Millennial Mage

Tala didn’t really know how to feel about the following two weeks.

First of all, after seeing the ending-grove, Thron had informed her that she’d somehow missed sleeping for the past few days, mostly due to her running around so much.

She’d been understandably shocked, but when she and Alat had checked her memory, it seemed that he was correct.

That means that I haven’t actually slept since the gate-breaking.

-That’s probably not very good for you, honestly.-

Her expanded flowrate was supercharging her inscriptions to the point that it seemed to be nearly negating her need to sleep. Even so, as soon as the wondrous act was mentioned, Tala felt her entire body sag in anticipated relief.

That was how she found herself sleeping for nearly twenty-four hours.

When she awoke, she felt renewed and invigorated like never before.

From there, she dove into her duties as an Eskau of the House of Blood.

As a new Eskau, most of her time was spent training or eating as more and more of the crops and other products of her sanctum were ready for harvest.

Thron had to slaughter the animals when they were ready and prepare anything that required more than simply picking free hanging harvests from a plant. Even so, overall, between Kit and Thron, it was trivially simple to keep Tala supplied with food.

Beyond that, Tala was required to settle a few disputes between servants too high ranking to be ignored or diverted to Thron, but not of quite enough importance to take time from Be-thric. Blessedly, there were only about a hundred such servants in all of Platoiri. Even so, they seemed to be quite competitive as often as not, leading to the disagreements requiring mediation.

After listening to the first two, an owl beast-man and a gray hue-folk male, argue for nearly three hours, Tala refused to offer judgment and informed them that they had ten minutes to settle it themselves before she cut off a finger from each of them.

They’d joined together to rail against her after that.

Then, the fingers had been taken.

They settled their own dispute less than five minutes later.

Thron was oddly approving of her method in solving that issue, and Tala really didn’t know how to feel about that. It didn’t help that Tala felt like Tali would likely have handled it similarly, though Tali would likely have taken a hand rather than a finger.

The second pair she’d had to mediate between had each calmly explained their position in brief sentences, and the answer had been utterly obvious to Tala.

“No, it is not reasonable for Heart-Servant Vanlin to take over part of your duties, Arnor, even if he is faster than you. If you wish to forgo some of your duties, you must also give over some of your rewards, but you have refused to do this.”

Vanlin had steadfastly refused to ‘assist’ Arnor at the end of each workday, even though Vanlin had finished his own duties and more, and Arnor had still not met minimum requirements.

The two were apparently friends, and Vanlin had helped Arnor a couple of times, but when the latter came to expect the help, Vanlin had begun refusing.

Honestly, it was a case of Vanlin still wanting to be friends, while not being taken advantage of, and Arnor not really thinking of it from his friend’s perspective.

Idiocy…

Tala’s word was law in this case, and the two were able to depart her sanctum as friends, because neither had had to ‘give ground’ on their own.

The Eskau was an Eskau. Who were they to argue?

That second mediation set the tone for most of the others. At least, she didn’t have to actually take any other fingers.

In each other case, Tala simply had to tell them what they both already knew was the right course of action. The very fact that she spoke took the responsibility from the parties involved and allowed relationships to function more smoothly.

This is really, really weird. Just tell them ‘no.’

-But then you’re telling your colleague ‘no.’ This way, they can both maintain the fiction that the ‘asked’ might have been willing, but a higher power said not to.-

Tala sighed. I suppose.

Around training and seemingly unnecessary mediation, Tala occasionally attended Be-thric when he met with those either outside the house, or only loosely affiliated.

Those meetings were filled with negotiations, trade discussions, and the building of relationships.

No one engaged with her directly, as she was simply meant to be a symbol of the power of the House of Blood. That was more than fine with her.

She always wore her iron paint, with the through-spike suppressed, while at these events, and no one ever gave Be-thric any trouble.

I kind of wish they would… Part of that was to give her something to do, and part was so that someone would make Be-thric’s life worse.

Her final duty was every three days or so. At that time, she simply walked with a servant of the House of Blood to each of their affiliated businesses and lesser houses to collect the portion of the profits which were owed to the major House supporting them.

Tala quickly realized that she had three roles in such circuits.

