After putting off the inevitable Adaline finally pulled out her magic mirror to contact her master, Hizanko. She had been hoping to find a solution to the conundrum instead all she had to bring back was dire news.
The mirror’s reflective surface swirled until it showed HIzanko’s office, Hizanko greeted her apprentice warmly before giving Tuck an aloof glare, Tuck in turn pointed at her winked and clicked his tongue, a gesture Hizanko recognised as aiming and cocking a gun. Her eyes narrowed but before an argument could begin Adaline began to tell her Master the abridged version of what she found out.
No one interrupted Adaline while she spoke and at the end she promised to bring back Tuck’s recordings and a few photos taken of the beast. She did not mention the Manager’s diary, since Adaline had noticed how Altair skipped parts while reading and kept both diaries in the end. There were probably things in those tomes that outsiders of the Merchant Association shouldn’t get their hands on.
"So you are saying this Three Eyed Firecrow can't break through the metal layer of the earth and is looking for a 'soft' spot to emerge, somewhere magma bubbles to the surface naturally." Hizanko verified.
“Yes Master, it seems to be following the flow of lava for the last 80 cycles but that flow passes directly under the Warren, and since it is built over a Caldera…” Adaline left the rest unsaid.
“Why did they build over an active volcano?” Tuck asked. From the moment he crossed the bridge into the Warren he had been shocked that the architects were so daring. Tuck understood how great geothermal energy was but he only understood the need to build a power plant in such a dangerous place, not an entire civilian complex. Hizanko rubbed her face in frustration but answered him anyway.
“Finding a volcano is always a blessing for societies, most Titan Beasts avoid them and our magics can tame them. Once Mages have control of a volcano then a team of Enchanters can layout runes to convert the volatile heat into useful energy.
The few volcano cities I know of use that energy to light them, power transport systems, purify water and run barrier magics.” Hizanko explained.
“Thank you, Ms Hizanko. Working with powerful Magics really does spit in the face of common sense.” Tuck said. Hizanko nodded her satisfaction, she liked when people asked questions about things they were ignorant of and that Tuck was grateful for the answer.
“We are going to have to evacuate.” Hizanko concluded. “This shitty 3 eyed reject from the Sun is going to make life harder for so many, lean times may be coming for our Sect.” She lamented. Adaline was surprised by this statement.
“Master, our Sect is not near the Warren, why would we suffer?” Adaline asked.
“The Warren is special my dear, in most City States the Sects are antagonistic to each other but here the Mage Assembly is made up of three sister Sects.” Hizanko looked to Tuck.
“They are the Halceon, the Belako and the Shiwan Sects.” she explained for his benefit.
“Since our Sects work together we had an opportunity to partner with the local Clans. Our Mage Assembly create Carbon Capacitors, known as Energy Crystals, using the power from the volcano which is under the Clans’ control and we split the profits from the sales to the Merchant Association, other Sects and other City States. The Warren is our cash cow but not only will we loose profit our customers are going to be hurting, our Mage Assembly provides Energy Crystals for nearly a dozen cities and thousands of airships. If the Warren goes down, the cost of living is going way up.” Hizanko informed her apprentice.
Tuck was reeling, he used the rechargeable Energy Crystals in everything he enchanted. As a best practice Tuck always used passive energy gathering Runes to pull heat from the atmosphere and keep his crystals charged but it had never occurred to him that Energy Crystals were carbon capacitors.
‘Why do they look like jewels instead of charcoal?’ he wondered for a moment before being hit by a realisation. ‘Wait, diamonds are made of carbon too and come in all colours.’ Tuck was pulled from his musing when Hizanko spoke again.
"Good work my apprentice. I'll tell the GreatMages of the other Sects and inform our own headquarters. The ArchMage will make the final decision for us.” She once again gave Tuck that dismissive look before continuing.
“I’m afraid we will be too busy for any fun for quite a while so have one last night with your paramor and use your pendant to come home in the morning. We will need your evidence to convince the council since I fear the Militia and the Clans will not take this revelation well. We all know that without the Warren to legitimise their status they are just Mercenaries and Merchants." Hizanko bid her Apprentice good night and the mirror returned to a reflective surface.
