Near Barringstone [Westibule mountain chain], local time [1793.11.09]
Before they reached the mines, Aisha unloaded Zeph on the ground and started instructing him about the use of his new Spells, as he was new to this kind of warfare.
They were still a few kilometers away from their goal, inside a small vertical ridge in the mountainside. After the first fiasco with Xim, they didn’t want to risk early detection.
The night was silent. It would be another few hours before the early birds started to sing about. Sounds of their whispered conversation were lost between the walls of the low, fern-covered cliff and the forest beyond. The brilliant light of the moon was able to illuminate even the forest floor.
Zeph listened intently to her instructions until he noticed she didn’t really understand his capabilities. All she talked about were an ‘average mage problems’. But changing the shape of one’s Veil wasn’t called an ‘Advanced manipulation technique’ without a reason.
He decided to interrupt and explain what he was able to do with his resources.
She was irritated at the beginning, but quickly changed her tone.
“What?” she whispered the question, surprised. “Why didn’t you explain this to me earlier?!” she asked raising her voice to almost normal volume.
“I already discussed it with Makani, you should have listened,” he answered emotionlessly. We were even battling and hunting together… How ignorant can a person be?! But as he was thinking that, he realized she didn’t have any means to see what he was actually doing. His Mana was invisible to everyone but him, after all. Doesn’t explain her lack of thinking… Well, let’s leave it at that.
“And the detection part isn’t that useful – without ‘Life detection’ Spells I can only guess,” he finished.
“Still, if you can trace the remnants of a Veil without being spotted and without using a Spell…” she started pondering, then sighed. “Yes, sorry. I should have listened to you and Makani more carefully. It’s just… so boring!” she spoke in indignation. “I will leave the detection to you… So, I guess you have a plan for those two charging Spells?” she asked, looking at him skeptically. She told him to choose fast ones, after all.
“Detection-wise, I don’t have anything better than my beads, learned Spells, and my techniques. Those two Spells may charge for a long time, but I think we would need them. Especially because they are very rare from what I heard from Makani.”
She sighed again, closing her eyes.
“I will speak honestly,” she started, slouching. “I am quite out of my element here. If we are to infiltrate the place without just charging in and knocking everyone out, then it is on your shoulders,” she said, pointing at him.
Sounds about right. I never expected her to be a stealthy type either way, he thought idly.
“But I don’t know how much I can trust your abilities…” she mumbled.
“Don’t worry about it. I have experience. We will regress to your plan as soon as we are truly detected. Hopefully, deep in the mine,” he answered, preparing his crossbow. “How are you even able to consistently knock people out?” he asked instead, wondering what to do with the bolts to achieve a similar effect. Aisha was quite adamant about leaving people inside alive, complicating his plan a lot.
Smiling, she hummed through her nose. “Long years of practice at smacking people. At some point, you stop doing it only physically and learn to use just the right amount of force,” she explained vaguely, placing fists on her hips and straightening up.
Ugh, and she is proud of it… he thought tiredly, deciding to use heavy, spherical bolt heads. He only had five tips of this kind, but the risk of damaging them was minimal, so he would be able to retrieve them easily. Also, they were big enough to hold a T0 Spell or two, for all the good it would do to him.
Because he had no useful Spells to enchant onto them.
Hmmm, maybe I can cobble something up real quick? Maybe something with ‘Air bubble’ and ‘Space lens’? I just need to silence the enemy for a short moment before constructing the real deal through my Mana tendril… But the range… he thought, squinting at the ball-like tip in his hand.
A crossbow bolt wasn’t slow by any means. From his previous tests he knew that without integrated Mana-L, the Spell enchantment would hold for only 4-7 meters of flight.
“Think faster, we don’t have all night,” Aisha said suddenly. He could see she was quite impatient. Rightfully so, their time was limited.
He thought about it some more, trying to decide how to do it. Which method would be the safest bet?