The first was similar to her task when accompanying Be-thric: to show the power of the House of Blood to those in partnership or subservience to them.

The second was as a guard to the servant collecting the payments.

Finally, she was to ensure that that same servant didn’t skim any off the top.

Why Tala, herself, couldn’t be the collector baffled her, until Thron explained.

“An Eskau lowering themselves to speaking with the merchants and nobles not actually a part of the House, would be unseemly. And you having to handle the payments yourself?”—He shook his head.—”No major House is that tight on funds or that lacking in servants loyal to them. Even my performance of that duty would imply that we were short on servants that we trust.”

The explanation did make a modicum of sense, Tala had to admit.

All in all, those two weeks passed in an oddly mundane fashion, very similarly to how she would have spent her time if she were in the human lands, though her job was obviously different.

And, you know, I’m a slave.

-I agree, but your slavery is mainly in the involuntary nature of your hiring, rather than how you are treated or what you are asked to do.-

Yeah… Which is why she was so conflicted. For the most part, her job wasn’t objectionable, except when she was around Be-thric…or when she actually gave a moment to consider the many, many founts around herself.

Yes, this is a wonderful place except, of course, the uncounted souls in eternal enslavement and torment.

-Yes, it’s practically a paradise.- The sarcasm was thick in the sentiment, and Tala heartily agreed.

Even so, time passed, and she fulfilled her duties and improved.

Finally, the morning dawned on the day of her first duty shift as Guard of the City Lord.

Tala had slept again the night before, but only for a couple of hours. She was down to only needing those couple of hours of sleep every second or third night since her day of rest allowed her to reset and acclimatize to her increased flowrate.

The rest of the night, after her short sleep, she had trained, finally mastering her aura enough to hold it within the boundary of her skin full time, without the need of the iron paint.

As the false sun mirrored the real one, Tala finished her training and began her preparations for the day before it began to light her sanctum.

She bathed, painted herself in iron, and reshaped her elk-leathers to match their formal form, which she’d worn to the feasts before and after her battle to become an Eskau.

Now, however, the emblem was updated to reflect her increased rank. Like at the feast after, actually.

Speaking of food, Thron had worked with a chef from the main hold to prepare Tala’s daily, morning feast earlier than usual.

She had to admit, it was fascinating to eat the bacon with marbled magics running through it. It added an entirely new dimension to the already utterly succulent food.

The fat contained magics to increase the caloric and nutritional capacity of that tissue, while the muscle within the delicacy carried power which mirrored the magics on her own muscles.

Apparently, the livestock were deeply difficult to kill with anything mundane, so Thron had simply taken to severing their heads with a quick application of corrosion.

Every part of the meal contained magics similarly paired with those within her body, and the results were showing.

Her inscriptions, and her natural magics which mirrored them, both used more power and used that power more efficiently than ever before.

Near the middle of her breakfast, Tala noticed Terry flicker in to eat a plate of more mundane bacon and a steak set aside for him. That ingested, he flickered to her shoulder for a quick nuzzle, and he was off once more.

He rarely killed the creatures that he hunted through the outskirts of her sanctum, but he enjoyed it, nonetheless.

Tala had actually been able to determine that Terry seemed to be training and beginning to breed the beasts to be harder to hunt, simply so that he had a greater challenge in turn. Though, the reasoning was more a guess on her part than actual knowledge.

It was an odd thought, and one that put Terry’s intelligence in a far scarier light.

From what she’d been able to gather, he always ate the first one he caught, and rewarded the last one he found, slowly forcing improvement in the wild porcine herd. The process was similar for the other ‘wild’ animals in her sanctum as well, with the rabbits showing the greatest changes from his ministrations.

Even with the ability to seek them out directly, through her deeper connection with Kit, Tala often had a hard time finding the rabbits that were supposed to be there.

Blessedly, she was able to find them on occasion, so she knew Terry hadn’t simply eaten them all.

He does seem to enjoy the hunting and…training quite a bit.

Tala didn’t think that the animals had been augmented to breed more rapidly, so it wouldn’t be a fast process. Even so, the creatures didn’t seem to be dying out, despite daily hunts, so she was left uncertain as to their true numbers and breeding rates.