"I get the feeling she doesn’t approve of me.” Tuck joked, Adaline rolled her eyes at the obvious before returning to her brooding. “I still have business to attend to here with Kenon so I won't be able to return with you." He informed her, she now looked up with tears in her eyes. Hizanko had spoken about the Warren as a business venture and how its loss would affect her Sect but for Adaline the Warren was home.
Her father was an ex-Airship captain who sold his ship and settled in the Warren after his wife’s death. Despite her nanny’s best efforts Adaline grew up running about the tunnels of the city. Even after she showed talent and joined the Halceon Sect she would still spend her vacations in the Warren with her friends and her father. More than half of her life’s memories were there, even the bad ones like her father’s funeral. Soon that place would all be gone and that hurt. Tuck held her for a long while, finally she dried her tears and looked at him.
"My master and I will most likely have to return to the Sect. The chances of us seeing each other again is low despite the fact that I've already become used to waking up next to you." Adaline leaned up and kissed him.
"Let's not waste tonight in melancholy." She said to him, Tuck accepted her invitation and the two lost themselves in each other.
***
Hours later Adaline laid on Tuck’s chest hugging him tightly.
"Oh goodness that was wonderful." She complimented. "I wish we could be lovers permanently." Adaline lamented. Outside was getting brighter with the approach of dawn.
"Sounds great to me, what's stopping us?" Tuck asked, Adaline sighed.
"Factions. I'm a Halceon Sect Mage and you are an Enchanter in the Merchant Association. My Sect wouldn't even allow us to get married unless you agreed to leave the Merchant Association and become a Bagman for the Sect and that is a terrible deal, especially since my Sect does not respect anyone who's not a Mage. You would never be an Executive or an Elder, not to mention our reach is nowhere as wide as the Merchant Association." Adaline explained while enjoying his warmth.
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"Okay, those are the reasons I should not leave the Association but what reasons should you not leave the Halceon Sect?" Tuck asked her, Adaline stopped to think for a moment.
"Honestly I've learned all I can from my Master. I wear the Rune tapestry of an ExpertMage. Being a GreatMage’s Apprentice is just a fast track to taking her position in the Sect once she's passed on, in another 20 years I will be one of the youngest GreatMages in our Sect. Leaving the Sect would cost me power. I'd be set back years!” Adaline pointed out.
“If I left my Sect to join the Merchant Association’s Mages I would be stripped of my Sect Rune tapestry and then I would then have to earn the pieces of the Association's Rune tapestry by performing tasks. Even if you leverage your position in the Association it would still take me another decade to get to the level where I am currently with no guarantee of a way forward." Adaline felt a little dejected from her own analysis, despite it not being said in as many words, Mages were slaves to their Sects.
"Other than labouring for every Rune piece is there no way to get a full Tapestry?" Tuck queried. Adaline blew a raspberry.
"Find a lost full Legacy. But that is next to impossible. Entire Sects are built around a single Legacy no one will sell one, even if they had it." Adaline concluded. Tuck pulled a book from his Reservoir.
"Take a look."
Adaline recited a light spell and checked the plain looking notebook. On the first page there was an anatomical black and white drawing with colourful runes on the chest. There were also notes on which type of magical beast’s blood as well as which herbs were needed to make the ink used to draw the Runes.
It was the first step in a Rune Tapestry.
Adaline sat up.
Page after page the Tapestry was filled in. She had never seen a Tapestry like this. To be fair she had only seen the parts of her Tapestry, the one she was currently wearing but those designs didn't have half the power she was now seeing.
'Could this be the tapestry of an Empire Sect?' She wondered, if this was some stolen Legacy to even have seen it could prove lethal. Adaline scanned the book looking for traps, to her great surprise there were no enchantments on the book at all, not even a preservation spell but it looked brand new.
She smelled the ink and rubbed the pages confirming that this was drawn recently. Adaline’s eyes widened at a possibility, she frantically searched her Carry-All bag and pulled out the note Tuck had written in her bedroom. The handwriting was the same!
"Altair, where did you get this?" She asked with trepidation, Tuck’s only reply was gentle snoring.
Adeline looked at him with incredulity before she smacked him on the chest with the book, jumping Tuck awake.
"You don't get to drop a bomb like this and go to sleep!” She exclaimed. “Where is this Legacy from?"
“Would you believe I found it?” he asked groggily. She smacked him on the chest again.
