Millennial Mage

Tala was again trying to decide how to depart from the increasingly straining event, when Elnea drew the focus back to herself. “Attention! We all have things to be about, so we will now perform the final steps of the elevation.” She motioned to the three new Archons, drawing them to her from where they’d dispersed through the room.

Tala had just finished adding desserts to her food reserves, in preparation for departure. Thus, she came from a side table, tucked in one corner.

Lyn had been discussing the choice of diamond as a medium with several other Diamond Archons in another corner.

Rane had been receiving some pointed words from his former master, though Tala didn’t know what about. Why do all the interesting conversations happen outside of my hearing? It could be that they weren’t actually that interesting, and the myth that she made of them in her mind vastly outstripped reality, but she doubted it.

The three smiled to each other before taking their places, standing before Elnea, and the Archon motioned three assistants forward. “This officially confirms your elevation and your Bound nature. Once you confirm, your records within the archives will be altered to reflect your rank.”

They each pricked their chosen finger and confirmed the document as presented. Tala and Lyn read it first. Thankfully, it was short. Rane simply shrugged and confirmed the slate. Some people like to live dangerously, I guess.

Once all three stone devices had briefly colored green, Elnea continued. “In your time as Mages, you have had many teachers, and you will have many more. At this time, it is my honor to become one of them, if only for a simple thing.”

The three glanced at each other briefly before returning their eyes to the Archon before them.

Well then, time to learn something new. Tala couldn’t help but grin.

“Now, you each have an aura, which amounts to your soul attempting to influence the world around you. At your current strength, it will be mildly uncomfortable to non-mages, but as you advance, it will become damaging, and eventually lethal. Because of this, it is forbidden to have an unrestrained aura in public.”

An Archon in a back corner decided to add his opinion, “And it’s rusting rude!”

Elnea quirked a smile. “It is somewhat like neglecting hygiene, in how it impacts those around you, yes. Though that is hardly ever lethal.” A few Archons chuckled. Then, her smile faded, her tone becoming serious once more. “The aura is the result of your body now being, in effect, a soul-bound item. Your gate is now yours and yours alone, bound almost unbreakably to your soul.”

That surprised Tala. Isn’t all power coming through my gate mine? Wait…aren’t my gate and my soul the same thing? But no silent pause was given for question or comment.

“You no longer naturally project excess magic outward as untainted power, to disperse into the air. All magic coming from you is now yours. That is the nature of an aura.”

Wait, you said it was our soul attempting to affect the world around us. Now, it’s excess magic? Tala focused inward, and saw that, true to Elnea’s words, her excess power was now diffusing out from her in a way that looked reminiscent of a teabag in hot water. Huh… She focused, turning the power back at her skin. Her aura was still there, but only barely visible to her incredibly sensitive mage-sight. So, my soul is still trying to extend, but the power is a medium for greater effect? That seemed to fit.

Her efforts to restrain her power were effective; she was an Immaterial Guide, after all. Thus, she immediately had a feeling of building pressure. Her body was already at capacity, and she was preventing the outflow.

She grimaced, and Elnea stopped mid-sentence. She’d been saying something else, but Tala had stopped paying attention.

Elnea sighed, and her inclusion of Tala’s name in her next statement caused it to register. “Or, as Mistress Tala is currently demonstrating, you could simply force the power to remain within your body, over and above the normal levels. That will not, actually, restrain your aura effectively, however. Nor is it precisely safe.”

There was a wave of power through the room as most present activated their mage-sight. Tala was only able to easily detect it because so many activated their inscriptions at once, though no individual spell-form was discernible.

Tala was focused elsewhere, however. My aura seems pretty restrained to me, Archon.

That said, the contained power couldn’t be static. She could not allow her reserves to be the placid reservoir they had been up until now. But what do I do with it? That was a laughably simple question. She shunted the entirety of the excess into her items, in turn, and finally to Flow. Huh, Kit is much lower on power than I’d have expected. It had been straining to accommodate the food she’d been shoveling in. It apparently takes quite a bit of power to reshape dimensionality within the pouch in order to accommodate a few plates of food? She absentmindedly patted Kit after the pouch was refilled.

Kit did not respond.

Her focus back on her internal power, there was a difference between what she was doing, and what she had been doing up until now. Mainly, she was preventing even the barest hints of power from leaving her form to go anywhere except her strictly maintained outlets. It was exhausting.

