19th of Taka, 1000, late morning

Mage tower, Fort Kitapüru,

Fitzhugh started climbing towards the roof. The coven cast had been running now for almost forty hours. Most of them had been able to get some sleep, but the problem with sieges was that the enemy was right there and they attacked at random times.

This applied more so for the magical contingent as they probed to find weaknesses in the opposition’s defence. Or tied to attack themselves. The Fujikan military had used the cover of darkness to approach the walls the night before. They had brought breaching charges to try and take down a section of the wall.

They had probed too aggressively and so were spotted. Then ensued a series of conventional siege fights. Which ended when they managed to get a charge close enough to the wall to justify detonation.

The coven had been forced to intervene casting a shaped wall so that the explosion rolled back on itself. The process killed a number of the attackers but this intervention seemed to be the trigger for another round of attacks from the enemy mages. Another sapper tunnel had been intercepted by what he liked to think of as the ‘hard rock’ defence.

This one wasn’t as well done as the previous leading Fitzhugh to believe that there were two earth mages deployed against them. It made sense the time between the casts the previous morning and those cast last night wasn’t twenty-four hours. It was unlikely that the three mages who cast the previous day would have restored a full nguvu. Some people liked to count fractions of nguvu for all sorts of things. Mostly boasting as for as Fitzhugh could tell. But only wholes mattered when dropping a cast.

In any case they knew there were seven mages in the opposition’s camp. Three cast in the morning. Four left to cast. The problem was only three casts dropped from the enemy overnight. Well, that his team could tell. The problem was nobody skipped a day casting. If one of the mages had a particularly poor recoup or cast rate scores then they would be casting every tenth-eight hours.

For those it made even more sense to cast early on day one. In a conventional mage battle those are the ones you expect to fiddle around with their cast schedule until in a ‘surprise' move they delayed a cast long enough for those with better stats to join a barrage. The whole group of mages dropping their casts all at once aiming to overwhelm the opposition in an instance.

The enemy wasn’t playing that game. Fitzhugh scrubbed his sleep deprived eyes. Why couldn’t there be a standard dumb conventional mage leader over there? Why did there have to be some kind of new plan, destined as it was to failure? Still his father always warned him that the enemy rose up to meet you. Of course the corollary wasn’t true. The enemy never backed off when you did. That’s why they were the enemy. Out to steel your toys and ruin your play time.

He was going to have to talk to the captain. He needed to know what his spy network could find out about the enemy’s mages. Obviously there was something going on and he needed to know what that was. More importantly they had no idea where he oppositions mages where. How could you drop a fireball on their heads if there were no heads around?

It was a frustrating and unforeseen issue. The coven casts where supposed to allow you to drop so many casts at a time you could easily account for the opposition mages. Once done the threat of fireballing the enemy’s army was enough to make them surrender. Yesterday could be best described as evens. A surprise to both parties as for as he could tell. It had certainly been a surprise to the enemy when they had roasted a bunch of them.

Nasty business that, cooking all those poor conscripts. Still it seemed that modern Fujiama believed the poor were a subspecies and that militia were not much better. There to sacrifice themselves for the good of the central committee. It wasn’t like the old days when the emperor ruled and all humans were worthy of respect and dignity. Well at least so his tutors had taught him. Fujiama last had an emperor before magic. So certainly before his time.

There were more steps to go. He was tired and didn’t really want to go but the pookkalam seemed to need four in attendance at all times. Well not quite. Silvia and Erica were stuck in their portions of the pookkalam. They couldn’t leave and he didn’t know why.

When a cast needed to drop only Max could do it. Normally Silvia could but she was stuck in the wrong part of the pookkalam for that so she couldn’t help. Max was going to have to sleep on the roof. Which left the last required position, that of finesse being the only one that allowed for a proper rotation. Mandy was on at the moment.

Ah rotation, that’s what else happened last night. Well, after the bomb the wall incident here had been a fireball and some kind of whirly wind thing that tried to knock people off the walls. In particular off the mage tower.

Erica had been fantastic with both of those. The fireball had missed the fort. The whirling winds where more creative. They appeared at the mage tower heigh above the walls or at the fort wall height somewhere in the mage tower. In both cases at least three floors away form their targets.

