Maturation 1

September 16th, 2032

There was something unreal about how glorious soaring through the skies of Ersete was.

The wind was warm on my face, Reyna shaping the current with her wings and her spirit. The sky didn’t cool even as fall approaches, with the ground green and brown, stretching before us.

I could see how she seemed to rewrite reality to her whims, her periwinkle energies appeared like sequences of calculations, of knowledge and information.

Violet magic was all about sequences induced upon the information makeup of the universe. Modern enchantment was itself a cast-off of the complex equations and sequences of Violet magic. Which sounds cool until you realize the most complex of its spells involve huge mathematical proofs.

Fortunately, while math was the layout of the surging Violet, it was also tied to language, and the mental concept of information. Using various operations and informational manipulations to alter reality.

Something like…

Deconstruct iron => collect product => transmute product => construct gold.

Which would give an equation like transmute[ deconstruct(iron) ] = gold, with transmute(x) and deconstruct(x) as functions formed into combinations, into spells. Of course turning that into a damn spell was difficult, and getting a detail wrong could easily backfire.

But the brain was more than capable of guiding the mathematical and linguistic currents of the mind into shape. Sequences of memory, of the generation of patterns, like how a person could throw a ball without having to do equations in their head.

Reyna was a flying beast, air and current, direction and movement was embedded into the deepest channels of her memory. I could see echoes of those patterns of knowledge, of a thousand trials and errors shaping the wind. The wind itself was inscribed with movement, gently parting around us.

“You're an amazing girl,” I complimented my companion with a sappy grin, firmly holding on to her saddle. “Being able to fly as you are, I couldn’t imagine it outside of my dreams.”

She pushed her head up, and I firmly met the top of it with my right hand. Impressions rushed through our touch, her memories trickling down like streams of air.

Memories of gratitude and bashfulness, with spaces full to the brim of knowledge. Of Reyna learning the highest secrets of the Violet, of acceleration, weight and movement.

Weight manipulation, I projected towards Reyna with a quirk of my brow.

More impressions, a flash of a large black griffin raking their front claws to form a point. A building collapsed like a pile of bricks, as structural support shattered.

“Well that’s a terrifying method of manipulating weight isn’t it? And it’s distinct but related to void… manipulating a different layer of existence?” The seven sources of magic had overlap, it was impossible for that to not be the case.

It was the methods, the perspective that changed, different aspects of the same energy attracted to certain concepts of Reality. The Violet changed information to manipulate weight, the Gray changed possibility itself to conjure magic into existence.

The back of my neck tickled with goosebumps, the air shifting and rising without warning.

“Wait what—” I was cut off by a powerful gust of wind, spanning a hundred meters.

Sundiver appeared out of refracted air, along with a handful of other griffins flying in his wake. Like a squadron of fighters escorting a bomber, which was not remotely metaphorical. Dinah had told me as much, at baseline Sundiver could generate hurricane-level winds. At his strongest, he had been a living storm-god, his downforce flattening thousands of threaded ones like gnats.

Being larger than a jet did offer a lot of perks when it comes to raw power.

“So what brings you to our neck of the woods?” I chatted up Sundiver, projecting my voice.

Sundiver snorted and began to turn, his horde-members following his actions like a well-oiled machine. And I finally noticed the position we were in, with Reyna forming the point of the flock.

What?

“Are you saying you’re here for us? Why?” I asked with a whimper, at the idea of being followed by an entire flock of griffins.

You know why, was written all over his expressive feathered face as we banked towards the port of Cruorpool.

“Oh. I guess that’s why I’ve been seeing you guys on the outskirts of the area? You were scouting us out?” I made a wild guess.

He nodded with a smug tilt of his beak, a strangely human expression.

We flew in silence for a moment, before my eyes made out the shape of metal boats and ships on the water of foreign construction.

Glabrous perhaps? Or one of the other coastal kingdoms?

“I’m going to go down, please don’t bother anyone?” It was phrased as a plea and the White Dancer chortled as he let an updraft push him upward.

Ugh.

The boats were self-powered, a touch of the Blue seeping into the waters around the two ships.

“Dive, Reyna.” I politely ordered, and she listened, like a smooth missile rushing through the sky.

My heart lurched as she rushed backwards with a fluttering of her black as night wings. We circled the vessels, all of them holding sailors of various ethnicities and peoples. I could hear them loudly conversing among themselves, jostling each other around, general sailor behavior.

At twenty meters, we were close enough to shout a conversation.

“Hello there!” I shouted, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Are you all sailing for Cruorpool?”

One man stepped up, a thin and lithe ogre with pale blue skin and hair threaded with beads.

