There was silence for a long minute as the KIA men thought about all the implications of what I was alluding to, and to what I had already done. About how I was breaking all the rules they’d learned about magic so casually, and what they’d seen me do.
“Lady Fae, you didn’t have to go and show off like you did,” Red piped up solemnly. “Really, none of us expected you to do anything like that. It’s attracted so much attention to you... on top of everything else you did. Why did you do that?”
I sighed. “Hypocrisy, of course.” That got their attention. “I could have just sat there at the eastern flank, slowly working our way in, grinding away at the Horde. I could have just done it for hours and hours, making a reputation without taking any real risks...
“And thousands of soldiers would likely have died, just because I was afraid of ‘showing off’. I would have had to sit there and watch them die fighting. Sure, they’d be completely ignorant that I could have helped them out so much, and they’d have died bravely doing their duty.
“By my estimation, I saved somewhere between six and ten thousand soldiers, if not more, by doing what I did. Not just killing so many of the Horde, but taking out the Queen Sidewinder and folding up the flank, getting the King Spider and Scorpion to withdraw hours earlier than they might have.
“I probably created a lot of trouble for myself by doing so. Sacrificing ten thousand soldiers to save some trouble for myself just wasn’t something I was willing to do.”
They were all silent, glancing back at the battle lines behind us as we swept up our true pay from the vanguard retreat.
It was notable that there were still plenty of Ants left to disassemble the dead killed by the rest of the vanguard force, cut them up, and haul them away. I had the feeling it wasn’t going to be the Tarantulas in charge out here soon enough.
I also imagined they were annoyed we hadn’t and weren’t leaving anything for them. Pity the Ants and their appetites.
“That Oath sounds fine to me, Lady Fae,” Red spoke up first. “I will ask you to get me rich enough to be able to take care of my family,” he added with an amused smile.
“Well, that depends on how big your family is, but sure!” It wasn’t like money was going to be a problem.
“Then I’m in.”
The others chimed in quickly after that. They weren’t dumb, and now they knew something about how I thought about other people. It went without saying that I’d do the same thing for them.
None of them were heavy on the Law side of things. They’d seen that game played in the military, so all of them were Yellow, with tinges of Green or Brown from the things they’d seen and the cynicism of life.
Notably, they’d become more Yellow in the past few days for some reason, imagine that. It meant they weren’t afraid to step outside the rules and the law to get the right thing done, but they weren’t going to break it without a literally Good reason to do so.
Which was totally and utterly fine. I wasn’t looking for a Paladin at this point.
“Let’s finish up this harvest, get back to your rooms, get another round of hardass Meditation in, and we’ll be about the Oaths.” I paused significantly. “Like everything else, they come with benefits.”
Smiling happily about having hitched their wagon to a sun, they eagerly awaited the end of the harvesting and what was going to come about next.
-----------
I skipped the returning to the Fort Hood reinforcement army, certain I would be accosted for some reason or another, even if it was cloaked in goodwill and gratitude. They’d want to know more about me, particularly how I’d Cast the spells I had at a mere Adept Tier, and the new ones I’d gifted the Scouting team we’d been fighting with... and which couldn’t be spread to others.
The first stop was the Hunter’s Guild. As the Mick had said, the Austin branch was totally happy to sign me up speedily, and I removed myself dimensionally before those searching for me could pile in to find me.
There was another full twelve hours of Meditation in a private chamber this time, enhanced by everyone having at least one Tier 4 full set of Stars. Even the latecomers got to a full 3-set in their late Elements, everyone else applying a full 4-set to everything.
That included me. I managed to complete a full 4-Tier set on my own forty-nine Stars, increasing my Mana reserves and the power I could draw off of them.
Big John and Bjorn were left with no work to do but to slowly attempt to catch up to everyone else, given no duties to undertake in the meantime.
We had to go to Dallas for deliveries, so that’s what I did, heading on out in the middle of the night. Of course, the hotel was mobbed with people wanting to see us, especially me, but I wasn’t with them when the KIA lads headed out. Driver Sam had already left early, picked me up outside of town and headed to Dallas.