He really wished she wasn’t a water witch. Mage, mage. He chided himself. She was great as a person. Best castor he know from both a technical and creative flare point of view. She had an absolutely massive personal nguvu pool. Problem was she was a little nuts already. Though maybe that was because she had been locked in a box with padded walls for the better part of a decade.

He finally made it out onto the roof of the mage’s tower. “Hi all.” There wasn’t much of a reaction. “Anything happen during shift?”

“Another sapper tunnel that Erica sorted.” Mandy was starting to settle down now. Less in awe of everyone.

“And they keep trying to send wind whisperers.” Silvia took up the story whilst struggling to avoid yawning. “Finally asked the professor if there was a way to sort it out. He had no idea but Erica modified the shield spell so our words twist and change in the mouths of the whisperers.”

Fitzhugh had never even thought to try something like that. “Huh. Nice idea.”

Glancing over he saw Erica asleep propped up in a wooden chair into which she was held tied. “Really its?” He had to ask.

“Only way to stop her falling off the chain.” Mandy replied. “She asked for it and so I did it.” She paused. “Never thought mage work required knots. Learn something new all the time.”

“And what about you professor?” Fitzhugh asked. “What are you doing up here?” He hadn’t expected to see the professor on the roof. He wasn’t due up for another four or so hours.

“There’s a problem with the pookkalam.” The professor groused.

“What do you mean?” Silvia asked

Fitzhugh’s mumbled “you don’t say.” Went largely ignored except for Mandy’s bodyguard. Why a girl of her age needed a body guard was anyone’s guess. But when her chaperone and magic mentor Claudia wasn’t there the bodyguard was.

“Well for one you can’t leave the centre circle.” He pointed out. “I have to get idiot and dopey…” he jerked his thumb at two of the watchmen station on the walls around the roof. “… to use their muscles to swing your meals, squat pot and anything else required to you.”

“Squat pot?” Fitzhugh asked just as Silvia asked “What else?”

“What don’t you understand about squat pot?” The professor said dismissively. “She can’t leave the golden circle, which is the problem, and everyone needs to use the facilities on occasion.”

To answer your question Silvia. “Your not the only one confined to barracks. Erica can’t leave either. Whilst it is easier to pass her things as her circle is on the edge, not the middle. Her circle is smaller than yours so whilst you can lie down she has to remain standing. Well, until we passed her a chair. Both of you are going into exhaustion and that sonly because the portion of the pookkalam designed to allow you out and to maintain your connection seems to have failed completely.”

He consulted his notes. “Which brings me to the main issue. Whilst most of us can move about and do the other things we need to all things related to the switch aspect of casting are failing.”

“I don’t understand.” Mandy said from her perch in the shade.

“Neither do I my dear.” The professor remarked. “And I’m the genius who makes this stuff up.”

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He took a breath and then sauntered over to the girl. “Look,” he showed her some tables in his book. “All indictions are that we should have a coven magic aptitude of about three hundred under worst case scenarios.”

“Huh?” The girl looked at the copious quantities of notes. “From the looks of it your assuming a straight summation of all out pool values will be the coven pool of nguvu.” She looks up at him for verification.

He nodded.

“Same basis for calculating the recuperation and cast rate values.” She asked getting another nod.

She looked further at the book. “Then you used the worst case values in the coven for the switch, finesse and sensitivity values.”

She looked up. “So what MA value are we actually getting with this coven?”

The professor looked dejected at her. “That’s what’s not making any sense. Silvia says the MA value is close to double that.”

“I don’t see the problem.” Fitzhugh interjected. He was ignored.

“You gave me access to the real time recoup and upkeep values.” Mandy said. “They don’t make sense.” She paused. “Erica iss spending a lot, holding the shield upkeep at slightly over half an nguvu a day.”

The professor smiled at her. “No, she’s doing really well. Normal shields are one off casts and consume one whole nguve a cast. Crack them and they stay damaged. Or you spend another whole nguvu to fix them. Given she’s sorted out two sapper tunnels, redirected a fireball and cloaked us from the wind whisperers I would say she’s the only one of us who’s winning. But you see the problem don’t you?”

She nodded. “They have seven mages. They can drop casts at the rate of seven a day. We don’t have sufficient recoup to match that. Our larger pool means that we banked more nguvu from the start of the fight but the longer this goes the more certain their victory.”

