Knight-Paladin Meyer Damfeld, being unmarried and childless, doted on Mayra in his own unique way. He was stern and strict, but treated his niece as well as he could. So long as she was actively pursuing her goals in life, he was happy to provide her with whatever assistance he was capable of.
The Damfeld residence in the Orlisian capital, one of the few that was more wood than brick, was larger than the one in her father’s barony. Even though her uncle was the second son and without hereditary title, his rank in the paladin order meant that he was actually the more powerful of the two. Despite being the second son of a minor lord, Meyer Damfeld had achieved a status that even a duke could envy, and his house reflected the position.
Almost as soon as Mayra had moved in, she had been given an entire wing of the building to do with as she liked. Over the four years that she had been living there, she had slowly turned it into her own personal extension of the mages guild. Her uncle hadn’t cared about the renovations in the slightest. If anything, he approved of them wholeheartedly. Meyer was not a family man, but seemed to take no small amount of pride in knowing that his home could aid his relatives, no matter what their chosen occupation might be.
Mayra’s wing of the building now held a small library, an alchemy workshop, a room specifically for making use of large scale magic circles, and several others that could be adjusted to fit whatever her current needs might be. Since her bedroom was only used for sleeping, she had considered her original large one to be a horrible waste of space, and had moved it into what had once been a walk in closet. Her uncle thought it odd, and the servants thought it scandalous, but Mayra thought it practical.
Being directly employed by the guild as a research wizard, rather than a mere affiliated member, meant that Mayra was given much leeway, and could work from home as often as she liked. While her findings had never been groundbreaking, they were still good enough to merit her salary and cover the costs of her membership dues. The treatise she was currently writing, On the Optimization and Order of Instructions for Golems and Other Nonsentient Magical Constructs, would likely end up being more of the same. It would serve a good reminder of her intelligence and skill, but she doubted that it would be impressive enough to help her achieve a higher rank. The difference between an accredited mage and an archmage was vast, and one single paper was rarely enough to make a difference.
Currently, Mayra was in her workshop taking a break from her latest thesis to write out a proper inventory of the items she had brought back from the necropolis. While most of her recent focus had been on the doll golem that Indigo had gifted to her, Mayra had looted more than Corlo, Haylen, and Kearse combined, and she wanted to make sure that none of it went to waste. The human mind could only keep track of so much at once, and she couldn’t allow something with potential importance to go forgotten.
The knock at her door made her glower before she remembered that she was actually expecting visitors. She should have been expecting them. Only minutes ago, one of the servants had informed her of their arrival, but she had been distracted enough that she had forgotten within the brief period of time it had taken them to actually be escorted onto the premises.
“Enter,” she called to the people outside her door.
A maid led Haylen and Indgo inside, and Mayra greeted them both with a hug. Mayra rarely received guests, and few of those were as welcome as these two.
Haylen was one of the rare natural friends she had. Most people she associated with were either other mages, or other nobles. The half-elf was the exception, and was someone that was close to her without needing a preestablished excuse for socialization. They genuinely got along, not because of their jobs, and not because of their social status, but because they actually enjoyed the other’s company.
It was obvious why her uncle had spoken so highly of the woman. Haylen was motivated. She was driven. She was the type of person who would fight tooth and nail to make the world a better place and, probably most importantly to the knight-paladin, she would follow the law in doing so.
In Mayra’s opinion, Haylen was the type of person that should be a paladin, and she was unsurprised that both her uncle and Corlo had singled her out as a candidate. What did surprise Mayra was that Haylen was still open minded enough for her to get along with. Most paladins, in her opinion, were too focused on making reality fit the law, whereas Haylen seemed to prefer making the law fit reality.
Indigo was… Indigo. She fascinated Mayra, both by her personality and by her existence. Not only was the girl a successfully created homunculus, a being that was only seen as “theoretically possible” by most mages, but her character and viewpoints had given Mayra much to think about. Indigo was both an intellectual peer, and a tool for her own advancement. Mayra didn’t want to think of the homunculus as a person to be manipulated, but how could she pass up the opportunity the girl presented?
