Millennial Mage

Tala was excited to test out the iron salve improvement, which is why she’d asked how much it cost. I can’t pay rivers of gold, but if this works as well as I hope, it could be worth a lot to me.

“Half a gold per gallon.” He handed over the test vial, complete with little brush mounted to the lid, just like the glue she’d used to protect her palms for the application of her iron salve.

Half a gold per gallon? Tala’s eye twitched. “That’s not cheap.”

“It is a bit more expensive than the salve I made for you last time, yes.”

A bit, yeah. That was only a few silver; this is fifty.

Though, as she thought about it, all the bars she’d purchased together would likely have been less than a gallon.

Maybe the costs are closer than I think. “Well, I’ll give it a try and see.”

The paint was thick as Tala used the little brush to paint her left hand using her right. “I recommend you do three coats to ensure complete coverage. With those, it should last until you scrub it off, and believe me, you will have to scrub.”

She gave him a skeptical look.

He simply grinned back. “It is surprisingly robust, intentionally so.”

She grunted in acknowledgement and shrugged. “I’ll definitely put it to the test.”

Even as she applied the first coat, she could feel a noticeable difference. Her magics were being better contained and reflected back than they had been with iron salve. Maybe I should be sleeping in an iron box, if this is the result.

Unfortunately, an iron box wouldn’t actually work for that. True, an iron box would keep her from losing magical power, just like it did for harvests and items, but the iron would not be evenly distant from her skin in a box, and the random angles at which it would be in relation to the spell-forms would mean wonky angles of reflection that would not well compliment her existing magics. All told, an iron box was useful for containment, not training.

She also realized these results helped her to understand why most Mages did not like iron. Their spell-forms are not as safe as mine to have amplified and applied internally.

The paint was surprisingly quick drying, and so in less than ten minutes, her left hand was thoroughly coated with three layers of the flexible, somewhat stretchy material. She had used the entire test-bottle to accomplish the three layers on that part of her.

The result had a bit of a metallic sheen to it, without being shiny, and it was a beautifully deep, dark grey.

An odd side effect of the nearly perfect containment was that her spell-lines, usually much to fine for mundane eyes to see, were shining through the layer.

No, that’s not right.

Only the most prominent through-lines were visible, those that carried the most power naturally, and even those were only just visible. The sheer amount of power flowing and resonating within the scripts seemed to be causing a resonance in the air that manifested as light.

Tala could only tell all of this because of her enhanced vision and mage-sight. The mundane alchemist had no idea.

“I apologize, Mistress. It seems it is not as impermeable as I’d thought.” He was frowning. “That seems even worse than the iron salve, somehow. But that doesn’t make sense. Didn’t you put it on over the iron salve?”

Oops. She had, in fact. And the paint is still staying this well?

It was amazing stuff it seemed.

“Oh, no, it’s nearly perfect. This is a resonance in the air, right against the outer layer of the material.” It was stunningly captivating, even just on her hand.

Tala flexed her hand, stretching her fingers and wrist with her other hand, but the layer didn’t breach, crack, or in any way show signs of failing, seeming to move flawlessly with her skin.

Oh. Oh yes. She hadn’t left her palm bare as she would have in the past, because her magics no longer needed an avenue out of her physical body. No, now they reach through the dimensions of magic itself, to enact my will upon the target.

It took a bit more power to do it that way but was massively more effective. It also took a will. In her research, she’d found that independent scripts, operating automatically, couldn’t work within the dimensions of magic. The analogy that she’d like best was a ball on top of a river.

The ball would go where the water flowed, but it took a will, an action, to push it under, or lift it up. The only other way to get the ball underwater or above it was for the water to be churned up to an incredible degree. The analogy actually held in this case. The analog was that magic could actually bypass iron with sufficient power, turbulence, or with the right type of currents.

In either case, it was something that she could do fairly easily at this point. She continued examining her hand as she grinned. And it allows me to do this.

She ran a couple of tests, trying to extend her magics through her hand and found the first issue:

The iron salve she’d been using was apparently permeable enough to let her aura draw power through it. Now, she could extend her aura, but couldn’t move power through it without the same effort required to utterly bypass the iron layer.

The result was that her aura didn’t extend as far on its own and seemed weaker, somehow, like it was missing a layer of support that was usually there.

Thankfully, she didn’t need magical power to pull on her soul-bound items. Unfortunately, it would mean that she wouldn’t be able to easily do what she’d seen some higher-level Archons do: mainly, create spell-forms around themselves, with their aura as the medium and magic, itself, as the spell-lines.

Magic concentration first, then when I’m a bit more advanced, and have a bit more time, I can work on spell-forms in my aura. She still had the ability to work with them in her lungs, but she’d decided long ago that that was too dangerous a place to do her tests. I can learn how to breathe fire after I can create fire in a safer location.