“Not while it is in your own damned handwriting!” She glared at him, which helped tuck to wake up.
"Oh, well it is something I worked out in my spare time." Replied.
"Bullshit, it's already amazing someone your age can be an Enchanter, creating a Rune Tapestry would take…" Adaline stopped her tirade short as she looked into Tuck's amused eyes. She had thought he had copied the book but there was another possibility.
In the dim light of her magic Tuck’s purple eyes seemed to glow with ethereal energy. Tuck could see her mind doing mental gymnastics. It should take lifetimes for one man to create a Rune Tapestry, Adaline concluded.
Of course she had no clue about Tuck’s blessing from the Goddesses, nor his ability to see energy including magic. How could she guess he had spent centuries trapped in a cosmic conduit with nothing to do but study and become an academic. Why would she guess that in his pursuit of knowledge about Runes and Enchanting that he had bought a few broken Rune Tapestry Legacies from the Merchant Association. Being incomplete, those Legacies did not have much power but they did explain how to make various Magical inks plus how to apply the Runes.
All of these factors came together to allow Tuck to first reverse engineer the Rune patterns he saw on the members of the 3 Sects and then to take all he had learned and be able to create his own Rune Tapestry which had greater magical synergy and allowed a Mage to draw more power and have finer control of their energies than the Tapestries he saw from the Sects. It had only taken Tuck days.
"Altair, how old are you?" Adaline asked, her eyes squinting in suspicion. She had come to the wrong but not inaccurate conclusion. Since Tuck had decided to never mention the Goddesses to anyone, her believing him to be some random immortal would do.
"Would you believe me if I told you 840?" He asked with a grin on his face.
"Of course I would." She replied. Tuck laughed.
"I must know, are there so many immortals on Shaards? Both you and Miriam have come to that conclusion almost instantly." He queried. Adaline filed away the words ‘on Shaards’, Altair Bashtuck was either from one void or one of the other worlds he had told her about. Adaline quickly decided she didn’t care.
"There is always somebody trying to attain Godhood, the closest any get is some degree of immortality. Of course those types of immortality vary wildly. With some having to go into rejuvenating slumbers while others die and are reborn constantly. Which type are you, I wonder?"
"The type that has no intention of testing his limits." Tuck stated.
"Smart, those that test limits seldomly like what they find, but back to this." Adaline held up the book. "What are your terms?"
"I get you as my second wife, in an Indentureship contract. You get the full Tapestry, straight to Archmage of the Bashtuck Clan. Should you end the contract, you keep the Tapestry you wear until you join another Sect at which point the Tapestry dissolves. Should I end the contract the legacy is all yours and you can use it to start your own Sect. In either situation you never speak of where you got the legacy."
"Deal. But I must be allowed to tell my Master why I'm leaving, she has been too good to me over the years."
"That's fine, just tell her my Clan had a full Legacy that I'm offering you. The important information that I don't want to spread is that I can create them." Tuck shuddered as he imagined being captured and sold from clan to clan so he could optimise their existing Legacies.
"Understood, once I return to the Warren and give my report I will tell my Master and withdraw from the Sect. Then I can join your Clan."
The two exchanged a passionate kiss, sealing the deal.
“By the way Altair, how many wives do you intend to take?” Adaline asked, Tuck grew a mischievous smile before replying.
"Hopefully 2 wives should sate my ravenous libido. Of course if you ladies decide you need help feel free to pick a third." Tuck said cheekily, he was expecting some form of retaliation from Adaline but she surprised him with her reply.
"Yeah, that makes sense." Adaline said seriously, stunning him. This society was similar to his own in many ways but others were completely different. Adaline returned the notebook and gave Tuck instructions.
"Have all the ingredients ready for me when we next meet. I don't want to wait a moment longer than I have to."
"Relax, I already have them in my Reservoir. Let me contact Miriam and give her the good news as well as a head start on this evacuation."
Tuck felt the vibration of space in the room and remembered how the space in Miriam's apartment felt, using his power he connected the two areas he twisted a hole from one to the next. An aperture opened, growing wider and more stable. This was the first portal Tuck had created over a far distance. Academically he knew the distances on Shaards would not be an issue for a stellar monster such as himself but now that he was testing it he only had one conclusion.
‘Space is my bitch.’