Mayra considered Archmage Verdis a fool, not because he had tried to gain from Indigo, but because of the methods he had used. If he had befriended her, if he had gained her trust, he could have profited more than anyone else from her mere existence. Instead, he had tried to leash and control her, and the results had been understandably bad. Mayra, simply by being openhearted, had already been given more than any mage could want in return.
Indigo wasn’t a person to be used. Indigo wasn’t a thing to be dissected and studied. Indigo was a person, and if treated as such, would give more than was asked of her. Mayra didn’t think that the homunculus considered her to be more than an acquaintance. They weren’t friends yet. But the amount of trust the mage had been shown made her want to be worthy of it.
“I never should have given you this thing,” Indigo said to start the conversation. “You’re too good with it. It greeted us at the front door. I thought it was a person! It… You even gave it a maid outfit!?”
Clutched protectively between Indigo’s pale arms was the golem, now dressed and styled to look like a tiny maid. Physically it was very small, not even coming up to Mayra’s knees, but the possibilities it represented were massive. It could only follow the simplest of orders, but its memory capacity was amazing. It hadn’t taken Mayra long to realize that different commands could be grouped together in sets. She had only owned it for a week, but already had it behaving in a way that was almost lifelike.
Mayra hadn’t yet thought of a name for the golem, but the servants had already started calling it “Mayra’s little helper.” One of the maids had even taken it upon herself to sew up a tiny uniform from spare cloth. They found it amusing to treat it with utmost courtesy. Even the head maid was already in on the joke, and had been positively beaming when the doll had given her a polite bow. Her uncle had yet to meet the thing, and while he wouldn’t find it as funny as other people did, he would likely find the doll’s sense of decorum to be entirely appropriate.
Indigo did nothing to hide her envy.
“Really,” the homunculus went on, “if I had known how cool this golem was, I’d have never given it up.”
A large black circle appeared behind her, and Indigo carefully returned the golem to the ground before dashing inside her storage space. Haylen and Mayra stood by the opening while the sounds of cursing mixed with the thumps, shuffles and clatter of boxes and other objects being moved around.
When Indigo had first given the golem to Mayra, she had called it an automaton, and had derided it as being a “child’s toy.” Clearly, she had realized just how wrong that statement had been. The mage allowed herself small amount of satisfaction at the idea that she had been able to recognize the greatness of an ancestral artifact faster than the person who had grown up surrounded by them.
Finally, Indigo reappeared at the the entrance, holding an orichalcum dog in the palm of her hand. She didn’t look pleased.
“This is it. This is the only other golem I’ve got. What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
Mayra didn’t understand what there was to be disappointed about. A puppy golem might not be as versatile as her own, but it was still useful. Any golem was better than no golem.
“Really! Indigo’s standards are just too high. She can put a spell together faster than anyone I’ve ever met, but she actually seems to believe it when she says that she isn’t a mage.”
Indigo sighed heavily before tossing the golem back into her storage, and Mayra winced when she heard it crash to the floor inside. That was no way to treat a golem.
“You’d think a homunculus would have more respect for golems. Just because they can’t think doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be treated with care.”
Her own was currently standing at the ready next to the workbench. An area had been chalked out for it to return to whenever it wasn’t engaged in a task. Eventually, Mayra planned on buying an entire dollhouse for it to live in. Her childhood dream, the one that had led her to becoming a mage, was to have dolls that she could actually play with. Over the years, that dream had never really disappeared. It had simply matured.
Another knock on the door preceded two maids who entered with tea and pastries. They were subtle like that. Mayra knew they couldn’t directly tell her, “You don’t act the part of a noble lady,” and so they would frequently try to fill in the gaps on their own. A magical laboratory was hardly the place for tea and cakes, but it wasn’t like she could stop them. At times like this, the servant had more authority than the master.
Haylen was somewhat used to how things went at Mayra’s, and took it in stride. Indigo seemed oblivious to the juxtaposition of having a tea party in such a location, and began to question the maids about what flavors the tiny cakes might hold inside them. Mayra sighed internally, but remained stoic. If the servants said she needed to have a quaint little tea party, then there was no escaping it. At least the conversation would be good.
