It had only been an hour, but Micah was so enmeshed in the advertisement speak for his school, he began to tell the two of them about school life overall rather than himself.
If he’d had anyone else by his side than Brian and a fire spirit, he might have been able to cooperate with them and face the conversation as a team. He would have preferred to have a friend.
As it was, Brian and he were pseudo-rivals who had to subtly wrestle for the pair’s attention without making it obvious, and it resulted in them taking awkward turns like a chess match.
After Micah wasted his first move talking about how much he enjoyed school—which he wasn’t even sure was true—Brian gave him an odd look and jumped into talking about how awesome and how great of a [Magician] he was.
“Wait, you’re not a [Pyromancer]?” Micah asked.
“No? Where did you get that idea?”
Well, uhm …
He looked at Hugh.
“I’m not really a climber,” Brian said, “I know spells, I can twist some of my Skills toward combat use, and I can give myself temporary combat Skills.”
How in the …? Did he mean spells? Enchanting himself with [Haste] and whatever?
“But I’m more interested in the spectacle of it all. Someone once told me the Towers are a stage—one of the grandest stages of our time. I’m looking to awe the crowd.”
“You sound pretty confident,” Shanty told him, while Bastion looked overwhelmed by having to talk to an outgoing teenager. He took another sip of his drink.
“That’s good. It’s better than sounding arrogant. I know there’s always room to grow.”
She turned to Hugh. “And you? Where are you from? How did you end up with him?”
That was a good question, and one Micah was eager to hear answered himself, even in spite of his feelings toward the spirit.
Hugh spoke, “I woke up during a harvest festival near Narajana—”
Shanty and Bastion’s eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to say something but Bastion slapped a hand over her face.
In a muffled tone, she groaned something into his palm, then relaxed.
“Uhh?” Brian stared.
“Sorry,” Shanty said with a sheepish look as Bastion wiped his hand on his pants, “the info hazard surprised me there.”
“Come again?” Micah tried to sound polite.
“I’m guessing you don’t know about the city?” Bastion asked.
“Nara—?” he started.
“It’s an ancient city,” she interrupted him with a scowl, “that somehow managed to enchant its own name with an epithet. If you know it well enough, you are compelled to speak it whenever you hear its name. If I had said it out loud, it would have been enough to afflict you.”
Micah had so many questions it all came out as a single, “Hah?”
“Why would anyone do that?” Brain asked.
Shanty shrugged. “Tourism? Advertisement, hometown pride, propaganda. Name it what you will.”
“You can think the phrase out in your head,” Bastion said, “to resist the effects.”
Shanty smiled and looked at Hugh. “As I said, you caught me by surprise.”
He shrugged. “Never bothered me before.”
Now, Micah wanted to know what the phrase was, even if it got stuck in his head. Not knowing was torture.
“So you came from— there,” Brian caught on more quickly than he had. “How?”
“In the fields outside the city,” Hugh corrected him. “A bonfire stack spat me out. And though the revelers around me grew drunker as the night went on, until they blacked out or staggered home, I became more and more awake and stayed ‘til the embers burnt low.”
He looked at the other two. “I did odd jobs around the city, even threw myself down the Wells sometimes, and used the Balefire Streams to travel around. This guy called on me from time to time while I did to show me tricks he was working on.”
He jerked a thumb at Brian, who listened attentively. He must have been hearing this for the first time, too.
“He was … fun. An entertainer for spirits. Seemed weird. The city even more so, with that ugly chunk of unburnable overhead. I couldn’t see a lot because he used uh, this cantrip [Candle] as his summoning base?”
Wait, what?
“But I asked around. One of your kin came to me with a proposition, 'asked me if I wanted to travel.”
“Bal,” Brian said with a weight to the name as if he expected to get a reaction out of them.
Shanty looked back at him with an earnest look. “I’m not familiar.”
Brian seemed disappointed.
Micah could have wondered who this Bal was, and why was she asking fire spirits to hang around kids in his city …
… but he was far more torn up about the fact that Hugh was apparently like Cal, their principal’s companion, while he, no matter how often he tried, couldn’t even use [Candle]. He thought of a tiny flame with eyes staring at him from his fingertip. Part of him missed it.
When he looked at the fire spirit in front of him, he felt disgust.
Lisa’s aunt had promised him he could learn to use it again, and he was beginning to think she was a liar.
“So Narajana born and raised,” Bastion said in a more animated tone, while Shanty peered up as if to silently repeat a phrase to herself. “How’s Hadica been treating you?”
Hugh shrugged. “It’s no Crystal Village, though I hear that’s on this world …?” His voice went up, hopeful.
Shanty nodded. “A ways northwest from here, near our north pole.”
He sucked in a deep breath and grinned. “Fantastic.”
“Crystal Village?” Brian asked.
“It’s like one of your human spas. A place where people treat us right. It’s famous. We have to go there on vacation someday.”
“Okay?”
For once, Micah thought he knew what they were talking about. Lisa had told him of a nation of mages who drew on a stream of magic far to the north.
She had likened the world to an ocean, or a desert, and those streams to warm water currents or rivers. Spirits stuck to them as humans had stuck to actual rivers.