“I like it.”

“I’m so glad.” The man was studying her hand with obvious fascination, fixating on the glowing lines hard against, but outside, the dark, metallic grey layer atop her skin. “May I…touch it?”

Tala hesitated. “I don’t actually know what that would do, or if it’s safe. It might be hot?”

“I will be careful and go slowly.” He thought for a moment. “Let’s be wise about this. Here.” He pulled out a piece of paper and set it on the counter. “Place your hand on this, please.”

Tala looked at her palm and the glowing lines there. That’s a pretty wise first test, actually. She placed her hand down on the paper and waited for a count of fifteen. That done, she pulled her hand back.

The alchemist placed his own hand on the unmarred paper. “A bit warm to the touch. Not room temperature, but certainly not dangerous.” He held his hands out, and Tala carefully placed her left hand into them.

He turned her hand over as he examined it from all sides, running his fingers carefully through the lines.

“Fascinating. I can feel…something, but it isn’t quite heat. It seems to be resonating with something here.” He placed his hand on his chest. “Somewhere behind my heart.”

His gate. Tala looked closely at the man’s hand, focusing on what her mage-sight was showing her, and she saw little eddies and echoes of her defensive magics in his natural magical pattern. As he moved his hand back, those artifacts faded, but they were definitely there. “Imprinting? That magic is resonating powerfully enough that it is imprinting on the powers around it. I believe you feel it because the natural magic in your hand is taking on, very temporarily, my spell-form.” Is this how they create artifact style items? It made sense, now that she thought about it. Resonate a spell-form strongly enough around an item, and it could build up an echo or imprint.

Her thoughts were disrupted as he pulled back his hands. “Ahh. Well, I don’t want to blow anything up, or-”

Tala waved him off. “It’s purely defensive and regenerative. No danger.”

He looked skeptical, and didn’t touch her hand again, but he didn’t argue.

She decided to change the subject. “How much will it take to cover myself fully?”

He hesitated. “Fully?” He frowned. “Well, I believe a colleague of mine sells body paints for various artistic purposes, and she sells three quarts at a time. You are on the smaller side, so that should be about right. That is factoring in using the proper number of coats.”

Then, three gallons would cover me four times, but that’s probably a bit excessive. “I’ll take two gallons.”

* * *

Tala left with the iron body paint carefully stored inside of Kit. She wasn’t happy to part with a gold, but she understood the value of a non-toxic, long-lasting iron paint that she could cover herself with.

She didn’t have time to apply it immediately as she had much too much to do that day, and she’d already spent more time than she should have with the alchemist.

She retraced her steps from so many weeks ago and found the blacksmith that Ashin had taken her to for a camp knife.

There, she had a lovely conversation with the master smith in residence and ordered four steel triangles into the corners of which she could put bloodstars before mounting them to shields.

She’d claimed two curving tower shields and two large round shields from the Leshkin loot, and that had pretty much exhausted her claim on the haul.

Rane had apparently sold most of the rest, only keeping the swords for merging with Force.

She did not look forwards to taking a blow from the newly enhanced weapon, which of course meant that she needed to do it sooner rather than later.

She also had a bit of back and forth with the blacksmith about another idea and ended up leaving him with one of her tungsten spheres to properly size the contraption. She would have left him with one of her anchoring darts, too, but they, by their design, couldn’t really be left behind.

Instead, he took good measurements of the empowered item and asked some pertinent questions.

All told, he expected that he and his underlings- Apprentices? -could have her work done in a few hours.

They settled on a price of 40 silver, and they both seemed happy.

Tala paid half in advance and went on her way.

At that point, she was ready to drop through and see Holly.

The inscriptionist was, as expected, quite busy, but the moment that Tala walked into the workshop, the Archon came from the back, practically at a sprint. “What have you been doing to yourself, Mistress Tala?”

Tala took a step to the side, trying to dodge without stepping back out of the building. “I was coming to ask you about my cravings. They started suddenly this morning.”

Holly shook her head. “You’re not pregnant, obviously.”

Tala reddened. “What!? Why would you-”

Holly waved her off. “Cravings, changes in health in the morning, better to dismiss it early, so that we don’t have to consider it any longer.”

“But I haven’t-”

“I don’t want to know, dear. Now,” her eyes flicked to the side, seeming to be reading something, “a sugar craving? Yes, your increased mental activity is using much more of that macro-nutrient.” She hesitated, then added, “I mean carbohydrates, obviously, not sugar specifically.”

Tala immediately felt like an idiot. Alat. She’s using my brain more than is usual for a mundane human, so it needs more fuel than usual. Just like my increased exercise had me craving more fats and proteins.

“So, you need to alter your diet. You are off of caffeine; I can see that. Good for you, but that headache must be murder.”

Tala glared. She’d been successfully ignoring it, but having it so blatantly pointed out made continuing that impossible. “Anything we can do about it?”