Elnea shifted, straightening her robes irritably. “Mistress Tala.”

Tala met her gaze, without really giving the woman her attention.

“If you insist on trying that, now, you should know: Power isn’t water.”

Tala blinked at that, then frowned. What? True to the woman’s words, Tala had been visualizing her power as water. The Academy ensures that every Mage sees it as such. What madness is she spouting? A thousand features of water flickered through her mind, far fewer than a Material Mage would have considered, and that likely helped her narrow it down.

She quirked a smile. Didn’t Rane mention a Way of Compression, or some such?Water is incompressible. Power isn’t water. I can compress my power. Of course, she could. She knew that. So, why have I never compressed my reserve? Hadn’t she? Her power density was incredibly high. The natural density…density isn’t really the right word, though, is it? Holly was referring to my total amount of power, not how compact that power was, within me. Related, sure, but not the same.

She had to be careful. She didn’t want to increase her inflow, not at the moment. So, she bent her will, bearing down on her power, which she still kept trapped within herself, compressing it into a hollow sphere around her gate, in alignment with the placement of her keystone. The concentration around her gate, itself, remained the same, so as to not create a suction or a blockage.

Instantly, the difficulty of keeping the power within her body dropped off, considerably. All the power was contained in that sphere, only flowing outwards as the keystone directed, following her spell-lines, instead of saturating them. They are aqueducts in the desert now, instead of underwater pipelines.

To her surprise, the power didn’t fight her in the least, at least not directly. Like crumpling up a tablecloth.

That thought made her hitch, and instead of simply compressing it into shape, she folded her power, compressing it in carefully regulated layers.

It wasn’t hard, just like tossing a ball into the air wasn’t hard.

It was hard, because juggling was hard, and she was mentally juggling more magic than she could quickly quantify. She began to feel a building headache.

Tala groaned. The whole process had taken less than ten seconds, and even newly complete, it was already becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. It was easier than simply holding the power in by leaps and bounds, but not easy by any means.

Mutters rolled through the room. Grediv snorted in disgust before barking a laugh. “One bit of advice, that’s all she needed. She didn’t even need a demonstration. I don’t even see how your advice applied to her aura.”

Elnea shook her head. “Look closer, Master Grediv. She is channeling her excess into her items, specifically the soul-bound weapon.”

Tala spoke as evenly as she could, despite her distraction and straining. “Is that not correct?”

“It is a crutch. For the few Archons who cannot master the true technique, we suggest soul-bonding an item for such a purpose, or we create an item that effectively soaks up their power, reducing their aura down to a harmless state. They are then required to bond with that, so as to make the patch permanent.” She gave Tala a serious look. “They never advance after that point.”

That explains those with Archon marks…those here really are the ‘lesser’ Archons… It was an incredibly uncharitable thought, and she threw it aside. Tala found herself frowning. “My aura is still there, diminished, not restrained.”

“Precisely.” Elnea gave a slight smile. “What you are doing is moving towards an advanced power-flow in the vein of Ways. They are too numerous to cover, and each is relatively easy to enact briefly, but hard to hold. However, they are not the intended topic I am discussing, here.”

Tala let out a relieved breath, her concentration on the internal technique breaking, her power reserves, and flow, returning to normal, though the excess was still mostly directed into Flow, now that her other items refilled.

Elnea nodded. “Now, as I was saying: Right now, the three of your souls are like toddlers, spinning around without a care to what their arms hit, what damage they can do. Pull yourselves in. Restrain your inner toddlers.” A ripple of laughter moved through the room again, and Tala found herself smiling along with the levity.

Ok…how?

Grediv cleared his throat. “Like your knife, Mistress Tala. Master Rane, Mistress Lyn, observe her.”

My knife? Tala looked down at the weapon, feeling the connection, knowing it would come as she called. Ahh! She pulled on her aura, not the knife. She lifted her arm and watched as, to her mage-sight, the red withdrew inward, fading entirely behind the power in her spell-lines.

Before, she’d been running circles around a tarp, frantically sweeping water back towards the middle. Now, she picked up the edges. So, so much easier. The effect was almost identical to her first attempt, but accomplished with an absolutely trivial amount of effort.