The three of them sat at a small table in the middle of the room, talking about what they had been up to, and catching up on recent events. Mayra was again thankful that most of her friends were either not nobles, or at least nobleborn mages who shared her lack of interest in the noble lifestyle.
They started with the festival.
Haylen talked about her nervousness during the opening ceremonies, and Mayra could understand that. Face value was an important thing among nobles, and while Mayra disdained seeking it out herself, she knew the feeling of “not wanting to damage another person’s reputation.”
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“Haylen had it easy though. All she had to do was stand there. Try spending an evening at a ball where you have to talk to people you hate for hours on end. That’s difficult.”
Indigo forced Haylen to go into detail about what had happened once they split up that night. Mayra didn’t know whether to blush or laugh when the half-elf talked about the lovemaking abilities of the orc she had ended up bedding. Haylen was an odd one, and seemed to flit between wanting to conquer and be conquered.
The mage listened with no small amount of envy. The night they had pulled Indigo out of the mist was the closest the mage had ever gotten to a sexual encounter. Mayra hated that the status of her hymen was enough to completely alter her chances of finding a suitable man to marry. She wasn’t about to give it up for a single night’s passion, but she wished that it could count for as little as what Haylen had held her own to.
Indigo’s own retelling of that night had Mayra switching between laughter, blushes, shock, pale anger, and then more blushing. Even going by only what she had seen, that night had been revelatory for Mayra.
She had known that Anja hadn’t been particularly interested in men… but Bianca? It actually made sense. To Mayra at least. Indigo’s story added context to what Mayra had always known, but never noticed.
Same-sex marriage wasn’t recognized in the empire. Or Orlis. At least among nobles, marriage was meant to solidify alliances and further bloodlines. There was no point in getting married otherwise. Homosexuality wasn’t frowned upon, but family had to come first. For either gender, as long as you provided offspring, having a paramour of the same sex was entirely acceptable.
But now, Mayra had more context as to her friend’s situation. Bianca hadn’t joined in because she was interested in Indigo like Anja was. Bianca had joined in because she was interested in Anja. The subtle clues had always been there, but Mayra had always been lacking the final piece to put the puzzle together.
Anja was a lesbian. Bianca was also a lesbian, and was now clearly in love with Anja. Both of them being mages meant that even a heterosexual marriage was unlikely. To Mayra, they were a perfect match, and Mayra, as their mutual friend, would likely have to slap some sense into Anja who was probably unaware of Bianca’s feelings.
To anyone else, this would have seemed strange, implausible, and completely unpredictable, but to Mayra it was the only rational outcome. If they didn’t end up as an open couple, she would have some strong words for the both of them.
As Indigo’s story continued, she was surprised. Mayra had never been kidnapped. She would probably never be kidnapped. Nobles getting taken for a bounty or a ransom was something that, outside of war, only showed up in books and stories. It did happen, but it was so rare that the odds of personally experiencing it were slim to none.
Indigo’s seeming amusement at being abducted was even stranger. What type of person gets stuffed into a sack and still thinks of the people committing the crime as the victim?! Indigo, apparently. How much self-confidence would that require? A lot. The girl had grown up in a necropolis though, so anything that didn’t immediately kill her was probably considered a good thing.
The homunculus’ confrontation with Verdis set the mage’s blood to boil. That she could understand his logic only made her angrier. He was an archmage of the guild, and yes, by rights he could claim unowned magical constructs. But he had been told that Indigo was an exception. Still, he had insisted on pushing through with his greed, and had attempted to claim her before any authorities outside the church could be informed that the girl was off limits.
The so-called adventurers guild probably hadn’t even questioned the bounty. From their point of view, it had been entirely legal. A mage, an archmage of all people, had simply been outsourcing the capture of something that was rightfully his. Indigo had been declared a person by the church, and had been further acknowledged by the mages of the expedition. But not everyone knew that yet. Indigo didn’t have citizenship. She probably didn’t even have residency status. And Verdis had taken advantage in the gaps of knowledge to try and force his way through it all.