“Yes we are! We are coming for your victory festival, with letters and tribute from King Arnulf clan Amali, King of High Corpus. Do you know the way?” He called back. I kept myself from flinching at the name. “I am Zazag clan Amali, his kith and kin and captain of these three ships!”

I kept calm. “You’re in the right place, it should only be another hour or so, right in time for lunch at the meal halls. Just keep an eye out for ironback snarks, they love the taste of ship steel!”

“Much obliged good knight! I look forward to meeting your king, and your accomplishments in detail!”

I blushed a deep shade of red. “Of course, I don’t mind at all!” I faked all of my confidence, puffing up my chest and placing my hands on my hips.

With that, I gave him further directions and took off ahead before my facade cracked like an egg.

This was going to go poorly I just knew it.

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A few hours later, I was standing next to Dinah on the docks, fiddling with my cloak. My fingers fiddled with the refreshed fabric, which had been grown and weaved into a much larger garment. More akin to a cloak coat, with arm slits and buttons. More akin to a poncho or a more billowy trench coat.

It was a single piece of fabric, with potent new enchantments weaved into the fabric. A bounded field, knitting a boundary line of magical energy. It was designed off the principle of resistance, the body’s natural ability to reject hostile magic. It was essentially a circuit to fill with magical energy, used to reject outside energies.

It would work well against purely metaphysical attacks, and the stored energy could be shaped into barriers engraved into the field.

It had taken Ultima and I weeks to work it out, but it meant I had a cloak that could shield me from mental and physical attacks.

Dinah nudged me gently, and I smiled carefully at the noble dragoness. The two ships had of course brought heralds of the King of High Corpus, an independent city built into a mountain valley down along the eastern coast. A population of ten thousand souls, with allies up and down the black coast.

They were a major port city, as their valley ended at the sea, and were… well often a center of piracy and raiding across the boiling sea.

They had arrived an hour ago, and more ships had been reported in, Sundiver’s griffins spotting them for us. It didn’t help when said griffin decided to use the dock as a perch, smugly splayed out like the queen he was.

The third ship coming into port hailed from Glabrous, carrying a message from queen Jessenia. The queen’s herald was a reedy catfolk, wearing rich and pretty clothing. Their ears twitched at the sight of me, clearly aching to ask me questions.

They had been unboarded for some time, but were waiting to see who was on the fourth ship. Which for your information was from the southern neighbor of Glabrous, the taifa of Pedicles. A peninsular kingdom jutting out from the eastern coast, forming the Strait of Pedicles. Though only a fraction of their kingdom was within the peninsula itself.

The newcomers pulled up to the dockside, and I heard Whiskers… yes that was their name purr.

“Well well well, I see Pedicles have sent their best and brightest!” They rudely called out, though it was at least teasing instead of violence.

“I see you haven’t gotten killed by your curiosity yet doll!” The dwarf captain hollered, flourishing a braided beard and tattoos like chalk written into stone.

Probably, hard to tell.

The king stepped forward, offering the man the usual rite of hospitality and safe shores. The man accepted with a heavy bow, mingling with his crew as they headed up towards the guest quarters and meal halls.

“Do you know what that’s about?” I asked, leaning towards Dinah to whisper.

“Glabrous and Pedicles have gone to war more than once in the past,” Dinah said with an eye towards a fifth skyship. “Though not in about forty years, even so… rivalries remain strong.”

“The range limits on your communication technology is really biting your people in the ass.” Five ships had popped up onto shore, barely caught by patrols in time.

“We’ve been dealing with… interference, the dissolution of a certain realm left echoes in the flow of connections.” Dinah said defensively in response to my words.

“So that fifth ship is from Xiphus right, the coast down past the peninsula?” I presumed from the flag bearing the symbol of the taifa.

She slumped. “Which means we only need Azygos to have a direct route from the whole east coast to Proteus.”

“Proteus of course being the largest and most powerful taifa with a population of a hundred and twenty thousand, and the seat of the entire kingdom of Danab.”

Well, fuck.

This was going to be a trend wasn’t it? A trend of drawing far more attention than I should be. Lovely, wonderful, excellent.

I saw Whiskers double back, yowling at someone on the ship. In a flicker of movement, another person emerged from the vessel. A rigid of all things, in six-limbed glory.

They had a teardrop shaped body of smooth burnished metal, with six jointed limbs ending in flexible grabbers. A long neck stretched outwards, ending with a tapered hooded head with four glowing optics. Their movement was unsettlingly organic, smooth and fleshy rather than stuttering and mechanical.

Well at least it meant I got to mean new people and have new experiences.