Lyn smiled briefly, and her aura shimmered, pulling inward just slightly, before it washed back out. She clutched her abdomen. “Ow.” She groaned. “Oh, that’s…that’s like writing a thousand contracts, after a month away from work.”

Tala grinned. “Turns out that your soul is a bit like a muscle.”

Lyn sighed. “More training to do, I suppose.” For some reason, she sounded resigned.

I must be misunderstanding.

Rane, for his part, had closed his eyes. His aura was moving inwards in slow, steady pulses. As a result, it was smaller every time he exhaled, having shrunk on each inhale.

Tala checked her own aura, verifying it hadn’t crept outward once again. It hadn’t.

She could hold this indefinitely. Her daily soul-work with Flow showed its value. Just as Grediv said it would.

Still, she wasn’t in the clear, yet. It’ll take a bit, before I can keep it contained in my sleep, too.

“Even once I have this down, I could slip. No one is perfect. How can it be safe for us to be around other people?”

“It isn’t, not as you are.”

There was a long pause. When no further answer was forthcoming, Tala’s eyes widened. “So… All of you, all of us, are walking disasters. One moment of lapse, and our aura can level a city block?”

Grediv helpfully interjected. “Just the creatures within a certain radius. Buildings would be fine.” After a moment, he shrugged. “Would mainly hurt mundanes and non-arcane animals, and even then, you would need a fully realized, Paragon soul, before it would be instantly lethal to any but the weakest...” His voice tapered off as he noticed the other Head Archon.

Elnea, once again, was giving Grediv a supremely irritated look. “Master Grediv, you are not Head Archon, here.”

“Apologies, Mistress.” He raised his hands, stepping a bit further back.

Elnea tsked, turning back towards them. “As you guessed, Mistress Tala, this is incredibly important. This is also one more reason we so closely guard the process for elevation to Archon, but it isn’t as dire as you assume,” she glared towards Grediv, “or as Master Grediv implies. Your aura, as we said, will cause discomfort, not injury. By the time that it is dangerous to others, the restraint will be second nature, and you will have to force your aura to expand outward, should that ever be desired.” Elnea added one final point. “It does get harder with advancement, but if that ever becomes a problem, there are solutions.”

The Archon marks. Most probably didn’t fail and stop as Bound. That made so much more sense.

Tala frowned, remembering Holly. Wait, I saw Holly’s aura… Rane spoke before she could, however. “I’m sure I’ve seen Archon auras before. I wasn’t struck down, hurt, or made wildly uncomfortable.”

Lyn nodded. She often worked near Archons, herself.

Master Himmal’s aura is sometimes visible, and I never got any discomfort from him.

Elnea gave a weary smile. “You can have a scent without your smell overpowering those around you.” When they didn’t respond in understanding, she sighed and explained. “Withdrawing or weakening your aura to the point that it doesn’t automatically affect those around you is much easier than eliminating it entirely. Some like to ‘relax’ and let their aura free on occasion, while keeping the harmful nature at bay. Others are unable to fully restrain it, to the same result. That is still often seen as rude or lesser, however, at least when others are around.”

Tala grunted. That made a sort of sense.

“Now, to complete the lesson.” She gave them each a firm glance. “Before you are Bound, your body is not you, not really. So, the power it used was not yours. The power you gave it, became your body’s power, again not yours. Your body was magic-bound to your soul, unable to receive power from anyone or anything else, but it wasn’t you. Can you take power from one magic-bound item and give it to another?”

Tala had no idea, she’d never tried, but Lyn shook her head.

“Why not?”

Lyn nodded, seeming to ponder. “Because the power now belongs to that item, not to me. I cannot take it and give it to another.”

“Precisely.”

Lyn smiled as she continued. “So, all power that came from our gate, except that specifically directed into other bound items, flowed into our body, into three categories. First, the human body uses magic for basic functions; though very little naturally, the amount it uses increases as our power density increases. Second, our inscriptions; that’s self-evident. Finally, our reserves, also known as our magic, or power, density. The power within our reserves wasn’t really claimed by our magic-bound body, but it wasn’t ‘clean’ either. Is that right?”