I couldn’t Teleport some place I hadn’t been before, after all. Lived-Line extensions, activate!
The others went about setting up things we needed to do, and were rapidly accosted by the Magic Association and the military when they went to pick up their credits, and mine on my behalf.
After being hassled and pressured and interviewed by extremely suspicious and greedy Mage Association people, they were allowed to go, since they literally couldn’t help at all, weren’t inclined to, and were totally within their rights not to give magical knowledge away for nothing which they could get elsewhere, regardless. The Association trying to clamp down on the uses of the new spells was leaning against the tide, which was rapidly calling for the spells to be available to everyone, especially other low-level mages!
The most powerful mages didn’t care, of course, able to bend their magic for offense, defense, or utility as they liked, and some of them might even want to limit such versatility among minor mages. The number of voices swelling against them was only rising, however, as vids of Lt. Jefferson’s platoon using the new attack spells were all over the internet by now.
-------
The rise of a new building near the Hunter’s Guild headquarters went mostly unnoticed. The Guild itself finessed the purchase of the land on the sly. It was cleared off and the stone buildings went up fairly quickly with the use of Earth Magic, with ornamentation and glass and internal wiring to follow quickly afterwards. With the right money and connections, those things could actually happen pretty fast.
It didn’t take too many rooms. Mostly, there was a lot of multi-level parking going in, for some reason...
-----
“Any problems finding it?” I asked them, looking at the cherry-red container where molten stone was bubbling and breaking down quickly. A thin trail of gleaming molten yellow liquid was dripping steadily out of the bottom, down a groove and into a slowly rotating set of channels and catches there to receive it all and make nice new goldweight-sized ingots.
“Nope, right where you said it would be, a hundred and twenty feet down. We extracted all the stuff we could and closed everything up afterwards. Got about ten tons of proper ore left to go, should melt down into at least a few hundred pounds more gold,” the Mick replied immediately.
“Excellent. We’re going to need a lot more of this stuff, although platinum and gemstones are much better.”
Red crouched down next to the quickly-cooling gold ingots, his Fire being used to maintain the heat of the cauldron. Gold, as the heaviest component, was naturally draining out the bottom once it was freed of its chemical bonds by the melting, and the slag was continually skimmed off and being cast into bricks for use in the floors of the new building. “You can really make magic items out of this stuff, Lady Fae? Seems kind of cheaty...”
“Well, it takes a LOT of gold. Certainly the industrial operations that are ongoing are more efficient in some ways... but the capability of mages being able to extract the gold is so high, it should make very little difference.”
Unafraid of the heat, I reached down and picked up a bar, which was still hot enough to melt iron. My fingertips went red promptly, but I ignored it as the contact also cooled it down very quickly, pale blue flames coming up around my fingertips in reaction to what was happening.
“I’ll get you your Implements as soon as I get the money coming in, gentlemen, and this mostly-useless stuff is just what we need to get it all done.” Rote gold was only used for ornamentation here, you needed an Energized kind to carry Lightning Mana for magitech.
“Tox and I pretty much have the website set up, Lady Fae,” Burt spoke up quickly. “Running it through the Hunter’s Guild was actually a good idea. The local directors aren’t stupid; the sheer amount of traffic coming through is going to be great for this place!”
“The automatic cash transfers are in place?” I smiled thinly, and they nodded. I’d been all the way to Houston by now, and the internet enabled one to go much further, if they cared to. “Ah, the glories of enlightened self-interest. Now, is everyone ready for their first lesson on Wizardry?”
The hunger in their eyes was pretty keen, as everyone sat down on Disks to receive the lesson. Accentuating everything with psychic understanding and holograms of examples only made it all the easier to do...
------
They all had Intellects in the 13-15 range. Red and Burt led the pack with 15’s, making them extremely intelligent normal people, but not true geniuses. I could show them what to do and how to do it, but they still had to do it themselves.
Happily, they had a lot of Mana Control practice as mages, but this was a completely different Tradition we were going down, and so Spellcrafting was far more important. I had to admit that they glommed on quickly with Psychic examples.