So that was something.

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The ground was earth, the plants were organic and most of the creatures that prowled around were also organic. The realm around him was truly the realm of those of flesh rather than metal and crystal. It was more than he had ever seen in Jangha, a realm of silver and shine with pockets of flesh.

A six-limbed rigid, exploring the world beyond his ancestral forgeland. For the first time since the Burning and since an old companion had vanished into the wind.

He wasn’t at all surprised when he saw the face of the human at the edge of the docks. A small thing, her frame hidden under a dense and swaying cloak tightly fastened to her person.

Curious, the rigid thought. She knows no signs of fear even among nobility. He approached, dextrous metal limbs clicking against hardwood folding.

She was speaking amicably with the Caudalann heir, a wide grin revealing a disarming cute lack of fangs.

Observation: She is confident, she is not reacting to the pressure of magic in the air. Insufficient data to fit to further conclusions.

Then there was the unknown variable in the room, the enormous White Dancer sunning himself on a closed dock. The griffin was nearly seventy standard units in length, with eyes like the sky, like fire.

He analyzed the human knight further, taking into account how she gently guided along her spirit-beast companion. A young Nightscreamer in the middle of her final growth phase. Five kilograms a week for the next sixty to seventy weeks.

The beast slinked with a predatory grace, talons curving along wood and stone. For a moment those eyes honed in on the rigid, and he instinctively raised the barriers of his mind. He could see the brilliant storm of the Violet within that beast, he would not have his song stolen, silenced, stilled.

The beast seemed to almost smile, and with a slight shrug of her shoulders brought the attention of the human down upon him.

Observation: Bitch. He attempted to retreat but the human’s eyes widened, and there was a glitch in his visual systems as reality screamed itself into a coma.

She had crossed the distance between them in an instant, entire tangles of existence ceasing to exist in the vacuum while others grew in the absence left in her wake.

The heir blinked and went after her knight, at a steady and careful case.

The girl blinked. “Sorry about that. Might have gotten overzealous, you’re a rigid aren’t you? If that isn’t rude to ask?”

Overwhelmed force is unlikely to dissuade her. “From a human it is not. You are the Traveler then?”

Her eyebrows furrowed. “Traveler? I suppose I am?” She bent her arms, sliding back to grant him space. “I’ve never seen a souled rigid before, there aren’t many in this region. Which is sensible, the water is a bit caustic.”

She’s familiar with the local environment, and naive. I could kill her in an instant, but she does not appear afraid despite her rumored intelligence. The facts do not match. Hypothesis: She is as powerful as the rumors said and flaunting it.

Celia’s eyebrows lifted. “So what’s your name, if you don’t mind me asking.” She whispered an admonishment under her breath in an unfamiliar language.

“I am Adahn.” He said.

“Celia.” She offered with a curious grin in dark eyes, meeting his swiveling receptors. He saw the ghostly patterns of stripes and lines across her face, every tiny blemish illuminated in ultraviolet. “So you came here with the retinue from Glabrous?”

“I paid for passage on their ship as I am on a journey seeking knowledge,” Adahn carefully explained, revealing the primary reason for his presence. “There was insufficient new data in Jangha, and I followed the rumors to this land.”

Her dark eyes seemed to paradoxically brighten. “Huh, so not that different from me. Though the distance is both infinitely greater and infinitely lesser.” There was amusement in her voice though not at his expense. “Hope you get what you need from this place.”

Adahn tilted his head. “Observation: You are an odd one.” He said bluntly, calculating that he would not be harmed for the accurate comment.

She laughed. “You’re not wrong, but I wouldn’t call this world perfectly normal either. But that’s just a matter of perspective isn’t it?”

He flexed his limbs, fractal lattices flexing beneath layers of dense mineral skin.

“Curious. I believe we should speak again when we have the opportunity.”

Her face fell. “Oh… you need to get settled don’t you? But yeah, I would like to talk with you in more detail. I have so many questions.”

The human was unceremoniously tugged by the hood of her cloak, the heir of Caudalann offering an apologetic look. He lifted his front limbs into the air, waving as organic witches did.

Adahn watched them go, vanishing into the crowd at the docks. The moment they were gone he acted.

He flexed not his limbs but the heart of his power, reaching into the realm of knowledge and memory, circling the realm of chaos and perception. He saw formulas and equations, song and chords weaving the working mind of the city itself.

This was what he sought, a new realm to explore, new paths and knowledge, the memory of a Place open for him to discover.

I hear the song of a mind born of a hundred generations, a robust formula.

He would partake in this city as needed, to complete his self-set mission.