The Five Cities weren’t near any, ‘in the middle of nowhere’, but they had the Towers, so who needed spirits anyway? They lived in a bountiful oasis.
“But uh,” Hugh brought them back on topic, “Brian’s been keeping it interesting, and this is something to do for a while or so … so … Give him money.”
Shanty blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Hugh,” Brian hissed.
“Give him …? Give him money? Is this not how this works? You seemed impressed. I thought that was the goal, like this is the moment we hold our hats out to the crowd.”
The pair chuckled, Shanty glanced at him, and Micah kicked himself out of his mood to find interesting stories to tell about himself, but he had nothing to compete with a fire spirit that apparently came from a magical city on a different world.
Besides, he had so many questions he wanted to ask them and … maybe that was a better plan?
“How did you two end up together?” he asked Shanty and Bastion, and they looked surprised.
“We uhm—” Shanty glanced down. “It’s a long story, and not exactly one that would be suited for an event like this.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
Even Brian joined in and insisted, “I’d love to hear it, for perspective?”
“Well, we uhm … We died together.”
“I’m sorry?” Micah genuinely thought he might have misheard her, because … she was here? And he was here? They were both alive. ‘Died’?
“You were human?” Hugh asked.
“I was.”
“Quite a feat, going over like that. Or quite a sacrifice …?”
“There were special circumstances.”
Micah looked from one face to the other with every comment, his eyes growing wider and wider.
She seemed to see the questions burning in them because she sighed and spoke in a storyteller’s voice:
“I was what you would refer to as a sorcerer in my original lifetime. I grew up in the city of Cestra on the Plane of Seasons as an adoptive member of the royal family, promised to one of the princes in the hopes of passing my bloodline onto theirs.
“It was quite a scandal at the time, but the royal family had been inspired by a witch who came through their city a year before my birth. They told me of her great feats, and I wasn’t nearly as powerful as she, but to train me and make use of me, they sent me on missions alongside some soldiers … like Bastion here. Never got to marry Ittarat, did I?”
He smiled sadly. “No. Lucky me.”
“We only went on a few quests together,” Shanty said, “we only knew each other for a few years, but uhm …”
“We were supposed to deal with more magical threats,” he explained, “for our king, but we were in over our heads. We failed and we died. She promised to find me in the next lifetime.”
They smiled at each other as the music carried on, and the couples danced, and he wondered if they were pulling his leg but … They seemed genuine.
Micah had never considered himself a romantic before but suddenly, he wondered where Anne was.
“Oh.” Brian gestured, suddenly awkward, and it helped shake the moment. “So you two are … together-together.”
“Sometimes,” Shanty said. “I’ve been his ward, his friend, his groomsman, I’ve raised him, buried him, fought him. In some lives, he doesn’t want me around. In some, I’ve been preoccupied with other things. In this one … We’ll see.”
“It takes time,” Bastion said, “for me to remember. In that time, my experience shapes me. This lifetime, I have had Skills to help me remember more of my past selves.”
“Wow.” Micah leaned on the table. “Can anyone do that? Does that mean reincarnation is a sure thing, or do you have to do a ritual or something? Can you teach— Wait, can you skip death and become a spirit forever?”
He wasn’t a fan of Hugh, sure, but this woman seemed nice—and lucid—and if he weighed the complications of being a spirit against eternal life …
Well, eternity was its own reward.
Bastion glanced at his partner, clearly overwhelmed, and they shared the trapped look of having said too much.
But again, Brian added his interest to his, pressuring them, and they didn’t seem like they were the most social pair, unused to defending themselves in this way.
“Again, there were … special circumstances surrounding our death,” Shanty said, “we forged a bond at the last moment though …” She struggled to find the words and sighed. “To be honest, I don’t understand it myself.”
“That’s fine,” Bastion told her. “I keep telling you, you don’t need to know everything. Keep your eyes peeled, your weird pockets filled, and my armor enchanted. That’s enough.”
She chuckled. “Not knowing everything is precisely what got us killed the first time.”
“And what brought us back,” he countered.
She smiled.
“So you really don’t know?” Brian asked.
She considered, “We lived in the Plane of Seasons, that might have affected us. It’s closely connected to the Plane of Memories, so the magic might have suffused us growing up … My bloodline, I am of the Vim—”
“Those are traveler spirits, right?” Micah asked. “Storyteller spirits. Uhm, spirits of memory?”
“Yes, well—” She hesitated. “The Vim are primordial spirits, in some ways. There is a saying: all spirits are of Vim. Are either of you acquainted with the Law of Recurrence?”
He might have been?
“Perhaps under a different name then. It’s a fundamental law of magic which states: ‘If something occurs once, it is easier for it to occur again’.”
“Oh, I know that one! It’s the law that creates patterns, alchemical properties?”
“That is one way of looking at it. This extends to other aspects of magic as well. You could probably name a subordinate law for it, the Law of Similarity, or something else. In this case, the Vim exist, and so spirits exist in their likeness.”
“Huh?” He wasn’t quite sure how that followed. “Wait, so you’re saying because you exist—”
“Not I, the Vim.”
“Right. Uhm, what’s the difference? Wait, no— I’m getting off track. Just because the Vim exist, spirits are the way they are?”
“Precisely.”