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I had worked out the procedure quickly enough, given it was a normal Formation ‘limited’ by their Elemental Mana. They couldn’t be true Wizards... but they could be Wizards of their Elements, and that was good enough for me.
What they had to do was gather the raw Stardust in their Starfield, and make their Arcane Core, the foundation of the Valence structure and all Wizardry. That effectively meant scooping the stuff together on the borders between their Starfields, compacting it, and setting it spinning furiously, until all the Mana mixed together, blended, and it ignited into a proper Arcane Core, even if it only was a couple Elements.
Mick and Red, having the most powerful Elements with their 5-Tiers, completed the process first, igniting their Cores to life. The rest of them followed suit over the space of an hour, bolstered by feeling the subtle changes in Mana of the arcane energy going around them.
-------
The Mick was the first one to comment after Lady Fae left the room. They were all trying not to look after her as she headed for the workroom, there to start pounding the first of the Light alternate spells into gold foil.
Her plan was to make five Tablets, each with a spell inscribed on them. Each Tablet would be paid for separately and memorized separately, requiring the blood of the person wishing to learn the spell be poured onto the Tablets, initializing the magic. Once each of the seven Stars on the Tablet was full, the spell would be properly impressed into the minds of those using it... but it also came with a Geas that would completely obfuscate the spell itself, just like they had on themselves, rendering the recipients unable to teach it to others.
“So, who else thought their heads were gonna pop when she showed us exactly how to make this little ball of light in our skulls?” the Mick asked nobody in particular.
All of the others raised silent hands.
“There was nothing sexual in that at all,” Red murmured, looking up at ceiling and shaking his head. “You remember Dr. Trannister, right? Doing that debrief?” There were grunts and mutters of acknowledgement about the woman who had ‘treated’ them after their ‘little misunderstanding’ with That Bastard who had left them to die. “She was pretty professional, pretty dry, but her Psychic touch... it still felt like a woman. You could tell she cared and she was trying to help and she was trying to be gentle, if determined, and she definitely wasn’t giving any vibes off, right?”
It had been the first time any of them had been exposed to a Psychic Mage, so they all remembered the debrief quite clearly.
“Lady Fae didn’t feel like that at all,” Bjorn said hoarsely. “That... I’m not sure what that was. Can there actually be someone out there that smart, that in tune with magic? It was like watching a presentation unfold, where all my questions were answered as I was thinking them, and when I tried to resist, I was not allowed to go off-course. Every time I stumbled on something and didn’t know why, I was just put through it again a different way, until it just clicked. I couldn’t... I couldn’t NOT understand it, even though what I was doing seemed so damn insane.”
They all lapsed into silence, watching that little Core in their heads spinning. They had to feed it more, she had told them, getting it glowing brighter, stronger, until it could afford to start spinning out the Valences, the places where they could hang real spells, and also hang Cantrips, minor Spells, inside it, which they could use as often as they liked.
One of those spells was Visual File, which was basically having a computer for a memory. They were all looking forward to that. Know Time and Know Location, always knowing where you were and what time it was, and furthermore, any shifts in either from magic.
Being able to do minor repairs on something just by holding it and looking at it, letting the magic Mend it. Summoning a dove into your hand, or a personal flower. Purifying food...
There were a bunch of ‘universal’ spells they could employ, and others that were restricted by the Elements they had... and some of which could be adapted by Element to similar, but different effects. It was a precise yet casual control of magic, like some of the Mages or Archmages had, but it would be available to them at will.
Once the Matrix was full enough and making Valences, it would also start feeding back into them. They could pulse the power it wasn’t spending back into their Stars and replenish them. It wasn’t fast-fast, but even five points a minute was better than the absolutely zero they had now without Meditating, and it took basically no effort at all!
“You all know about Spiritual Attainment, right?” Red asked. He was always the most scholarly of them, reading the most, keeping up on the raw knowledge of the magical world for them. They all had their interests, but Red tended to go the most in-depth into anything new, just in case it was useful, or they could take advantage of it. The rest of them were usually pretty up on their own Elements, but Red kept track of everything.