Alas – after a moment, he came to the conclusion he was stupid about it.
“I will use normal bolts,” he finally decided, changing bolts tips again. Aisha frowned at him as he glanced her way, unabashed. “I don’t have time to prepare and test a new enchantment. I will use the crossbow to silently fire at their legs, some pain-inducing agent should help a lot in stopping anyone from fleeting,” he explained, making preparations. “I can send a Stabilized ‘Air sphere’ alongside the bolts, using ‘Mana rapture’. It should be enough to enclose them and muffle the noise,” he started explaining.
What he planned to do, was to cut off or separate a major chunk of an enemy’s Veil with ‘Mana rapture’ and place the Stabilized ‘Air sphere’ Spell near them by moving it with the same ‘Mana rapture’ wave. It would be especially useful in caves filled with Mana of stationary guards. This should be enough to entrap them in the Sphere, at least for a short time.
The only problem was, they needed to stay stationary long enough for Aisha to get to them, or for Zeph to construct another one behind them to cut off the sounds.
She hummed, thinking. “It’s not the worst of plans… But you better test it on me first. I would be mightily displeased if it was to fail on the first encounter.”
After the series of quick tests for each Spell, he started preparing them for the mission. Their first objective was to stealthily scout the vicinity of the mine entrance in search of any sentries.
To that effect, he started constructing all of his camouflaging Spells. He would be able to sustain them as long as they were in his Veil instead of a Mana tendril – the concentration required was lessened a lot.
Firstly, he activated the Stabilizing Spell to prepare for constructing the many Spells. Then, he covered both of them in a technique, the ‘Mana masking’. Its uneven currents attracting Air-Mana-O from the vicinity and packing it densely to deny any form of casual Mana and Veil scanning. It was an easy enough process after he increased the range to enclose Aisha’s Veil in its entirety, even if it required quite a lot of concentration.
He was barely able to construct a Spell in this state, but his Matrices didn’t pose such problems. He activated the ‘Lesser Air sphere’, spreading the construct widely and setting it just below his manipulation technique, like a lower layer. It was a new experience for him to use a Matrix Spell with so many variables, but he managed. The Spell was important, too, because it simultaneously filtered the air and muffled the sounds.
He immediately started grumbling, feeling stupid. The two Mana creations were actually strengthening each other, which he could have easily predicted if he stopped for a moment to think about it. He needed just a minute to increase the effectiveness of both by around 20%. He could tell his AMc would synchronize nicely with them, but he didn’t have enough attention to spare to keep it active. If only it was a Spell, he could just Stabilize it. But life was never so easy.
After Stabilizing the Spell, he fired the ‘Lesser Light reflection’. It was another Spell with a long, chain-like construct, similar to the ‘Air sphere’. No wonder they cost so much Matrix space; the size of the constructs is ridiculous…
He was getting low on Mana-L produced by the Stabilize, but his beads should be able to survive for the duration of the mission without it. Thankfully, the ‘Light reflection’ wasn’t volume-heavy – the construct was quite thin. He even managed to do a simple modification on the fly.
Normally, the Spell would just create small flattened drops of water, camouflaging them by reflecting the colors from the surroundings. A mirror camouflage, basically, just more complicated and inefficient. But it had a glaring weakness – it also reflected strong sources of light. He fixed that by adding the Fog cantrip—now an Energy Enhancement—to the mix. The fog dispersed light perfectly and with the instantaneous construction, he could just spam it all around the base Spell until Mana-L remembered the shape.
It was a suspiciously easy modification. Right now, he was very glad for choosing the Energy Enhancement transformation.
But there was another problem. The slightly modified ‘Lesser Light reflection’ covered them in water and mist, to Aisha’s displeasure. She had to stream away her naturally produced Magicules to not evaporate the water instantly. In other words, she was forced to constantly manipulate her Veil-creating Mana overproduction down her feet.