“So if the Vim hadn’t existed …? Or if something else influenced spirits instead …?”
She held her arms up and shrugged. “Anything is possible.”
Hugh and Brian gave each other a look.
“Where do Vim come from?”
She shrugged again.
“And how are you related to them?” Brian asked.
“I’m not related as you would consider family relations. Think of your stories of faeries and their courts. I am not a Vim but a distant member of the Vim, of their court.”
“So you’re a storyteller spirit, too?” Micah asked. “Wait, did you have to choose what kind of spirit to become when you died?”
What kind of spirit would he want to be? A guardian, alchemist, maybe a dryad or a golem?
“No, no,” she chuckled. “I am— My connection runs deeper than my nature, and not all spirits of a court are alike. Not even all true Vim are alike. Think of it like this, the two of you are members of Hadica’s court. Are you alike?”
They glanced at each other. Micah barely knew the guy. Brian was quiet, probably because Hugh constantly prattled in his ear, but when he did have something to say, he was kind of cocky … and kind of an asshole.
Micah probably knew and understood Hugh better, and would prefer to hang out with him, over Brian, which said a lot.
“No,” Brian answered, seemingly coming to a similar conclusion, “though that doesn’t answer what kind of a spirit you are.”
“Do I have to be a kind of spirit? Can I not just be … me?”
They must have made the same assumption, because of Hugh, that all spirits had an aspect of sorts. Somehow, it was reassuring to see they could more than that.
Micah sighed and slumped against the table as he let his guard down. He needed more of those grapes.
“It’s a lot of information to take in,” Shanty said, “I know—”
“Huh?! Oh, no, no!” he rushed to say. “It’s just the conversation itself was … not what I expected.”
“What exactly had you expected?”
“Uhm, I didn’t expect you to be so … lucid?”
“Oi.” Hugh didn’t miss his glance.
Neither did Shanty. “That seems like an awfully rude thing to say,” she said, “I doubt there is cause for that.”
“No, no, if he wants to die, I’m happy to oblige,” Hugh said. “I just thought we had a truce.”
Oh sh—oot, shoot, shoot. Micah’s mind raced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like—” he started to say.
“How old are you?” Bastion cut through in a calm voice.
Hugh blinked as if to say, Who me? “I have no idea.”
“Hugh isn’t so good with … time,” Brian explained. “Or numbers.”
“Do you remember any events in your lifetime, since you awoke?”
“Uh … I remember the fall of this one dark place, with the evil people, and the soap bubbles.”
“Evil for you … Do you mean the Eonian Empire?”
Micah knew a little about it from his history course, though they’d barely ever touched on it in classroom. It was a large empire that had conquered most of the continent of Lin and some of the surrounding territories, like the Illic Isles in the sea west of them and much of the North.
Hela, the woman after whom the helanic conversion of essences was named, had been from the empire, but it had fallen and failed to pick itself back up again around five hundred or so years ago.
“That’s the one! That was a memorable night.” He smiled with a faraway glaze to his eyes.
“Which fall?” Shanty asked. “The empire collapsed and rebuilt itself multiple times. I would think you’d remember the most recent one, though.”
“Not the most recent one, no,” Hugh said. “I wanted to watch, but it wasn’t safe even from a distance.”
“The one before that, then?”
“ … Sure?”
“I’m guessing that puts you at about eight hundred years old?” she mused. “Either way, much older than I. I’ve only been around for half a millennium.”
“You’re still young for a spirit, though, depending on the conditions you were raised in,” Bastion said, “which is what I was getting at.”
“Eight hundred …” Hugh said as if trying out the word. He glanced at Brian. “How old are you again?”
“Sixteen.” He stared at his friend as if seeing him with fresh eyes.
“So twice as old as me?”
Micah resisted the urge to bang his head against the table, or insult him. “So how is it that he is half again as old as you, but you’re so much more …”
“Human?” Shanty asked with a smile. “Take a guess.”
“Ohh …”
“I skipped the line. Also, spirits develop differently depending on their environment and experiences. I suspect you might grow a lot here, Hugh.”
He scoffed. “I don’t need to grow. I’m like him”—he gestured at Brian—”here for the fun!”
The conversation broke up as he said it. Brian turned. “Your mom was a bonfire? Or the festival crowd?”
Bastion leaned over to whisper to Shanty, “You were a little more … unfettered the first time you found me.”
“Was I?”
“Mhm.”
“Might have been a side-effect. But then again, we’re all different now.”
Only Micah had nobody to talk to, and he wished Ryan were here so he could watch him flip out about these two people who were basically living history. He would have loved this.
“Hey,” Bastion spoke up, “I’m getting us another drink. Do any of you want anything? I might flag down a server.”
“Uhm, a drink sounds nice,” Micah took him up on his offer. He didn’t want to be rude. “Lemon water?”
He was beginning to worry this might be it, that his chance at impressing them was over, but Brian beat him to the punch again.
“If I might join you, sir,” he launched back into his earlier tone, “I was going to see if I could find some fire potion for Hugh to … eat? Drink?”
“I bet I could convince them to liberate some from their supplies,” he sounded happy to have a mission.
Micah’s chance to tag along was gone in an eyeblink …
… and then it was just him and the spirit of the Vim, who stared with eyes much like his own.