“Yeah, that’s the measure of power for the Elements of the Mind. Void, Psychic, Sound, and Chaos, right?” Big John piped up slowly. “Huh. You remember talking about the Talents some of those lucky motherfuckers end up with?”
“Oh, yeah. Those fuckers got smooth sailing to the top of the world, if they have any brains at all,” Glenn agreed. “How’d you like to start life with a built-in Seed for your Element, or something like that?”
“Yeah. I’m vaguely remembering them saying that one of the most powerful potential Talents would be starting with Void Magic as your first Element.”
They all shuffled awkwardly at Red’s comment, trying to imagine that. “So... she’s someone with high Spiritual Attainment?” Driver Sam asked shortly, his dark eyes gleaming. “Did you notice the rest?”
“The rest?” most of them repeated instantly.
“Two things.” Red help up his hand, two fingers extended.
“She really did have only had one Element,” breathed the Mick, and one finger went down. “All of them,” and so did the other.
Driver Sam just nodded. “She was harmonizing with every single Element we all had here,” he said shortly. “We saw her using Sound Magic, Psychic Magic, Void Magic, Summoning Magic, and all our Elements. She really can use them all with her Typeless Element.”
“But her Mana weight is lower than any of us,” Red nodded, making them all stop and think. “Yeah, I didn’t know what I was feeling, either. She was gaining power so fast it was crazy, but then, so were we.”
“Yeah, she has only ever worked on one Element. She said she broke through to Adept, and we should have felt another Element on her, and there’s just... nuthin’. Nothing at all...” The Mick shook his head. “She’s got only one Element, and it ain’t any of them, but it works as all of them!” he nodded, finally believing it.
“So, she’s Spiritually Attuned to... every kind of Magic?” Glenn was still having a hard time wrapping his head around that concept. The different types of Magic reacted very differently to different kinds of people!
“Remember what she told us? That because we Awakened our Stars already, it restricted the types of Wizardry we could learn?” Red reminded them. “Go back, guys. Go back to before we were Awakened. We had that one little Star inside us, if we could sense it. What Element was that Star?”
“Huh.” Bjorn said, staring straight ahead, remembering that moment the Magic had Woken up inside him and determined the course of his whole life, like it did everyone who became a mage. “It was... all of them, and none of them. It was just Magic. Then we got Awakened, and it changed...”
“You’re saying true Wizardry is having all your Stars being like our original Star?” Burt pressed intently.
“And it’s your only Element,” Big John said with a smile. “Remember what she said. Mages have power, Wizards have versatility!”
“She has buttloads of power, we all saw it!” Glenn refuted promptly.
“We saw her Casting spells for hours on end, Glenn,” Big John went on, almost smirking to himself. “And then she’d flare her power, dump a whole bunch of stuff on one of her spells, and take something to Poundsville hard.”
“She was using Wizardry to fight almost everything, and using Magery for the really tough stuff,” Driver Sam agreed firmly. “We haven’t seen any of the spells she’s been talking about, but we all felt her Casting. I don’t know about you, but that was the most rigidly-controlled, iron-hard defined Magic I have ever felt in my life. She was taking something that should have been a minor spell and making it work like spells ten times as powerful, somehow.
“Even when she dumped Magery on something, that stuff was tight. So goddamn tight! I’ve never felt Magic like that,” Driver Sam shook his head and hands in disbelief. “Even those Archmages tossing around the big stuff, it’s not that controlled. They’re just flexing bigger loads, and the Magic responds to them because they are big. That was... the difference between driving a big rig, and driving a fully-engineered hot rod with custom layouts to the boards!”
“Or wrapping something up in a thousand silk strands, instead of a chain,” the Mick agreed. “And you all had to feel her Mana draw when she was Casting, right?”
“Smooth. It was like she wasn’t even there, if you weren’t paying attention to her. Even when she popped the big stuff, it was like trying to feel ether. She was popping tons of Fire and Ice Magic into those Darts she kept sending out, and I could barely feel a breeze going by of the Mana. She could have been a Novice or something Meditating next to me,” Red nodded.
