaken apart by its own movement. These people likely had better metallurgy than I was imagining, thanks to their magic, but I still doubted they'd be able to make use of titanium alloys or extremely high performance steels as we could, as well.
[In that case, I suppose we should focus on my capabilities as a living fortress, yes?]
The Archmagus nodded slowly before turning his attention back to me. "Yes... Yes, that's a good idea. We'll have to wait for the Queens permission to begin actually utilizing those capabilities, but her Majesty has scheduled a... visit for a few days from now, so we'll be able to ask her permission then."
The rest of our time together for the day was spent with Callahan giving me as detailed a lecture on the capabilities and functions of dungeon Cores, though he had to reference multiple books several times to ensure his information was accurate. He'd been an adventurer when he was younger, he claimed, but that was decades ago, and the memories were faded.
The exact extent of my abilities and how they worked was a complicated subject, but they could be boiled down to two major functions.
The first, and less complex on a practical level, was that dungeon Cores could claim physical space around them and treat it as a part of their body, more or less. This could potentially drastically increase rate at which a Core could draw in mana, and allowed the Core to more easily perceive a greater area. My senses, or so the Archmagus informed me, were not a function of the Core, but rather that of any entity which could manipulate and detect mana, and it was easiest to apply to ones own body, so as my 'territory' grew, the area I could readily sense would also grow.
Secondly, the enchantments on a dungeon Core, though most living Cores did not share this function, would allow the Core to create subservient life and subjugate non-sapient life with mana. This, Callahan informed me, was how dungeons raised armies, created traps, and expanded its physical domain. Subservient creatures could be used to build traps, dig tunnels, construct equipment and defenses, and so on, as well as behave as a military force, when necessary, by defending the dungeon from intruders or raiding the surrounding area for more resources, and occasionally captives.
Apparently, while the underlying mechanics applied to everything and everyone, dungeons and living fortresses were in a unique position that allowed them to draw incredible volumes of mana from slain foes. The mana in a creature would not dissipate upon death, and instead would seep into the air around the corpse, and anyone within range of the body would be able to draw strength from that mana. This was largely useful for recovering mana after a battle, but for Cores, and the occasional magus that knew how to rapidly absorb mana from their surroundings, it meant killing could be used as a method of growing ones power.
Therefore, dungeons could be more accurately described as predatory places, a sort of genius loci, and a vicious, hungry one, at that. The most successful dungeons had figured out that they needed to strike a balanced between lethality and reward, in order to bait more and more people into them, seeking the treasures and power they laid out to draw in more prey while killing enough of them to recoup the losses of any creatures and magics destroyed and looted by the survivors.
To aid in this, dungeons often commanded their denizens to create traps that would slowly sap the mana of any intruders, slowly weakening them and strengthening the Core while the intruders stayed within its territory.
Hearing this, something clicked in my mind, and a plan began to form. It would take quite some time, and the express permission of the Queen, but a way forward had presented itself, and I would not let it pass me by.