Chapter 46:

“As far as I know, she was the most powerful gifted in the village. Not just in the way that one might think of, as simply being able to do what others could, but better and for longer. Mom was capable of more.” Dodro began.

He reclined against the leather chair, his gaze lost outside the window as he reminisced.

“She never talked directly about the war, but from what I’ve been told by others, her presence on the battlefield was a guarantee that they would not lose. They had to retreat at times, and she was fought to a standstill more than once by powerful generals, but if Doressa was present, you could be certain you wouldn’t be crushed.”

As he spoke, Lilian rejoined them, having somehow wrangled Lia into her bed.

Knowing her little sister, Dorea was surprised that she hadn’t already snuck out of her room to eavesdrop. Their mother must have bribed her with something good.

“My mother was a greater-than-life figure, and to this day, it’s one of my greatest regrets that you could not meet her. She’d absolutely have adored you, little Dory.” He continued, smiling slightly.

“You know I’ve never been too into the magic stuff, your mother is much better at it than me, but I can tell you what I know. After the war, your grandmama often took on the duty of clearing up the surrounding lands of those beasts that had become too aggressive. She’s why the caravans come all the way over here, even though the risks are high, as she apparently saved them from certain death.”

Dodro sighed, ruffling his hair as he thought back to what were evidently bittersweet memories.

“I wouldn’t say she was a perfect parent. I don’t think anyone can be, really. But I understood that she had an important role to serve. Her power made it so that she belonged to all of Whitecliff, not just us.”

Lilian patted his shoulder in comfort. Revisiting such thoughts must not have been easy for him, especially since Dorea now knew that her grandmother had died exactly because of those duties.

Had she not needed to fight that poisonous beast, she would likely still be alive. According to Voggo, the more powerful a mage, the more they’d live, as their bodies maintained a certain vigor thanks to their large mana reserves.

“What you want to know is probably what her magic was like, no?”

Dorea nodded. She would have been content with stories about the woman’s escapades, but she cared most about understanding more of such a great mage’s powers.

“I’m sorry that I can’t give you technical details; for that, you’d need to check with Voggo if there is something in the archives, since I gave everything to him after she died.” He apologized.

She had known about those journals he was referring to and, indeed, had checked them out as soon as the Shaman had granted her access, but had found them incredibly dry and almost entirely about specific matrixes and their different usages.

Since her grandmother and she didn’t share an element, Dorea couldn’t take inspiration from it, as the underlying basis for spells worked under different principles.

She had an unfortunate amount of experience with it, as she had to test things out much more than her fellow mages, since transposing a spell from one element to another was a tiresome and incredibly complicated effort.

And that was with access to that element! Without it, it might as well have been gibberish.

“I remember that she liked to say that her strategy was twofold. A soft touch for when subtlety was needed, and absolute power for everything else.” he laughed, drying a tear that threatened to fall from his eye. “She was a very 'do or do not' kind of person. No half measures with her.”

Dorea smiled, liking that kind of approach. “I don’t know why you are laughing. It sounds entirely sensible to me”.

Her mother joined in the laughter, apparently having gotten enough of her exploits out of Voggo to know she enjoyed being a blunt instrument.

“Her signature move was something called The Rupturing. She’d break the ground with powerful tremors destabilizing everyone, creating cracks into the earth, and then used Stone Shower to annihilate anyone who still moved. It was apparently enough to end more than one battle by itself.”

There had been the power she had expected. To totally control the battlefield with such ease was the privilege of a Master, and while she was still very far from such a rank, learning their tactics could only help her.

“Again, I’ve never been that curious about the specifics. I just knew my mother would always win, and since it wasn’t a world I was involved in personally, it was enough. But I’ve been told that at least twice, she forced armies of thousands to retreat, on pain of complete destruction.”

Dorea gulped. Even though she had just witnessed for herself the power of a Master rank being, Old Titan was more like a force of nature, willfully taking what it wanted and uncaring of everything else.

Her grandmother had the benefit of human intellect. That made her an entirely different beast.

I don’t doubt that the damn bear is smart. Smarter than some people I know, I’d say, but it doesn’t operate on the same wavelength as humans do. There is no inherent ambition or planning. And honestly, it has no need for it.

“She was a sweet woman, but when what was hers was threatened, she could be rather forceful.” Lilian finally added after a moment of silence.

Dorea snorted at the understatement, which prompted a laugh from her parents.