At least, those were Zeph’s thoughts. They lasted until Aisha reminded him about a real problem, the underlying truth.
“Look, it’s just how it works,” she patiently explained. “If a melee combatant wants any Spell effects on themselves, they had to cooperate with the Manacaster,” she said, spreading her hands. “I am just angry to be wet. Thankfully, Warriors are inherently proficient with internal Mana manipulation, so chugging away the Veil is easy for us. Just accept it.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
He was creating a Mana construct all around her body. If she didn’t move her Veil’s output elsewhere, his Mana would be torn apart and ground down to Mana-O alongside hers by the virtue of simple interaction between the two. It was the exact opposite situation to the one with Makani and two-person Spell – it was not a question of synchronization, it was a question of compromise.
“But aren’t you heavily handicapped that way? There should be a Matrix alleviating that!” he said indignantly.
She just shook her head, looking at him with a mix of mirth and pity.
He started wondering if placing the construct on her was even a good idea. It would break as soon as she moved too fast, and required copious amounts of Mana-L. Amounts he wasn’t sure he could create without them slowly prowling through the forest.
But they didn’t have enough time for this.
“Can’t I just… make a sphere out of it?” he asked rhetorically, directing the same Matrix Spell to activate in the air.
The construct betrayed his expectations almost instantly. The water droplets didn’t find the purchase, creating a localized drizzle and mist. He felt stupid, again.
But also, inspiration hit him.
“Like I told you, you canno—” she started to say with crossed arms.
“No, I actually can,” he said, intersecting the ‘Light reflection’ with the two spherical constructs, placing it in the middle.
It didn’t work as he was expecting, splashing the water droplets all around, but he could feel he was close.
She made an angry face for a moment, but just sighed in the end. “All right, you can. But leave that for later,” she said with a stern look on her water-dripping face. “If it’s too costly, leave me behind and flash slightly if you need me. Gods, camouflage is such a pain…” she finished with resignation, gripping her head.
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then, he smiled widely. He placed his backpack on the ground and took out the almost-black oil for leather impregnation.
“We can always use conventional methods,” he said with mirth.
Heh, years of playing tabletop RPGs weren’t as useless as it seems. One point for me, it’s a tie now, Alana, he thought vengefully.
~~~
The two were moving swiftly through the forest. Zeph added the fog to the Air-masking, as he called the combination of his Spell and the technique. It was enough to blur their movements, but that wasn’t its main function.
They were already hard to notice, coated in ‘masking’ oil as they were, but the added fog was enough to distort their postures altogether. The fog was physical, it interfered slightly with the Air-masking, but it wasn’t moved by the Air-Mana. Well, maybe slightly by the ‘Air sphere’ filtering property, but it didn’t coalesce into a visible cloud. The additional disruption to his construct only cost him Mana and otherwise helped with the camouflage.
He used the Mana feelers, ‘Sound detect’ Spell, and ‘Life detection’ beads regularly.
As a result, he was mentally spent after an hour of fruitless searching.
Only then, close to the mine’s entrance, his ‘Life detection’ bead brought results. Manipulating one with Matrix-constructed telekinesis capped his mental capacity, so he was alternating between this method and Mana feelers.
On a cliffside, overlooking the entrance, a single person was hiding. He couldn’t tell how did they manage to stay up on the almost vertical wall, mostly because he was unable to see them at all.
Well, or they just found some big predator. ‘Life detection’ didn’t differentiate between sources of Mana-X, after all.
After making sure it was the only Mana source around, they started preparations for an ambush. The Mana source was around 5 meters above the ground. Aisha could hit that high easily, assuming she could see the target.
There was no time to climb above it, so they slowly crawled behind the bent of the cliff wall and out of the sight, but still close enough to attack quickly.
Zeph dropped the Fog Spell and started to gather the active ‘Air sphere’ construct, folding it in a small area. The overbent parts blocked the Mana flow and the Spell failed, so he quickly stopped feeding Mana into it. He knew the Mana -L would remember the shape for long enough, he would just need to restart the flow.