What made Mayra angriest was how few repercussions the archmage was likely to face. Nobody liked Verdis, but no one could likewise deny the amount of discoveries he had made. He was a horrible person, but he was a cornerstone of the Orlisian mages guild, and he couldn’t be brushed aside so easily. Even a house arrest, the usual punishment for authoritative people who had slightly overstepped their bounds, would mean nothing to him.
As much as Haylen hoped, and Indigo seemed to not care, Mayra doubted that he would simply give up. Mayra knew the man, and he wasn’t the type to stop when once he had set his sights on something. She hated him, and she hated how much she respected him.
Archmge Verdis, unlike many of the higher ranking mages, believed that the empire’s wisdom belonged to everyone. Every single one of his discoveries had been openly published to the entire guild. If he found a spell, he did not hoard it. When he managed to recreate something of the Ancestors, he made sure everyone knew how he had done so, and eagerly awaited any chance to prove his critics wrong.
Mayra respected that. Mayra loved that. And if Verdis had been anyone other than Verdis, he would have been her hero. But the lengths he was rumored to go to in order to acquire that knowledge left a bad taste in her mouth. Multiple times, he had been charged with fraud, extortion, or worse, but there was never enough evidence to prove him guilty. Wrongful, yes. But outside the bounds of the law, no.
“I’d like your opinion on something,” Indigo said, snapping Mayra out of her contemplations.
At some point, Indigo had finished her story without Mayra noticing.
“Opinion? On what?”
Indigo went over to her storage space and came out a moment later holding a cask made of the same shell-like material as her boxes, which she placed on the table before opening. Inside was something that Mayra recognized immediately. Metal balls. A lot of metal balls. The cask was filled to the brim with knuckle sized red-gold orichalcum spheres. Indigo had lost her previous steel ones back in Peninsula, but it seemed that she had replaced them.
“I made these when I stopped by Weland’s smithy earlier this morning. They’re lead with a coating of brass. I’m hoping that the orichalcum will make it easier for me to control them. They’re less durable than my old ones though, so I was hoping you could help me come up with a spell circle to keep them from falling apart the first time they hit something.”
Mayra blink, not quite understanding.
“That doesn’t sound difficult, but why would you need my help? You could probably make one just as easily as I could.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just… thought it would be more fun to do it together.”
That did sound fun, but… Mayra turned to Haylen, not wanting to make her other friend feel left out, but the half-elf just shrugged and took a bite from her pastry. She’d be fine.
The work itself didn’t take long, but the hour they spent comparing and contrasting different runes and arangements was about twice as long as it would have taken Mayra to do the whole thing by herself. Again, she wanted to slap some sense into Indigo.
“Not a mage indeed. She’s more like an archmage.”
The homunculus was a staunch perfectionist, and insisted on going through almost every possible combination before she finally settled on which circle to use. Maybe it was to be expected, but after spending so much time in the dead mana of the necropolis, Indigo valued spell efficiency very highly. Indigo leaned very much towards the more sorcerous ideals, and didn’t see the point in writing down a spell unless it was done to the best of your abilities.
Overall, the quick little project was bare basics. Mayra had hoped that Indigo would accidentally leak a bit of new information, but that wasn’t to be. Still, it was a good reminder of the fundamentals of magic, and was educational none the less.
In the end, the finalized spell circle would primarily enhance the durability of the ammunition. Indigo could launch them hard and fast enough that increasing the damage would have been redundant. Instead, they focused on making sure that the lead and orichalcum balls would survive the impact, and the changes in temperature caused by the velocity.
The thesis Mayra had been working on before starting on her golem report had been, Temperature Transference Between Magically Conductive Alloys, so she understood why Indigo didn’t want her balls to melt, but the idea that they could reach such high temperatures simply from velocity and air friction was still incredible.
That Indigo wanted to engrave the spell directly into the shell rather than enchant the orichalcum itself seemed to be a matter of taste. Physical circles needed to be powered with external mana, but this one was simple enough to fuel itself with the ambient mana of being telekinetically grasped. Directly enchanting the orichalcum would allow the spell to power itself, but the thinness of the brass shells meant that the enchantment would be much less stable. A written spell would, for Indigo at least, be much more alterable and make future adjustments easier.