Silvia and Fitzhugh both turned sharply int he young girl’s direction.

“Dad’s not going to be happy.” She continued unaware of their looks. “He needs us to balance the force discrepancy we have with the troops. When he finds out that we can’t even match their mages he’s going to be so sad.”

Max snorted. “He’s not going to be sad. He’s going to be …”

“Yes, thank you Max. Please leave you squat pot mouth in the squat pot.” The professor didn’t even look up. He pointed to something in his notes. “But look at that it’s worse.”

Mandy gasped. “Cast limiter.”

He nodded. “The raw recoup numbers that you have are not good. But they would give us sufficient nguvu to cast every three hours at our maximum rate.”

Fitzhugh interrupted. “Eight casts a day. It’s about where we wanted to be.”

The professor turned to Silvia. “Your SKAT should be telling you what the coven cast frequency is.”

“Ah, hang on.” Silvia’s eyes glazed over as he looked at things only she could see. She gasped. “We can cast every four and a half hours at max rate.”

Mandy and the professor regarded each other for a minute before Mandy spoke. “You’re right. It has to be the switch factor. If that was over one there would be no penalties. The SKAt system always bats true. Anything below one is regarded as a penalising factor.”

Forgetting that she wasn’t a senior for a moment she turned to Silvia. “Can you see the coven switch factor. Was is it?” She desperately asked.

Whilst Silvia went looking for the information the professor sighed to himself. “All that time doing all those calculations. I should have just asked the girl.”

“Wow that’s bad.” Silvia remarked. “Point eight one.”

“Almost twenty percent,” the professor ticked something off in his book. “Not bad I was close.”

Fitzhugh having missed the professor’s first comment was a little upset. “Not bad. It’s awful. It’s worse than anyone on the team has. We need to fix it.”

The professor snorted in his direction. “How. We don’t have the ingredients for a recast.” He sighed. “Still two casts a day into five isn’t awful. We will learn from the this. We can make coven casts better.”

Mandy piped up again. “But didn’t you say that you would be buffing the casts by adding to or changing the pookkalam as we went.”

“Yes. I’ll stay to keep doing that. We need to learn all we can.” The professor turned to Fitzhugh. “But you’ll have to find a way to smuggle me out. I’m too important to be captured when this fort fails. Some oaf will need to smuggle me out.”

Dryly, almost to himself Fitzhugh remarked. “I’m sure that notebook is all that needs to be smuggled out by my oaf.” Which earned him a snigger from Mandy’s bodyguard. In a louder tone he continued. “Perhaps a little more focus on winning for the moment professor. No need for suicide pills just yet.” The bodyguard sniggered more.

Mandy also didn’t seem to appreciate the professor’s bland acceptance of defeat. “Professor I was thinking that rather than starting again we might examine that when we are using to ascertain if we can modify it sufficiently to over come this issue.”

The professor didn’t react for a moment. Then with a fresh verve exclaimed. “Why, thank you, young Mandy that’s an excellent suggestion. A paper on modifying corrupted pookkalam. Yes, just the ticket into HMCC’s good graces. We certainly can salvage something out of the mess these magical military morons have made of my prefect pookkalam. I bet is was the poor diction used with the cast that set the whole thing off on the wrong foot.”

Both Max and Silvia bristled at the return off that particular insult. Fitzhugh knew the professor too well and just rolled his eyes.

Mandy reigned in her own fire long enough to continue her conversation with the professor. “So what are we looking for?”

“Oh that. Yes.” The professor replied. “We need to look at the hardened sections for part os the circles that are flat, unjoined or unnecessarily thin. We can fix that. We also need to look for areas where any of the sigils are badly formed. Lastly I need to rewrite Clara’s circle content almost completely. I suspect.”

He took a breath. “I say, Mandy your young. You’ve go sharp eyes. Perhaps you can ave a look for those mistakes whilst I work out how to strengthen the main connections.”

A short time later and Mandy took both Fitzhugh and the professor around the pookkalam showing them all the bits she thought were mistakes or problems. At first the professor was rather jovial about the ‘mistakes’ until he reached a collection of sigils that Mandy identified as poorly formed.

Here all joviality and calm dissolved from the professor. He exploded. In later years Fitzhugh realised that the only reason the professor didn’t use copious quantities of profanity in that moment was because he just didn’t know any.