“You know, you never answered my question, Mr. Stranya? So, tell me about you.”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
----------------------------------------
They didn’t really talk about the reason either of them had come here tonight. They went back to the topic of the other cities after all, Daniel’s job, his travels, and Ryan’s studies as they drank.
“Trest is beautiful.” He hesitated. “Well, you might need to get used to the layers, and the scattered layout, and the uh … underground buildings, but it’s nice.”
“A friend of mine, Ja—y,” he cut off before he said his full name, “told me it looks like someone dumped a bucket of paint over a gray rock in a field.”
Daniel chuckled and weighed his head, a hand on his mug. “Sort of. It’s hard to call a mountain range the ‘middle of nowhere,’ though. Especially one with a Tower sticking in it.”
“I’d love to visit. Not sure about fighting undead, though.”
“Oh yeah, that’s a concern for you, right? Can’t visit another city just for vacation.”
“Nope.”
What a wasted opportunity that would be.
“How do you feel about fishing then?”
“Much better. Uh … not that I have much experience, but I imagine it’s better. The sea. I would love to go to Lighthouse someday, especially when the railroad finishes u— Up?”
Daniel smiled. “What?”
“That’s not a sore topic for you, right?” Ryan asked. “Because of shipping, railroads, … competition.”
Daniel chuckled. “No. You don’t have to worry about that. I mean, they’re only doing it now because a generation of traders are about to retire and people are split on what to do about it.” He gestured with his one free hand as he explained. “Because of statistical decline, new innovations, public demand; all of that good stuff.”
“Sure,” Ryan said and smiled. He loved listening to someone when they were even a little passionate about a topic.
“But them passing the torch will probably affect us—’us’ in a general sense—more than the railroads will. I don’t know, some smaller companies might not survive the chaos, but shipping overall will be fine.”
“That’s good. It’d suck if you couldn’t enjoy something like that, or be happy for other people, because it meant something bad for you.”
“You think so, huh?” Daniel smiled.
Ryan shrugged. His beer was mostly froth by now, slowly turning to liquid, but he didn’t mind as he took another sip. It tasted prickly. He’d already bought the next round for them.
“So where are you headed to next?”
“Like, in the Tower or …?”
“Either is fine,” Daniel said.
Relieved, Ryan told him a little about what they had been up to lately.
He was lying to Daniel in small ways—his name, his school, which Tower entrance he used, his Class; that he was mostly a [Fighter] instead of hoping for [Ranger].
He avoided talking about some topics at all, like his parents or why he was in Cairn, where he lived—and Daniel didn’t pressure him to answer.
Despite that, he still felt like he was having a more honest conversation with the guy than he had had in ... ever? Ryan could speak his mind and be honest about how he felt without having that dark cloud hanging over his mind.
Not that the cloud was gone. It was just … taking a break. So he could enjoy this for the first time.
He paused mid-sentence and stared at Daniel, who was older than him, and smiling, and here with his friends—even if Ryan was taking up all his time. And it truly sunk in, He’s like me.
He might have a future after all, and he might not be so alone.
“What?” Daniel laughed as he stared.
Ryan shook his head and chuckled, looking down. “Nothing.”
They toasted the next round, talked about the literal weather as Ryan told him about the time the rain had delayed their boat and caused the river to flood, and Daniel had his fair share of disaster stories to tell.
“We actually almost didn’t make it here tonight. We had some scheduling errors with the cargo—people not arriving on time—but our captain leveled up mid-journey and got a new Skill to make up for the lost time. He was in such a good mood, he let us go early.”
“Wow. Lucky me,” Ryan said. “To your captain, then?”
They tilted their drinks at each other, drank, and talked about everything but the reason why they had both come here tonight.
He loved it.
Because this was what real people did, right? They didn’t have to commiserate, to dance around with words, or hesitate. They could just … talk. Like this.
Until they didn’t.
----------------------------------------
“Uhm, I’m an [Alchemist].”
They stood at a table toward the edges of the party, the balcony was close enough to overhear but not peek outside, the music was muted, and the dance floor hidden away.
Part of him wished he could have spoken to Bastion instead, or that Bastion could have stayed, but what would he have spoken to him about?
“Although my current field of study relates more to essences …?”
Would she know or care about that? Spirits were made of essences, but not every human knew or cared about the elements or human anatomy.
“I’m familiar. Different cultures have different names for magic, ‘essences’ is a name we have come across often.”
‘Magic.’ That seemed reductive, though maybe he was prideful, or some of Lisa’s pedantic nature had rubbed off on him.
“Right, so like, I’m trying to learn more, to understand them, find uses, discover new ones I can’t see, like emotion essences.”
“Emotions? Which ones can you see already, or how do you categorize?”
She didn’t seem as ‘into’ this conversation as she had been into the previous topic or even their introductions.
Micah had already insulted her with his preconceptions. She and Bastion were a team. Or rather, she was the one who had wanted to speak with him in the first place, Ms. Denner had told him so. He should have listened.
If the rest of the ballroom were an ocean, with conversations and music flowing in streams and waves, he felt as though he had found himself at a glacier, or a dry cliff, where the water didn’t move and things were uncomfortable, the beach in sight but far away.