She almost wished that she could get an informational panel or something to display the number of creatures within Kit, but she knew that she’d very likely rarely use it.

She didn’t really care enough to even ask for specifics of the beasts, if she were being honest.

Besides, today is going to be busy enough without me digging into Terry’s hobbies.

Tala finished off her meal with a large pitcher of ending-berry juice.

Throughout, she maintained a state of near meditation, moving the various powers into alignment with her compatible scripts and magics as she consumed them.

It was an oddly calming process, honestly.

As such, in seemingly no time at all, it was time for her to depart.

She thanked Thron and the chef for the food, summoned the exit to appear beside herself and allowed the chef to exit before her.

She had no interest in trapping the cook within Kit for the day.

Thron stayed behind as he would spend the time reading through the books they’d been granted, searching for gaps in the knowledge contained within.

Any Eskau related duties around the House of Blood’s hold would be taken care of by Pallaun, while Tala attended the City Lord.

With Kit on her belt, hanging opposite Flow, Tala set off to fulfill her duties.

When she arrived, Tala found that the City Lord’s residence was quite different from what she’d expected.

Instead of being a hold, it was a modest sized place, set among a reasonably sized park, near the center of the city.

This particular park had a heavily magic-imbued wall surrounding it, making it obvious that it wasn’t a public space.

The residence, itself, was an interesting mix of a fortification and an incredibly nice home.

The aesthetic was that of the simple house of a wealthy family, while the power ingrained within was that of a fort expecting daily assault.

Tala presented herself at the gate just as the sun peeked over the horizon, fully transforming the gray sky of pre-dawn into the blues, yellows, and reds of first light.

The clouds overhead already blazed with color, and that was only magnified by the arrival of the sun.

“Greetings, Eskau Tali.” The gate guard bowed to her. He was a cat beast-man, whose aura was nearly to true green.

No wonder he can guard the gate alone.

Tala gave a nod in return. “Greetings, Honored Elder. Shall I go straight to the main house? Or is there another place I should check in?”

Tala briefly connected a void-channel to a path within Flow, and the world changed. She focused most closely on the man before her and noticed that his power was already circulating in quick, whipping patterns within him.

Already primed for a fight.

-They likely have to be ready at all times. Plus, arcanes don’t really seem to lose power from active effects, unless those effects are stressed.-

The man didn’t react, confirming what she’d already known: The alteration to her eyes and surrounding features were hidden by the through-spike’s illusion. And this man doesn’t have any ability to pierce those illusions.

“The City Lord has requested your attendance in the highest tower.” The guard pointed to the singular tower that jutted out of the top of the house, rising a good hundred feet above the roof of the four-story structure.

A Mage’s tower, too. How had she missed that, earlier?

The answer was quite obvious, now that she knew to look. There was a ‘disinterested’ working, wrought around the entire tower. Unless a person knew to look, or were directed to do so, the tower would be so uninteresting as to not be seen at all.

So much more effective than simple invisibility.

“Thank you, Honored Elder.”

The guard bowed once more and stood aside for her to pass through the open arch.

As Tala walked underneath the stone gateway, and into the grounds proper, she passed through a barrier of sorts and almost stopped in surprise.

The space within the private park was expanded to an insane degree. From the outside, it looked totally normal, and even the magics of the expansion weren’t visible to Tala’s sight.

Maybe my void-sight would have seen this from the outside, if I’d looked anywhere besides at the guard. She could check after she left.

The home had not changed, but it was now at least twice as far away from her as it had appeared before, and the gardens were revealed to be extensive in the extreme.

Their mastery of magic is… She shook her head.

-I know, right? Humanity has so much that we could learn from arcanes.-

Tala found herself grinning. We still have so, so much knowledge to steal.

She picked up her pace just a bit. After all, she was supposed to check in and assume her duties at first light, and she was still quite a ways from the structure.

As she approached, she noticed various workers doing repairs or cleaning, or performing other tasks around the structure. Some were up on the roof, and one or two even seemed to be working on the tower itself.

She came to the main doors, and she was met by a beast-folk woman who looked like nothing so much as a pigeon person.

The being was… odd to say the least, but Tala didn’t stare too much.