He prepared two smoke/smell bombs and slowly moved the folded Mana-L package upwards. After making sure of the enemy’s Mana range again, he started to weave a half-sphere around it.
Before closing the double-layered construct, he Ignited the two bombs and quickly threw them upwards from behind the bent.
Aisha observed, ready to pounce.
The smoke filled the air, stopping at the borders of his construct, and quickly eating away his Mana-L. The smoke wasn’t dense enough to block their sight, so they saw as the person above lost control of whatever was camouflaging them. He was gagging uncontrollably while dangling from a rope saddle, but the sounds were distorted and quiet.
Aisha sprinted around the bent, took a swing with her weapon, and jumped up. In a marvelous demonstration of dexterity, she hit the bent-over guy right in the solar plexus while holding her weapon by the end of the shaft, then reversed the swing by forcing the head to make a tight circle and reached even higher to cut off the ropes.
She managed to do all of that in one jump.
She caught the unconscious body, minimizing the noise but grimacing furiously at the smell. It was her first contact with his bombs, after all.
She made sure the guy would sleep till morning, and they hid him in nearby bushes, tied and gagged. Instead of charging right in, they found a good observation point and waited, in case someone noticed the small ruckus.
They exchanged a look after observing the mine entrance for ten minutes, and nodded simultaneously.
It was time for the real hurdle. If they were detected, so be it. Aisha was even eager for a fight.
Zeph used the feelers and ‘Life detection’ again. Nothing showed up at the entrance.
He gestured to proceed.
The mine was a mess. Something similar to railroads was under construction, working tools were scattered everywhere. Evidently, no one expected thieves here.
He wasn’t that surprised, as the mine was supposedly new, but he would still send a complaint. The lighting was poor, the floor uneven, and the smell hideous.
It reminded him of a garage gym, smell included.
He decided to not engage the fog modification, they could easily hide in the shadows.
The way down was a slow slope, indicating the lack of advanced machinery in this place. The loud noise of debris under his feet made him nervous, he had to remind himself the ‘Air sphere’ was still in action. A shame it was a two-edged sword, blocking sounds from outside with the same efficiency.
The tunnel was long. He used ‘Tremor detection’ once, but Aisha smacked him after waiting for two minutes, one of which was reserved for the Spell construction.
Wising up, he opened the ‘Air sphere’ from time to time to listen out for a danger.
After almost 200 steps in the meandering shaft, they finally saw a chamber ahead.
Prowling slowly ahead, Zeph checked the entrance. The chamber was filled with someone’s Mana, but he couldn’t see anyone.
He backed off, and a whispered discussion took place.
Finally, Aisha stated her ultimatum. “We don’t have time! You either allow me to get in there, or I will just throw YOU in!” she threatened, tapping his chest with a finger.
“Whatever!” he said, throwing his hands up. “If we are to be detected anyway, we can as well try to lure them inside the tunnel.”
She shrugged and he sighed.
After they hid in the shadows, he folded the ‘Air sphere’ and formed a shape of a local lizard using his Mana tendril, imitating their thin Mana Veil. The animals posed a minor threat to humans, and he hoped the guard would react to that.
He slowly moved it in the direction of the chamber, animating it clumsily, as Aisha shook a few pebbles inside her hands irregularly. The sound echoed through the tunnel, its source impossible to determine.
What a parody, he thought, trying to move the ‘legs’ in sync with the speed.
But, to his surprise, the sentinel actually came to check. Well, free Soul fragments on the night shift would do that, I suppose…
Just as he saw an arm emerging from behind the corner, he used ‘Mana rapture’. His folded Spell drifted away with the jet of Mana as the guard’s Veil was ravaged.
The execution wasn’t perfect by any means. All he managed was to place a thin layer of the Air Spell behind the guy, before firing his crossbow at his thigh. The man fell and Aisha sprinted up to him.