“Nature, emotion, and concept essences are my three big working categories, though I suppose you could create a fourth, ‘mental essences’. I can see nature essences and ones related to mana and spirits—uhm, which would be that fourth category. The name isn’t a perfect fit. My Skill calls it [Affinity Sight] and that’s not a perfect fit either.”
‘Mental essences’ sounded more like it should contain both emotion and concept essences, but he used it for mana and influences. Surface level-stuff.
“So you really do mean essences, as in big picture. The cosmology of magic and its practical applications?”
“Maybe?” Micah wasn’t entirely sure what ‘cosmology’ meant. Cosmos, as in related to stars?
Practical applications sounded right.
“Your classmate is a climber for the spectacle, he wants to be an entertainer, to awe the crowd. How about you? You’re an [Alchemist] but you attend a school for climbers?”
“I am. I do. Uhm, I wanted to find my own ingredients at first, partially due to financial reasons,” he told her honestly, because Micah wanted to be honest with other people, but he didn’t want to linger and make her think he was only out to get her money.
He moved on, “Partially because I wanted to be … independent, I suppose?”
She watched him with her arms crossed on the table, hands on her arms, waiting.
“I got my Path and Class early and taught myself a lot of what I know. I clung to that mindset at first, relying only on myself until I met others—”
“Forgive me,” she sounded awfully respectful considering their positions, and the fact that she was more than an adult and he a child, “but that sounds like something in your past. If you wanted to learn more about essences, or grow as an [Alchemist], would you not be better off receiving a more fruitful education at a school for alchemy or spellcraft than …”
She smiled awkwardly. “I don’t want to badmouth Ameryth, but at a climbing school, should I say?”
Spellcraft, no. The fundamentals focused on mana, and that didn’t come intuitively to him.
The other option …
“I think taking a more uhm … hands-on approach,” he remembered, “might give me a unique insight into these topics. I understand better than most alchemists where ingredients come from and how alchemy can serve climbers against the challenges they face.“
“That can be useful. You want to bring your experiences back to alchemy to further the craft …?”
“Maybe? I’m not sure. I don’t know if I want to be like, a commercial alchemist, or an advisor, or something else yet?”
“Maybe you want to be a climber who happens to be an alchemist?”
“Uhm.”
“Or both, or all three as your career goes on, transitioning from one to the other?”
Micah wasn’t sure how to answer, and he didn’t have time to consider. She went on without him.
“I guess what I’m asking is,” Shanty smiled, “what do you want, Mr. Stranya?”
Uhm. Oof. That was a tough ask.
As a kid—though he was still a kid, he supposed—Micah had been told Paths were the answer to you.
‘When you know what you want to do with your life, what interests you, who you want to be, you will discover your first Path.’
The average person discovered their first Path when they were sixteen, so that was a load of bull.
Besides, people could discover two, three, four, more Paths. He only had two, but as you discovered more Skills along the way, it was possible to follow a branch one step off to the side of that road.
Ryan had done something similar with his [Exemplarism Path], branching off into [Salamander Path] as that was a specific piece of the whole and …
Ryan was a bit of a weirdo, now that Micah thought about it. Who had a Path about a specific lineage of monsters?
But he was his weirdo, and Micah loved him.
The other, more difficult option was to discover a whole new topic of interest, as he had.
In the way, the saying was a self-fulfilling prophecy: Paths made it easier to think on certain topics, they made you smarter in a sense—similar to a Skill. Once you discovered your first Path, you were likely to shape your Class to match it, then you leveled and got Skills …
You invested, and it got harder to abandon that investment.
Some people did it. They reshaped their identity and received [Lesser Abjuration] for their efforts, which was a variation on [Lesser Magic Resistance].
Some tried and failed, and they suffered for it.
Some suffered out of necessity, bouncing from job to job and hoping each time, This is it!
They got a new Class, only to lose their position and be forced to move on to the next thing if they could find one.
If they were lucky, they leveled [Worker] alone but if you had seven different Classes to get by, it made you a skilled employee—depending on your Skills, it might even make you a perfect employee, if you found the place to be the supply that met a demand—but it made investing in your future a gamble.
What if your company wanted to grow, or if a senior colleague retired and suddenly they were lacking Skills you were unlikely to obtain?
If they had a great many employees, or just needed proverbial hands, that was less of an issue. The burden didn’t lie on you.
Ryan’s parents were a bit like that, from what he understood, though they didn’t have it as bad as others, and Noelle had apparently found a good place to meet a demand.
He was happy for her, and by extension for Ryan.
All of that was to say: the future was complicated, and Micah didn’t know if he knew what he wanted, or if he was stuck in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
He was sure of a few things: “I want to learn. It doesn’t even have to be essences or alchemy. I have always had questions. I want them answered.”
“I want to level, and to be successful, and the two sort of go hand in hand from what I have been told.”
Right now, I want nice things, he thought as he looked at the lavish ballroom and the guests who had come here today, but that seemed like a shallow thought so he didn’t add it.
“More than that, I want to protect my friends, I want to learn more to be better able to protect my friends, I want to level to get stronger to be better able to protect my friends, and I want to learn, to level, to get stronger, and to get stronger to level, and to level to learn, and … argh!”