“I’m sorry I can’t tell you her war stories, but know this. Your grandmother did everything she did for the sole reason of protecting our little slice of heaven. She was never deliberately cruel, nor did she risk herself or her allies to grant mercy to an enemy. That was one of the few things she told me herself. Do what is necessary for yours to thrive, not just survive.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

----------------------------------------

Dorea flipped through the pages of the loosely bound tome on the table, once again looking for the last bits of confirming evidence that what she was about to attempt would not call a calamity upon Whitecliff.

It had to be remarked that she was doing so under duress, since she had been ready to start the practical side of the experimenting long ago.

Instead, Voggo had imposed upon her the onerous task of checking all her sources to ensure she hadn’t missed anything.

And I didn’t. The circle is perfect, and the function is clear as the day. Just because the last sketch was missing a power regulating function doesn’t mean everything I make is inherently reckless.

She was pouting, she knew, but she still didn’t see why they wouldn't want to have the shield always at full power.

After all, if they needed to call upon it, the threat had to be grave, right?

Voggo didn’t seem to share such thoughts, and for all that he himself was known for his less than perfectly safe experiments, the old man had his own rigid way of doing things. And since she didn’t have the experience with Rituals necessary to understand at a moment’s notice if something was starting to go wonky, and the Shaman wouldn’t be able to check the matrix for mistakes beyond the most basic stuff, as she was using an elemental one, she needed to ensure nothing could go wrong from the get-go.

Of course, what she was about to attempt was a pale imitation of what she would raise upon the village’s walls once she was confident it would work, but prototypes had to come first.

Apparently, it was common practice everywhere to make smaller, weaker examples of one’s future work as a proof of concept. It was how most artifacts got into the market, actually, as mages sold functioning, if useless to them, things that to non-magicals would serve as family heirlooms for generations.

What Dorea was making wouldn’t serve much to anyone, especially since it required regular recharging and needed a mage to be present to switch from passive to active.

Strictly speaking, even the finished product wouldn’t count as much more than a temporary ward. She simply wasn’t skilled enough in the craft to make a permanent one, much less if she added even more complex functions to make it practical for other people.

But then again, we don’t need a fancy artifact that operates by itself, feeding on the mana currents. We need to have further fortifications, especially up north, and since we cannot simply make the wall taller, as it would end up much weaker than the lower side, this is what we have to work with.

Her final concept had been brutally stripped of all the bells and whistles by an amused Voggo. While it might have been helpful to have several additional functions like progressively stronger air resistance against intruders or localized weather events, she had been deemed ‘over enthusiastic’ and told to work with what was in the realm of possibilities.

What she ended up with was both more and less complex than she had expected.

More, because she hadn’t accounted for all the little regulation mechanisms she’d have to put in place, and finding the proper fractals for those had been the work of an entire week.

Less, because having stripped all the cool functions, the ward would essentially only raise a silent alarm that they had been breached in passive mode and project a shield where needed on active.

She had initially thought to always have the shield be around the entire town, but that had been shot down too, as entirely too expensive and possibly even counterproductive if they needed to evacuate.

It was humbling, having to go back to the drawing board so many times, being forced to explain why she thought her ideas would be needed even in cases where it should have been evident to all with a functioning brain that they were.

Unfortunately, she had been shown several times in the past week that her instincts weren’t as keen when planning realistic wards.

Still, Dorea considered the whole experience as a learning opportunity.

She might not have been in the wilds, hunting powerful beasts and growing stronger every day, but after the scare she had had with Old Titan, she was content taking some time to explore the other branches of magic a bit better.

Especially because they still had heard nothing from the Mondeans, which made her nervous.

I know it’s likely that they are just too busy killing other tribes up north and that we just aren’t that much of a priority for now, but with all the losses we have inflicted on them, they are bound to come back one day. And I’d much rather know when that might be.

Thus all the preparations she had been busy with.

That it also allowed her to avoid confrontations with her so-called friends; well, she wouldn’t complain.

It wasn’t so much that she was scared of confrontation. If anything, she was afraid that her temper might erupt entirely, leaving no possible way of reconciling with Beth.

And for all that, she was still incredibly annoyed with the girl for dumping all her fears and accusations on her without even bothering to talk with her first; she still loved her like a sister and would like to one day make up.

She had better apologize soon, though. I can’t really just ignore what she said to me.