In one masterful strike to the head, she took care of him, but the clamor was way too loud. Zeph wasn’t sure if the sound-muffing Spell worked out at all.
Aisha quickly surveyed the chamber and checked the unconscious guy. She gave him a nod, and they continued in a hurry.
Thankfully, the mine wasn’t overly complex. The first chamber had two exits and one was a dead end. Thin tunnels diverged from the main shafts. He stopped Aisha for a moment to check one of them. She didn’t complain this time, they were here to check what was happening, after all.
Yes, it’s definitely cinnabar, he thought, examining the red stains on the walls. It indeed was mercury.
He backed out of the tunnel, Aisha raising an eyebrow. He shook his head. “Just making sure the element is the same,” he explained. “But the disease source has to be somewhere else.”
She didn’t comment, and they marched forward.
They found two more chambers with guards after that. Zeph managed to do slightly better with the Mana rapture trick, but the truth was that the long distances between each chamber were the only reason they weren’t detected yet.
It took them an hour to perfunctorily search all the caves, but they found nothing. They only had two more hours, maybe three, before the sunset. Aisha was irritated by the fruitless work. She was sure something fishy was happening here.
As was Zeph.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said grumpily, looking at the wall at the end of the last tunnel.
“Like they would keep their secrets in the open,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I will start using Tremor detection and Magnetic scan as we go back,” Zeph declared. “I think I will be able to squeeze something more from the Tremor one – if you hit the ground with your weapon, I should be able to tell how thick are the walls by the echoes… I am not a sonar specialist, though, so let’s test it in a mining spot first. I need to learn what is different about the feedback.”
She nodded and the tedious process started.
Or so they thought.
Back in the last chamber, the closest one to their current position, the ‘Magnetic scan’ returned a ridiculously strong signal from one of the walls.
Zeph was disappointed, he didn’t even manage to use the ‘Tremor detection’ after testing it in the mining area.
He tried it at that moment anyway but, as expected, the metal behind the rocks distorted the vibrations into something unrecognizable.
~~
“You sure there is something behind? There is metal all around, you know?” Aisha asked, examining the wall for the third time.
“Whatever is behind, gives a signal similar to what the steel tools return. There is no way it’s just a natural vein,” he answered while kneeling and checking the floor. “Shouldn’t it be an enchantment of some type, anyway?” he asked, looking her way. “Who in their right mind would create mechanical doors when you have so much Hydrargyrum around?”
She turned, giving him her characteristic crooked smile. “Oho, are you suddenly an enchantment expert? Seriously, your growth rate is truly astounding,” she said, shaking her head in mock disbelief. “Just keep searching,” she instructed, turning back to the wall, “if it’s an enchantment, there is nothing we can do.”
Zeph frowned. It doesn’t make sense. They had to have a way to access these doors somehow to transport the mercury. Otherwise, why build a hidden chamber so close to the mine in the first place? he started pondering. If I were in charge, or a local specialist, I would definitely leave the doorman duty to someone else, he continued, hoping his deduction was at least somewhat right.
He was still kneeling in the ‘orz’ pose, forgetting himself.
Ergo, some easy but unintuitive way to open the doors should exist… Probably something including enchantments. Where would I place it? he asked himself, looking around. Definitely in this chamber, to minimize the risks of someone uninvited finding the mechanism. But… there is nothing?
They already checked the small cabin of the guard, there was nothing of interest. The walls and floor were bare, nothing indicating a hidden switch, access panel, or whatever else there could be.
“Grrra!” it wisely suggested, speaking for the first time during the mission.
Zeph’s eyes widened. Aisha froze.
They looked up.
“No way… right?” she asked in disbelief.
“But isn’t that a vein?” he answered with a question of his own.
“Gra!” it proudly proclaimed. The only thinking being in the mines.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
Interface: no changes.