He groaned as if he had tasted something awful because it was a cyclical mess and quite a mouthful to say.
“You get the idea. All of that goes hand in hand.”
The spirit still stared at him with wide eyes, and he wasn’t sure if he’d convinced her yet.
He didn’t know to add. That was him. Just as she had said she was a spirit of herself, he asked, “Isn’t that enough?”
Shanty grinned. “What do you think I wanted when I was your age? Of course, that’s enough!”
A wave crashed over the rocks, the ice broke, and Micah smiled as she drew him into a conversation.
He told her about himself: his Skills, Classes, Paths, and studies, his projects like his emotion essences, the wind affinity he worked on, and earth magic.
She seemed interested in the plants he grew, so he told her a little about his results so far.
‘Smile-y essences’ made plants perk up and be a little hardier. They were more likely to survive with fewer resources. But it also made them lazy: they didn’t move to follow the sun as much over the course of the day as his control plants, or even the ones he watered with other emotions.
‘Angry-ish essences’ made plants ‘hangry’ in his opinion: they spread out, mostly via their roots. He assumed to monopolize resources and drive out the competition?
Some flowers also grew more vibrant when they drank ‘angry-ish essences,’ and he thought it might have something to do with natural warning colors.
“Plants can’t think,” Shanty said. “It’s all stimulant-response. Makes you wonder what kind of processing powers they have.”
“That seems like a faulty— Uhm, a jump,” Micah said. “They don’t need any processing powers for essences; powerful enough essences can influence the world on their own.”
He got these from volunteers. People. Smile essence made plants perk up, the same as a smile would. He was more interested in the layers of information the essences themselves stored to be able to do that. Or was his perception the stimulant that spurred a response?
Would he get different results if he found a way to automate the experiment without perceiving the plants, like hiding them in a box and having someone else rearrange them, or doing likewise with the infused water so he wouldn’t know what he was watering them with?
And would they affect plants differently if he fed them through a pattern intermediary?
Shanty seemed fascinated, and he hoped to draw her into a conversation about that, but she moved on.
“Let me get a look at you.” She paced around him, and now that she had stepped out from behind the table, he could see the pockets of her sundress.
They were stuffed with many little trinkets: worn playing cards, a pipe, accessories, a pocket watch, a blocky humanoid jade statue, a crumpled handkerchief.
Some looked oddly homemade—he hesitated to think amateurish, because maybe it was her hobby to weave friendship bracelets?—but some of them looked … alive.
One half of a green bracelet grew tiny legs like a centipede, dragged itself out of her pocket, and plopped onto the spotless floor of the event hall. It hauled itself away.
Shanty didn’t give it a passing glance.
“You’re pretty far along in your wind spirit … though it seems somewhat tame.”
“Tame?”
“What you are doing has been attempted by many peoples before. They have had different methods but the most successful ones …” She looked up with a smile as if trying to find a polite way of saying it.
“It’s as if you are working out with basic bodyweight exercises, which can be healthy on their own, but they have their limits. There are better ways to achieve what you’re trying to achieve.”
“How did others do it?”
“One people I met climbed mountains until the air grew frigid and thin. They pulled in wisps of wind magic to carve their spirits like using trickles of water to carve a ravine. It was supposed to teach them control and strength or something. To be honest, I wasn’t paying as much attention back then.
“Afterward, they sought out cliffs where wind flowed in torrents and pumped as much wind magic as they could into the channels they’d cut. Also to learn control and strength, but on a bigger level, and to stretch those channels. The goal was to let the magic widen but not flood the riverbanks, I think.
“I don’t think the order is important, and I don’t think this example is the most potent one. I do know: spirits grow faster and healthier in places with higher magical density. It’s both a source of nourishment and exercise for them, you see? The abundance and the pressure.” She pointed at him. “You need to find a way to pump better wind magic into your spirit.”
“Oh. So … wind crystals? Better potions?” That could be expensive. Another reason he needed money.
“Or do your breathing exercises on a higher floor in the Tower,” she said and shrugged, “one that’s windy. Or ask a teacher to cast a wind spell against you while you jog.”
“Wait, that would work?!”
“Sure! Why not? If you expose yourself, you force your spirit to adapt. You’re well on your way toward that already though. What happens after?”
He was confident. “Stone affinity.”
“I guess that should have been obvious. I’m half surprised you aren’t there already.” Shanty went back to the table and patted one of her pockets with a frown. “Do you want to be a sand mage?”
“Huh— I mean, pardon me?”
“Stone and wind typically create sand over time. Erosion.”
“I wasn’t aware affinities could affect each other?”
“The magic of your spirit can blend together, interact, or be separate. It depends on which aspects you cultivate, which sources you draw from, which image you keep—on you. You have to be careful, though, how you grow your spirit is important and often permanent.”
“Can’t I be like, a windy mountain?” He thought of the Towers, and his morning laps around them as he did his breathing exercises. That definitely seemed like something stable that could protect him and his friends …
He remembered ash and frowned.
“If that’s what you wish, how you see yourself, sure.”
He wasn’t sure it was.
“Are there any other options, or ways they can mix?” He didn’t exactly have books on this … although he bet he could look up mana affinities in his new books to get a sense of it.
“Hm. Your spirit already has a bit of a water aspect to it and … ice?”