“You’re right. She was outright killing so much stuff, I never really noticed how much Ice Magic was in what she was doing. And she was doing it right in with her Fire Magic!” Burt blurted out in consternation.
Red just shook his head, and both Glenn and Burt looked embarrassed. Now that he pointed it out, the wounds on the Commanders and Rulers, all Rimed in Ice, were glaring at them. What kind of intensity would it take to Rime such powerful creatures? “Whatever that ‘Firefrost Seed’ of hers is, it’s conflating her Fire and Ice Magic. The more Ice Magic she uses, the more it feeds her Fire, and vice versa... and it’s growing stronger. My Sundrop Seed basically increases my Fire about double, and she’s already stronger than that, I can feel the effect growing as her Cultivation increases so fast. I’m pretty sure when she breaks into Mage that she’ll have the equivalent of two Soul-grade Seeds rapidly, and it’s only going to get stronger from there.”
“Do you think she’ll be able to get Seeds for all of us?” Big John piped up eagerly. “I gotta show some power when it comes time to get my Dragon!”
Red put his hand to the bridge of his nose with the long-suffering expression that said they hadn’t noticed something again. “John,” he rasped, “you just pulled how many tons of gold out from under the ground thirty miles away from where she Cast the spell to tell you where it is.
“Now, you want to tell me which stands out more magically, a bunch of seemingly-worthless ornamental metal, or a Seed?”
John wasn’t the only one who pursed his lips in awe. “Holy shit, Red,” he muttered into the stunned silence as everyone realized what it meant.
“I want that Divination Element!!!” Glenn hissed quickly. “Someone tell me how to get it!”
“Have access to the Lady with the un-Awakened Stars who can use it,” the Mick sighed for all of them. “Hopefully this Wizardry is going to help us use stuff we can’t right now...”
“I’d think that Locate Earth Seed or something could be part of the Earth Element, right?” Bjorn ventured softly, and they all fell silent again.
“Man, if that’s true, being rich is going to be the very last of our worries,” Big John muttered. “Being able to locate Seeds at will? The least of the real ones go for half a million bucks!”
“Well, locating them and actually retrieving them are two different things,” the Mick reminded him with a scoffing tone, and they all half-laughed despite themselves. Magical Beasts tended to be very sensitive to the presence of Seeds, and wanted them for themselves. Gaining a Seed usually involved fighting something powerful for it, and the better the Seed, the stronger the Beast guarding it!
“Where’d she learn all this stuff? Where’d she come from?” Glenn had to sigh. “I mean, I’ve heard of ridiculously talented, but that girl is just freaking insanely good!”
“More to the point, someone that talented, not wanting to bring her Family into things, to the point she actually has no money at all, no Hunter ID, no nothing at all...” the Mick pointed out. “She fights like she’s been a Hunter all her life. Not a soldier, either, we all can see the difference. She’s used to giving orders, not taking them, but she can change her function and role on a dime if she sees the need to.
“Add all that and her looks, and she should be freaking famous. There’s nothing on her, nowhere. Nothing at all.” He’d looked, they’d all looked. Granted, she was probably using a totally assumed name, but the Mick was right. Looking like that, with talent like that, and knowing what she did, how could she not be known somewhere?
“To be perfectly fair, I don’t want to know. Because they might be coming for her, and anyone she wants to get away from is someone I don’t want to confront,” Red admitted softly. “If there’s a Family of wizards out there and their magic is why nobody knows who they are, can you imagine how dangerous they are?”
“Not limited by Element. Capable of using magic to one way or another do just about anything they could imagine, even if they don’t have the massive reserves of a Sorcerer...” Burt muttered. “That is indeed pretty frightening, guys...”
“More to the point, her face and image are now being posted everywhere, because she rescued us, a lot of soldiers, and taught some of us something that comes across as really, really basic magic to her,” the Mick stated grimly. “You all know we owe her our lives. Now we owe her a small fortune each, and a huge fortune if we talk about our upgraded Stars, and our entire careers changing with the new spells.
“We owe her pretty much everything that’s going to happen to us for the rest of our lives. That is not something small, boyos.”