“Well, yes. Drinking a lot of water would help considerably.”

“Can’t my scripts prevent this?”

“Mistress Tala, I will not mess with your neurochemistry so directly. Natural decisions have natural consequences. You won’t die, or be permanently harmed by the headache, nor the irritability.” She hesitated again. “Well, assuming that you don’t direct the foul mood foolishly.”

Tala sighed. “So, nothing nefarious is going on?”

“No, dear. You just need more sugar in your diet.”

“Well, that solves that, then.” Tala almost turned to go but noticed that Holly didn’t seem to have heard her, as she was staring at Tala’s left hand.

Tala lifted it up, and Holly grabbed it, seemingly without thought. The spectacle created before Tala’s mage-sight by her iron-painted hand in Holly’s inscribed ones was fascinating.

Holly’s aura seemed to harden at the borders of her skin, preventing any outside magic from influencing her natural magics or inscriptions.

“What have you done to your hand?” Holly’s voice was distant, barely above a whisper.

Tala gave a brief explanation as to what she and the alchemist had done.

Holly nodded along, commenting at the end. “This would be a swift, incredibly painful death for anyone with different scripts than yours. Even your gravity alteration spell-forms are equally weighted for increase and decrease in their normal, active state.” She tsked, shaking her head in wonder. “But this is so beautiful.”

Tala tried to pull her hand back, but Holly held fast.

“You are going to be pressure cooking yourself in magic, and I cannot wait to see how you turn out.”

That’s a pleasant image. “Is that…bad?”

“Oh, no dear. It is getting your body adjusted to a much higher power content, that will increase your power density proportionally as your body tries to adjust to containing such, on its own. I assume the plan is to paint your entire body with it?”

“That was my thought.”

Holly cackled lightly, then caught herself, and schooled herself. “That’s amazing. You will progress your magical weight in months as much as most do in years, if not decades. How are you on the road to becoming Fused?”

Tala hadn’t thought about that in a while, but when she did, she felt the work continuing in the back of her soul and spirit. She looked inside, looking closer at the ongoing stitching. “Half done?” No, that wasn’t right. She was close to halfway from the center to the outside, but each layer outward was bigger than the one before. “No, one quarter, if I’m remembering the area calculation formulas correctly.”

Holly grunted. “Not bad for a bit less than a month’s dedicated work. Some may have done it faster, but most take years longer even to get this far.”

“Why?”

“Why do they take longer?”

Tala waved that away. “No, no. Why do you ask?” She knew that most people didn’t pursue advancement at the same, arguably insane, pace that she did.

“Oh, because every step of advancement deepens your connection to power, and all aspects and features of yourself that relate to it, depending on the stage of advancement, of course.”

“Ahh. I think I understand.”

“You don’t, but that’s fine. You will in time.”

Tala sighed, Holly’s words harshly reminding her of Boma’s similar feelings about her understanding. Feeling a bit defensive, she turned to go. “Well, I’ve much to do. Thank you for answering my questions and for your assistance.”

Holly gave Tala a level look. “You’re busy?” She opened her mouth to say more, but then just shook her head. “Not worth the time. I appreciate you dropping by to chat, though. Good day, Mistress Tala.”

“Good day, Mistress Holly, and thank you again.”

Tala left and went straight to the Constructionist Guild.

She again enjoyed the cool air and stone as she trekked across the winter cityscape.

She arrived at the guildhall and walked through the open entry way.

She’d never noticed before, but there was a marked increase in temperature as she walked down the short hall, and the subtle hints of magic in the air, only barely visible to her even now, gave her the reason as to why it was so.

Seems like it would be easier to just use a door. Though, as she thought about it, one of the core purposes of a city was to bleed off power and use it up, helping to keep the barrier between worlds intact for longer.

Huh, syphons might actually be helping in a certain way, then. That was an interesting, if marginally disturbing, thought. So long as they don’t kill people, they might actually be better to leave alone.

She guessed that if they got too powerful, that would no longer be the case, however. That’s probably why they are hunted. We don’t want a Sovereign Siphon rearing its head in a human city, after all.

She was scanned, greeted by the pleasant ding, and waited the short moment for an attendant to come out. It wasn’t one she’d met before.

“Mistress. How can we assist you today?”

“I’m looking to meet with Master Boma and Master Queue. Are either available at the moment?”

“Let me check. May I tell them who is requesting a meeting?”

“Tala.”

“Thank you, Mistress Tala. I will be right back. If you’d like, we have a waiting area right over there.”

Tala glanced that way and saw the coffee dispenser. She swallowed involuntarily, feeling her body groan in desire, her headache spiking, almost as if it were promising to go away if she would just have one little cup. Yeah, I better not get any closer to that. “I’m fine waiting here, thank you.”

“As you wish.”