Elnea gave a proud smile. “Exactly. Well-reasoned, Mistress Lyn.” After a moment’s consideration, she nodded. “It is best to consider your reserves, before the rank of Archon, as a rusty, placid tank. If you were careful, you could draw from it, without pulling tainted power; you have each likely empowered something using a bit from your reserves, but you couldn’t drain it, completely, to do a working outside of your physical body. Now, as Archons, you taint the entire tank. No power in your reservoir is unclaimed by your body, but that isn’t an issue for empowering things bound to you anymore.”

Tala’s head was hurting, again. “So… it’s possible to pull from a magic-bound item’s reserves? If you’re careful?”

“Yes, but no.”

Tala waited.

Elnea sighed. “While you can, in theory, do as you ask, you do not actually have authority or sway over the power within, say, your dimensional storage. Were that item sapient, it could theoretically direct some of its reserves into other items, but they would more likely magic-bind to it, than to you, and would likely reject the power if you had already bonded them.” She waved away Tala’s further questions. “We are delving deep into empowerment theory, and have, once again, lost the thread.”

Rane made a triumphant sound, both because he’d finally pulled his aura fully inside himself, and because he seemed to have realized something. “So, our soul-bound body effectively gives our excess power to the air around us, binding that air to us in turn?”

Elnea hesitated, seemingly taken aback by the radical change in subject. “That-”

Grediv cut across her. “Yes, lad. That is precisely right. Archons, when not using proper soul and aura control, effectively constantly magic-bind the air around themselves, making that air a reserve with no outlet, so it dissipates. Now, if done properly-”

Tala’s eyes widened at the implications, even as Elnea shot a peeved look towards Grediv, cutting across him. “Yes, Master Grediv, but as you well know, that is not usually explained, until new Archons have mastered basic aura control completely.”

He shrugged. “He guessed it. I’m not going to lie to the lad. Were you?”

Her glare sharpened, but then faded, and she let out a tired sigh. “I suppose not.” She clicked her tongue, still clearly irritated. “But, Master Grediv, you will be silent for the remainder of this portion of the proceedings, no matter how short that may be.”

Tala thought she caught the hints of power across the spell-lines on the woman’s left forearm, before a spell-form flashed into existence, fully manifested around Grediv. Sound isolation. No sound can exit that field.

The Head Archon of Alefast gave a disgruntled glare towards his Bandfast counterpart but didn’t act to counter the magic.

“Now, we have gotten away from the crux of the matter at hand...again.” Many of the surrounding Archons chuckled. “Like anything else, you will need to practice the aura restraint technique, until you can perform it even in your sleep.”

Just like the Ways… Tala realized that this was quite obviously a complement to the Ways she’d learned of. Another thing to practice, another way to improve. She almost snickered to herself. Hah, another ‘Way’ to improve. She was hilarious.

“Many new Archons take a sabbatical, or otherwise go into seclusion, to master their aura. The quickest on record needed only a day, the longest: a month. No one has failed as a Bound in a very long time.” Her smile held a motherly cast. “You will find this is much easier to maintain than a Way, and you should find this meshes well with whatever Ways you choose to pursue, once you delve more deeply into those.”

Tala didn’t know enough, or have enough experience, to tell the truth of that assurance, but she decided to accept it as it seemed. She still effortlessly maintained her aura contraction, her soul strong, steady, and used to her ‘self’-control.

She glanced around and noticed that the tables had been cleared, the room returned to its pre-celebration state. Quick work.

A servant, looking clearly very nervous and a bit awkward, took the momentary pause as an opening, and approached.

Elena gave the young man a quizzical look. He bowed to her. “May I have a word with Mistress Tala?”

The Archons around the room seemed a bit surprised. Elnea, for her part, sighed. “Very well.” She glanced to Tala. “The servants must depart before we conclude.”

Tala nodded, turning a questioning look to the young man.

“Yes?” Get on with it… This was a bit embarrassing.

“The un-eaten, still edible food has been packed up for you.”

Elnea gave Tala a long-suffering look but, again, didn’t comment. Tala turned back to the servant, after glancing at the Head Archon. “Thank you. Is there anything else?”

“The thing is…” The servant looked away, clearing his throat and reddening slightly.

Tala cocked her head, frowning. “Yes?”

He refused to meet her eyes, and his response was barely more than a whisper. “We are missing quite a few plates.”

Missing plates?... Tala’s eyes widened in realization. Oh…oh slag.