When they were finished designing the spell, Indigo held one of the balls in her fingertips and a loud chime filled the room. It was loud, and Mayra and Haylen had to cover their ears. When it ended, the ball had a spell circle perfectly engraved onto its surface.
“I should probably do the rest later. And away from other people,” Indigo mused.
That was probably for the best. Indigo had a lot of the balls, and it would be a long and loud process to for her to put the circles onto all of them.
“How did you do that?” Mayra asked.
“Telekinesis,” Indigo answered. “Instead of grabbing it, I hit it. Like a very tiny blacksmith’s hammer moving as fast as possible.”
Indigo’s telekinesis was frightening. For any other mage, lifting something with their mind took far more mana than it was worth. Indigo however was able to do it with a level of efficiency that should have been impossible. Mayra didn’t know exactly how much mana that was, but she’d be willing to bet money that it was less than the girls average regeneration rate. It was just absurd!
“Are you two done?” Haylen asked while taking a sip of her tea.
At some point, the half-elf must have gotten bored, because the golem doll was sitting in her lap like a small child.
“Yah, we are done,” Indigo replied after putting the ball filled cask back into her storage and closing the door.
“You’re not leaving already, are you?” Mayra asked.
She usually enjoyed working on her own, but having friends come and go so quickly was enough to make anyone feel a bit lonely.
“Not yet. We wanted to ask you about the pilgrimage. I know it’s still early to ask for a decision, but we started planning it out yesterday, and we’d like to make sure you agree with the plan in case you come.”
“Ah. The pilgrimage.”
“I’d like to go with you. I want to go with you. But it’s not that simple.”
Haylen nodded in understanding, but Indigo looked confused.
“I talked to Uncle Meyer about it, and he thinks it’s a good idea, but I still need to ask my parents. I’ve sent them a letter, but it will probably be another week before I get a response.”
People of Mayra’s status typically went on pilgrimage soon after getting married. She, being a mage, was unlikely to marry any time soon. The difference between her birth and her occupation meant that this was a situation that went beyond her own opinion. If her family didn’t support it, she wouldn’t be allowed to go. She thought that they would give their approval, but she was still uncertain enough that she was afraid to get her hopes up.
They were in the middle of explaining the plans for their trip when Indigo twitched and stood up.
“Hold on. I’m being scried again.”
That statement alone was enough to send Mayra reeling. Her workshop was warded. The entire building was warded. She had personally handled all of it. If Indigo really was being watched, it would have taken someone with an archmage’s skill to bypass the numerous barriers that surrounded them.
Indigo reached pulled a scroll out of the air, held it above her, and shouted loudly for the benefit of their unseen watcher.
“Leave me alone, Verdis! If you don’t, then whatever happens next is your own fault!”
The homunculus began to count down from fifteen. She scowled upon reaching zero.
“Fine. Have it your way,” she muttered.
The scroll burst into flame and crumbled into nothingness almost instantaneously. Shortly after, a single loud thump could be heard in the distance. For the noise to be heard inside, and this far away, it must have been a very loud noise indeed.
Mayra had been scrambling to find whatever scrolls or protective talismans might have been useful. Haylen, until she heard the sound had been unperturbed. Now, they both stared at Indigo, and their faces had gone equally pale.
“Uh-oh.” Indigo said. She hadn’t moved, and looked as nervous as she was embarrassed.
“I thought you said it wouldn’t kill anyone!” Haylen shouted.
Mayra was silent, and at a slight loss as to what was going on. She had heard Indigo mention that Verdis had been scrying her, but she had no idea what spell the girl had apparently used to stop him.
“It… It… It probably didn’t kill anyone. Really!” Indigo stammered. “That was just the shockwave, I’m sure. Even a full mana battery couldn’t do that much damage. Right? It was just loud. Right?”
Whatever had happened, it hadn’t been subtle.
Mayra grabbed Indigo and pulled her to the door with Haylen following close behind. They needed to get to the mage’s guild.
Whatever Indigo had caused, it wasn’t something that people could ignore, and Mayra could only hope that it wasn’t as bad as it had sounded.