Chapter Thirty-Four

Loysa and Dwarguy sat patiently and ate slowly while I explained everything to Tes’alay from start to finish. For her part, she ate greedily, raising her hand several times to order additional portions. Loysa frowned a little more with each helping the elf ordered and, the fork scraping over an empty plate, the fifth one since my story began and brought us up to last night.

The elf raised her hand and shouted, “One more, please!”

“And now here we are.” I said and gestured to my comrades, “Dwarguy Davaran and Loysa…” It just occurred to me that I didn’t recall having heard Loysa’s last name.

“Just Loysa. No family name.” She added.

Tes’alay dove right into her introduction, “Right. Tes’alay Nika, sorceress and innovator and sometime mad genius. My friends just call me Tess.” She said and licked her lips as another plate was set before her, stacking neatly on top of the others, I had to wonder how much someone her size could actually eat.

She held the plate up and fairly wolfed the food down, munching on porridge with bread crumbs and bits of pork mixed in, the toasted bits crunched beneath her teeth and the steam rose up like fog. “It’s nice to meet you and all, but,” she lowered the plate for a moment and said, “I don’t know how much help I can be.”

“Why not? That was you last night, right? With the magic?” I asked. I discreetly left off the part about her conjuring her undergarments or the abundant vomiting from her cure poison spell.

“Yes. Yes, that was me.” She said and set the plate down before reaching for her cup of morning tea.

Dwarguy and Loysa both stiffened when she casually acknowledged it.

I think I must have underestimated how powerful those kinds of spells can be, and to casually acknowledge that kind of destructive power must have been no small thing.

She sat her cup down and folded her hands over her belly. “Fantastic.” She licked her lips, “Listen, I know that sounds impressive, and it is.” Her bright green eyes sparkled a little, “But I have a problem.”

“Drinking?” I guessed, and I got three sour looks.

“No.” She answered. “My magic… it doesn’t exactly work… not how it is supposed to.”

“What God or Goddess do you serve?” Loysa asked with a furrowed brow, “Did you offend them in some way?”

“None. That’s the point!” Tess exclaimed and put her pointer finger down hard on the table, “I want nothing to do with any Gods or any Goddesses. Screw the lot of them!” She hissed with unexpected wrath. “My parents were devoted to their deities and they both died in some pointless squabble over a bit of border territory. If those deities were good for anything, it should be to ensure shit like that doesn’t happen to those who serve them!”

The elf was shaking with fury, and Loysa was clearly shocked by the vitriol and the revelation that she was casting these spells without the release of a divine agent.

“Wait… so when you say it doesn’t work…?” She inched back as if Tess was about to explode, her chair scraping over the floor as she backed away, and Tess smirked a little.

“I can try all kinds of spells. But there’s almost no chance they’ll work how they’re supposed to. That’s what I’ve been working on, coming up with a way for people to use magic without any help from any deities. The trouble is?” She relaxed, sighed, and let her hand relax against the table.

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“I’m just ‘missign something’ and they go awry. Try to cast lightning to split a tree? I may get a ground shake that tears it apart. I tried to conjure a cloth, I got…well, never mind.” She huffed with indignation that would have been mysterious if I hadn’t been there.

“I tried to cure wounds once, the person died, but it became a resurrection spell instead. Usually something positive comes out of it, but I can’t remember the last time a spell worked how it was supposed to. I made a magic hat for a goblin once, the damn thing was supposed to make him work faster. Instead it sped up his time so that his normal pace was fast by comparison. Of course the trouble with that is that he’ll age faster while everything else continues normally. If he were to use it too often, he could die ‘young’ relative to everyone else. Still, I got paid for it so he was happy, I guess.”

“Resurrection? Slow spells? Conjuration… if all those things worked as intended, you’d be the most powerful magic user in the world.” Loysa whistled, but she did not inch closer to the table. “But instead you’re a world class screw up.”

It was shockingly blunt, but Tess took it well, she even nodded. “Afraid so.” She made to stand, putting both hands flat on the table and pushing up, “And I’m not an adventurer anyway, so thank you for the meal but, I’m not really your elf.”

I held my hand up with my palm out to stop her, out of the corner of my eye I could see Loysa’s eyes harden, she was clearly listening to her Goddess.

“Really? This is the one? You’ve got to be joking. There’s got to be some mistake?! She’ll probably cast a cure disease spell on us and turn us into vampires or something!” Loysa exclaimed and gestured vigorously toward the slender elven caster.

“Plus she’s a glutton! Are ‘you’ going to pay poor Aiko’s bill?! Let us find someone else, she doesn’t want to do it anyway!” Loysa exclaimed. “And she’s not even an adventurer!”

“She could register from here, couldn’t she? Just take her to the guild and evaluate us both when we’re done.” I answered, chiming in on her Goddess’s side.

Loysa glared at me as if I had betrayed her.

She opened and closed her eyes several times as if going from me to Kuduru and back again.

“Goddess damn it!” She said and cocked her head toward the waiting Tess. “Listen, you owe Aiko for the meal, and probably more. So how about this, you come with me, get registered with the guild, and go on one quest. You split the reward and then you can go back to blowing things up at random, how’s that sound?”

Tess nodded. “I suppose I do owe her… alright, fine. I’ll register and help you with… whatever.”

“Fixing a gate in Hapralee.” I answered.

She whistled, “So you’re a tinker. That explains the belt of tools.” Tess said with a genuine smile starting to form. “I think we’ll get along well. So do you already have the magitite?” She asked.

“No. That’s next.” My answer seemed to surprise her, her lips formed a little ‘o’ shape, and she answered…

“That explains stumpy, but if you want to get ore for that one, you’ll need to get ore from the same mountain that one came from. The gate in Hapralee is special, if you try to install it with something else, you’ll screw the whole thing up.” Tess said and I looked at both Loysa and Dwarguy to see if that made sense to them.

It clearly did not.

Tess chewed on her lip for a moment and said, “Look, it’s built to recycle mana to make sure it can’t be disabled or sabotaged. Remember that diplomat a few years ago who ended up in a dragon’s nest because somebody screwed with it and ended up kicking off a war? This is meant to prevent that by shutting down if there’s any tampering. Everybody knows magic interfering with magic is a huge problem with unintended effects. It’s why kitsune and other spirit beings can’t work mechs but can fire magipistols. You have to use magic on magic for the former, but for the latter you only have to keep the pistol charged. But gates require connection to gates, so the magic has to stay syncronized. That’s why they need confirmation for use between two sides, and that’s what makes them dangerous. A caster lied about the sync and somebody ended up where they shouldn’t have. The gate in Hapralee is designed to prevent that. The trouble is, now it will only be usable with ore from the same mountain it’s powered by. And that mountain has a problem with an ‘infestation’ right now. It won’t be easy to get to.”

“How do you know all that?” I asked when I got a chance.

“Easy. I built it.” Tess said as if it were nothing.

“I’ll take her to get registered right now.” Loysa said, rising to her feet. “The rest of you, wait here.”

We were not about to argue.