“Ice? I uhm, have been putting effort into keeping it pure, ma’am, and the weather has been hot recently?”
“Ah, no. Not that,” she said and glanced past him as if searching the floor. “I mean your mana?”
“Oh.” Because of his spells? Infuse, Dissettle, Dissolve, Create Water, Chill, Freeze.
“Learn a few more water spells. Add their aspects to yours, and it might help balance the other two out and even open some doors for you further down the road.”
He frowned. “I’m pretty sure water and stone create more sand than wind and stone do.”
She smiled and looked back at him. “Yes, but the water is still there. And when you lead water to a desert with a seed of something, you know which miracle occurs?”
An oasis.
The Five Cities. Hadica.
“I could get a life affinity,” Micah thought out loud, “maybe that could help me heal others, or use healing potions better, or I could do something with my blood—!”
“Wind, stone, water, blood,” Shanty said, “It sounds like it would suit an alchemist. Fundamental ingredients.”
He smiled at the fantasy of it all, saw the sky dimming outside the window as the sun sank toward the horizon, and his smile slipped away.
He sighed and leaned on the table. “But that will take so long. I already have a plan for how I can cheat my stone affinity a little faster.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Do tell?”
Micah told her about the dangers of earth magic, what Lisa had told him, and then his solution.
Wrapped in a bundle on the bottom of his closet floor was the gauntlet of a golem, a battle trophy. It still had crystal veins of earth essence running through it.
She considered, then nodded. “Sounds reasonable. If time is an issue, though—and if we are to be your sponsors—I have a much better plan.”
She held a hand up toward the balcony and the cracked windows and whistled like a soft chain of bells and wind chimes.
The music muted around them, the wind picked up, and zips of green light flooded toward her hand like magical threads weaving themselves into—
Another wristband, wider than the ones poking out from her pocket, as though it were woven from green leather cords.
She handed it to him and it felt as though it had been woven from blades of grass, which felt disconcerting because he didn’t see any hands reaching up from within except his own.
The material also seemed restless like the wind in his back. It urged him to act as he stood frozen in shock.
“How did— Is this— Did you just—?”
“It’s a magic item,” she told him, “woven from spirits, though, so treat it with respect.”
“Of course! I— What?!” He breathed out with a wide smile. She just created a magic item in seconds! From nothing! He wanted to know how. If not for himself then for …
He glanced back, searching for Gian in the crowd, one of their enchanters. He would want to know.
Shanty spoke and he snapped back to attention. He didn’t want to be rude. Besides, if she had wanted to speak to Gian, she would have asked for him, he told himself.
“This will challenge you. Awaken it through movement, like running. The spirits are mischievous though and they will try to pressure you in their own way … It’s probably best if you keep a healing potion on hand when you use it, or only use it in a safe environment. Like on a practice mat.”
She gave him a weighted look. “I am not kidding. These are lesser spirits. They don’t fully understand how fragile you can be. Stay safe.”
Micah eyed the wristband with a bit of apprehension. It rippled like a field of grass in his hand. Then he bowed and thanked her.
If he understood her correctly, this would replicate the wind spell method she had mentioned, to help him get his wind affinity faster by training ‘with weights’.
Invaluable.
“It should last for about a month,” Shanty went on, “if you use it at least once a day, depending on how quickly the spirits get bored or if you treat them poorly—”
“I won’t,” he promised.
“Of course—”
“I won’t, ma’am. I am aware I was … rude earlier. A friend of mine tried to teach me the value of respecting spirits, and I want to make up for my mistake.”
“I’m glad to hear that. But really, all you need to do is go for a run once a day or so, place the wristband somewhere the spirits can get some fresh air, and don’t damage it. Also: do not, under any circumstances, bring them into the Tower with you.”
“Why? If I may ask.”
His head filled with thoughts of the spirits turning on him, forming an elemental or a golem body to attack him with, or being trapped inside the Tower for all eternity.
Instead, she said, “Have you ever brought children to a county fair, or a playground, a candy shop …?”
He didn’t know what a county fair was but he could guess. “Playground, I’ve watched over my cousins before—”
“What’s the first thing they do?”
Micah realized, “They run off.”
“Exactly. The spirits will leave you the moment they see something more interesting if you don’t have some other way of enticing them to stay … Maybe keep the wristband away from any awesome wind mages you know, too.”
That was interesting. The bracelet felt somehow alive in his hands and he wondered, “What’s enticing them to stay right now?”
“I am. I asked them to.”
He felt that sensation he often felt with magic items, an eagerness to try it out right now—although, in a way, this was the opposite. It was a cursed item, meant to make things harder for him.
He still thanked her and since he couldn’t use it, tucked the wristband away. This was far more than he had expected from this evening and—
Wait a second?
He backtracked in their conversation to the moment just before she’d made the item. Did she say ‘sponsor’?
----------------------------------------
He was halfway through his third beer; Daniel had probably had more. He had been drinking with his friends when Ryan first saw him. Silver-white shot glasses were stacked up in tiny towers on their table.
It went from drinks, when the bartender brought their new ones, to drinks they liked, to drinks they’d tried, to ones ‘Conner’ had to try—
Oh, but the bar didn’t serve them here.