Therefore, she had caught two birds with one stone. She could contribute to the village’s defense in a significant manner once she was done with her project, and it also allowed enough distance and time to pass that, hopefully, Beth would start seeing reason.

Dorea shook her head, clearing it of any distractions. She would have the chance to clear things up with her friend, but for the moment, she needed to concentrate fully on the task in front of her.

“How’s it going?” came the question from behind her.

She turned to give Voggo the stink eye, still annoyed that he had forced her back to the drawing table for the third time. “It’s perfect, as I told you. I solved that little issue in no time.”

He chuckled, smoothing his beard. “It was such a small thing that if I had not rechecked it, it would have blown us all up.”

Dorea huffed, somewhat bothered that her first prototype had not been perfect.

A warm hand on her head made her look up to see the old man’s kind gaze. “It’s perfectly normal to want to be good at what you do, but wards and rituals are a complex craft. Mages much more powerful than I dedicate their entire lives to them and still do not make great breakthroughs.”

His words reassured her, but she still felt somewhat insecure. He must have noticed this, because he continued “It only took you a week of studying to get to this point, little Dory. I’d say that is remarkable in and of itself. If you ever manage to cast the ward on the whole village, you’ll have done us all a great service.”

He said this with fierce pride in his eyes. That, more than his words, made her smile back.

It wasn’t that she had been insecure before. She knew very well what kind of contribution she had to Whitecliff’s safety. But she had somehow believed that she’d be instantly capable of crafting powerful wards. That she’d discover another secret power that would make her surpass everyone’s expectations.

Instead, she followed the standard curve, somewhat aided by her magical control.

As Voggo had told her, it wasn’t anything to scoff at what she was trying to do. If she succeeded, she’d have given the tribe another powerful ace.

It might not have been the powerful wards that surrounded the Forest village, with all their trickery and illusions, but it was better than what they currently had.

“Remind me again, why haven’t you built one of your own?” she asked the Shaman. Given what he had taught her, he certainly had the skill to do so.

Voggo sighed. “I could. I could have made it many years ago, even. But back then, no one else could have sustained the cost, and I needed my mana to be ready in case injuries happened.”

That was a good argument. It still stung somewhat that all her hard work was not strictly necessary, but she understood his point.

“There was no need for one either. For all that the forest is always dangerous, our walls served us well. And with no discord with other tribes, active defenses would have been a waste.” he continued.

“But that doesn’t explain why you didn’t put up a ward after the Wrath. We knew, even then, that conflict was bound to arrive at our door.” Dorea wasn’t trying to put the old man on the spot, but she had wondered about it as she studied for her own attempt.

Again, he agreed, “I could have. I even started drawing up plans to do so. But there was one big problem. Something that, so far, has remained unsolvable. Something that, luckily, doesn’t apply to you. Can you think of what it is?”

While he usually gave lectures more directly, when teaching people one on one, Voggo enjoyed making them think for themselves.

It was universally considered an annoying, but practical habit.

Dorea pondered the question briefly before it hit her like a bolt from the blue “Of course! Unlike me, you can't use three elements, allowing other people to power it up.”

It was such an easy answer that she wondered why she hadn’t immediately thought of it.

The twinkle in his eye told her that she was only partially correct.

“It is true that your peculiar ability should allow you to make charging up a ward much easier. But it’s not the only reason. There are ways to convert elemental mana into un-aspected, but they are horribly inefficient. Of course, after Noele came to Whitecliff, the burden could have been placed on the two of us. Still, I decided that our time would be much better served healing and replenishing our stockpiles of potions rather than maintaining a ward that could only be used passively.”

And that was likely the real reason, she realized. Even if they could have put up passive protection, they wouldn’t have been able to sustain its cost when going into active mode.

That meant that it wouldn't be feasible until a mage with an element common enough became proficient enough in rituals.

“But why haven’t you encouraged those who do not want to fight to try their hands at this? Even if they weren’t super talented at it, they should have managed to make something useful with enough time.” she wondered aloud.

It wasn’t that Dorea thought of herself as unnecessary, as her tri-elemental nature made her perfectly suited to the task, but surely an attempt could have been made.

Voggo laughed out loud, holding his belly as he unrestrainedly showed her what he thought of her words. Before she could get offended, he mustered the strength to reply.

“Most of them still haven’t cast a spell, which entirely removes them from the equation. But some have, and they have been studying how to do so for a while. You just have never noticed them. A bit too inside your own world, heh?”