Once calm again the professor was able to point in his book at what he had drawn in that section of the pookkalam. It was quite different. At which point a discussion ensued between Fitzhugh, Silvia and the professor. Others who commented were ignored. The upshot being it could be mostly fixed and should be. Which would change a number of issues with the pookkalam and fix some obvious challenges.

A few ours later found the professor crawling around the pookkalam. Here he added a bit more powder there he moved the tacky remains of the first cast. He carefully re-inscribed things, stylised some off the intersections and generally appeared to be redoing the entire pookkalam. All the while looking at his note books and the tables he had drawn based on the success of the first cast.

“Right. Everyone back to your original positions. If I get this right the coven cast will be significantly improved.” He commented ruefully before smirking in Silvia’s direction. “Some of us may even be able to take bathroom breaks.”

Silvia growled at him.

He ignored her. “This time I have altered the cast so that I can do the vocalisation. Last effort was a bit of a bodge job and we ended up with this colourful roof colouring that did nothing well.”

“You might be a professor when you’re in HMCC’s compounds but you are an ass wherever you happen to drag yours.” Silvia retorted.

“Lady, you may be the leader of this coven but you are turning to be a complete pain in my…”

The twins sniggered together before Clara cracked up interrupting. “Ass. haha. Remember when we were in that little town’s bathhouse and he was so intent on his book he wasn’t paying attention and walked into the girls bathrooms.”

Cindy laughed even harder. “Yeah and that overweight momma towel whipped in the ….” At this point she broke down she was laughing so hard she couldn’t finish the sentence.

Clara was laughing so hard she was almost crying. “How long did he complain he couldn’t sit down because he had…” she paused.

“…a pain in my ass.” The twins chorused together, laughing uproariously as they concluded.

“Ok, ok.” Fitzhugh decided that he was never putting the professor in the same coven as Silvia again. They were fine on their own but they just rubbed each other the wrong way. Actually it was the twins, one or other of them always found a way to wind everyone up. He needed to avoid any more friction. He changed the subject. “Lets get this started. Restarted. Updated. Well whatever we’re calling this lets get it over with.”

“Everyone, same as last time, hold onto some nguvu and wait for the pookkalam to activate.” The professor paused before going on in a slightly less commanding tone of voice. “Hopefully we can get it right this time because there are no backsies after this.”

“You said that last time.” Cindy said.

“Yeah you did.” Clara added.

Before the professor exploded. Silvia stepped in. “Lets just start.”

Taking a big break the professor started. Once again there was a litany of words. Strangely it was still Silvia who seemed to lift and dance in time with some unheard tune that they seem to accompany.

Suddenly there was the same inaudible pop. The same feeling on being slapped to the floor by the hand of something too big to be allowed. Then, as if flicked by the giant hand in question, the professor was ejected form the pookkalam. He accelerated at velocity hitting a lookout and punching them both through the parapet well out into the empty space beyond. That accomplished the pookkalam chimed as it emitted a vibrant red light.

Suddenly Erica straightened opening her mouth to say something before she was cut off by Silvia. “Quick, catch him Max.”

Max was one step ahead of her, already casting. “Cindy, guide his landing. I always get the mitt to land on something bad.”

“Mitt?” Claudia asked.

“Simple spell all wind castors use to catch each other when they fail at flying.” Firzhugh said.

She nodded in understanding.

By the time the cast dropped the unlucky guard had already hit the ground below. But it was just in time to save the professor. His collision with the guard had broken his ribs, collarbone and fractured his skull, leaving him unconscious for a week. If he had hit the parapet directly it would have killed him.

It would be nice to say this incident marked a change in the professor. That he turned over a new leaf and started treating the soldiers who guarded him with respect. He wasn’t that kind of man. Spots didn’t change on him. He still regarded the less intelligent as beneath this notice.

Fitzhugh looked around the group remaining on the roof. The only ally in the coven he’d had, was now unconscious on the ground bellow. Only the professor had seemed genuinely upset that the pookkalam had been tempered with. It was another thing for the covens protocols that he was putting together. Always check every mark, powder granule and sigil in the precast work before you power it.

Not that he was advocating these covens just yet. The most powerful thing it had done was eject a member with extreme prejudice.