Maybe another time?
Maybe not?
They shared an awkward look because they probably wouldn’t see each other again after tonight.
That was … disappointing. Daniel was kind. He paid attention to him, never looked at his friends even though they were in his line of sight, and he’d forfeited a night out with them to talk about the weather with Ryan.
It was also a relief in its own right, because he was lying to him, and because if they met again, it would be under similar circumstances.
They talked about the bar. They talked about its reputation and that it did attract a lot of trouble.
“Bar fights?” Ryan laughed. “Seriously?”
“Yes! Believe me. In other places, you start a fight and you get kicked out. Resist and you get to deal with the guards. Here? Full-on bar fights. Bat-tle Roy-al.”
He looked around at the bar with a light in his eyes, as though he was remembering a scene, but there was a hint of a smile hidden in the corner of his lips.
Ryan wasn’t sure if he believed him. He made it sound glorious when it was likely a nightmare for everyone involved.
“Sure,” he humored him with a smug smile. They talked about other places, his experiences with those, and then—
The spell was broken. Reality crept back in even as Ryan took a deep swig of his beer to ward it off.
Because, Daniel brought up bars that catered entirely to ‘guys like them.’
Almost, Ryan thought with a mental sigh, and for the first time in half an hour, he looked around and ducked his shoulders a little.
What would people think if they saw them talking, smiling, laughing? They weren’t flirting with each other, but they were still two guys chatting at the bar.
He couldn’t tell if anyone was watching. He didn’t want to turn far enough back to see his friends in their booth.
He’d already known about those bars. Vaguely. He’d never seen one himself, never heard of a specific one, and he wouldn’t know how to find one, but Lang had told him about them once.
Well, he’d spoken vaguely around the topic, using a lot of hypotheticals and stand-ins for words until Ryan got the idea, but even then he hadn’t been sure.
Getting confirmation like this was … lame? Because Ryan had never known how to feel about the idea, and he didn’t want to be talking about it right now.
“I could recommend some spots to you, but uh …” Daniel smiled awkwardly, “maybe not.” He wiped a hand over his mouth.
“What do you mean?” Ryan asked because it seemed like the thing to say as he tried to think of a way to change the topic back to something more comfortable.
“You said it yourself, you’re inexperienced,” Daniel said, “and it can be overwhelming, going to a place like that.”
Ryan hesitated, then bristled. He was assuming things, putting words in his mouth, being condescending. He’d been awkward earlier, sure. That was mostly because Rachel had been so pushy.
He righted himself on the barstool, one elbow on the bar, back straight, and leaned his head back, making his neck stand out a little, as he shrugged. “It’s not like I’m not outgoing or anything. This was a first for me,” he looked to the bar, “but I’m not afraid of a crowd.”
Case in point, there was another crowd forming around them as the wave demanded more drinks.
“It’s not the crowds, Connor,” Daniel said. “Those places aren’t exactly popular; more like slices or pockets of the world. But the guys there can be uhh …”
His arm was resting along the bar, and he tapped it with his fingers before spreading them out, an inch from Ryan’s own.
“ … demanding,” Daniel finished. “And again, you’re inexperienced.”
Ryan scowled and lifted his mug to use as an example—higher than he’d intended, it was lighter than before.
“I’m old enough to drink. I’m old enough to risk my life in the Tower. I have my Path, my Classes.” He was practically an adult.
“Sure, sure.” Daniel looked him in the eye and said, “Still. They would eat you up.”
It was a stand-in for something else, but unlike when Lang did it, Ryan had no doubt about what he meant.
He shrunk back, put his mug down again as Daniel lifted his to take a sip, rubbed his arm with a damp hand, and tried not to blush. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Ryan scoffed and awkwardly looked around. “Yeah, no. Probably wouldn’t want that.”
“Probably, huh? And what would you want?”
“I don’t know. Something more like this, I think. Just … talking.” More of what they’d been doing before, shooting the breeze.
Daniel smiled. “Yeah, talking can be nice.” He leaned sideways and titled his head as he watched him. “There are other things you can do of course, but I wish I had someone to talk to a few years ago.”
Ryan smiled. “Thanks. For this.”
There was a lull in their conversation. His mug was close to froth again. He wondered what time it was and how long he could allow himself this. To stay.
Should he even try to bring the conversation back around, or was this a sign that he should go?
He swayed a bit on his seat and his chest felt warm, making him wonder if he had accidentally let his Skill warm up. But no, it was turned all the way down as usual.
“It’s a shame we’re both passing through,” Daniel said. He put his hand on Ryan’s knee, and Ryan snapped to attention, heart racing.
“You know, two ships in the night? Almost literally. Well, not that I sleep on the boat, but uh, I have a room for the weekend close by?”
He nodded his head toward the bar entrance and squeezed his knee, warm and slightly damp fingers pressing into his skin just below where his shorts ended.
A tingle shot down his spine, up his skin, almost like an invisible line going from his fingers, along his leg, and thigh, to his groin and—
Ryan shifted in his seat, glanced left, eyes wide. The crowd, Daniel’s spread leg, and his hand on his knee trapped him in. Not that he could stand right now. Couldn’t meditate here either.
Can’t run, then—
Ryan punched Daniel off his chair.