“Eskau Tali?” Her voice was surprisingly deep and melodic, indeed sounding a bit like a pigeon’s coo.

“Yes.”

“Right this way, please.”

Tala followed the pigeon-woman inside, not really taking in the décor as she was directed to a stairway a short distance within the house.

Tala jogged up the stairs, coming to the top rather quickly.

She hesitated before the doors on the landing at the top, taking a deep breath to slow her heart before she knocked.

“Come.” The very air vibrated with the single word.

The door seemingly unlatched itself. That was not an analogy. Without any exterior magics acting upon it, nor any power acting within that Tala could see, the door unlatched and swung open.

What?

Before her was another section of stairs that let up and out into the center of the room above.

Tala climbed them quickly, the last few allowing her gaze to sweep most of the room as she reached the top.

A man sat at a reading desk off to one side, a large tome open before him.

His aura was, indeed, more than halfway between blue and indigo, and power practically hummed around him, though he did not appear to be using magics at the moment.

“You are a bit late, though I’ll grant that you arrived at my gate at the appointed time.”

Tala gave a hesitant bow, not excessively deep but a bow, nonetheless. “My apologies, City Lord.”

“Arrive on time to fulfill your future duties, and all will be forgiven.” He still hadn’t turned around.

“As you say.”

“Now.” He finally moved to face her, giving her her first good look at him.

To Tala’s eyes, he looked to be in his mid-twenties, though she knew that wasn’t correct. His skin was a deep crimson, his hair was shockingly white, and his eyes were a burnt orange, no pupil in evidence.

Tala almost expected to see horns on his head, to match him to the mythos of demons put forward in some plays back in the human lands.

He might actually be the origin of those myths. The City Lord was old, and she would not doubt for an instant that he was around before the large section of humanity had broken away to achieve their modicum of freedom.

His build was lean, like a sprinter, and his clothing was simple but obviously well made. At the moment, that meant a plain shirt and pants, hanging loosely around his well-muscled frame. He wore no obvious weapon, but with the power at his disposal, she doubted he needed any.

All this, she took in as he spun around. She felt his eyes move across her, the pressure of his gaze greater than the power behind Cerdai’s magical scans.

“You really are human, and gated at that, fascinating.”

Tala felt the through-spike being suppressed by an outside power, even while it still lay solidly inside her aura and control.

The illusion faded, and she was rewarded by a slight widening of the man’s eyes. “Incredible density and resonance. Were you of proper, unbroken stock, you might signal a long-looked-for uplifting of your race.”

He shook his head sadly.

“Alas, you are of the broken ones, a vestige of mistakes made long ago.”

Tala didn’t know what to say. So, she stayed silent.

-Wise choice, in my estimation. Well done.-

Tala held in a smile as she fought to not roll her eyes at Alat.

The City Lord didn’t seem to mind the lack of a response, as he continued, “Now, to business. There is an assassin climbing my tower, bent on slaying me.”

Tala frowned. “What?”

“Look down over that balcony, there.” He pointed to one of the doors out of the tower room, out onto an outdoor space.

Tala walked out and looked down. “All I see is a window washer.”

“Ahh, he is clever in his disguises. Please slay him, that we may get on with the day.” The tone was light, but the City Lord seemed utterly serious.

Tala cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure he is your would-be assassin?”

“Of course! You doubt the word of your City Lord? Should I kill you and him, myself?” There was no heat in the voice, just seemingly genuine curiosity.

“No doubt or disrespect intended, but your window washer is decidedly female.”

The City Lord blinked at her a few times, then burst out laughing. “Oh, that is a horrid mistake on my part isn’t it.”

He continued to laugh, Tala standing awkwardly on the balcony, not sure what to do. The laughter caused the air to visibly shudder as it reverberated with the man’s power. Blessedly, the tower seemed to be magically reinforced, because it didn’t move or sway in the least.

Finally, he got himself at least a bit under control. “To think, I set up a silly test to see if you were a thoughtless killer, or an easily cowed sycophant, and I get the sex of the target wrong.”

He started laughing again, shaking his head.

A test? What sort of nonsense is this?

-Pallaun did say that the City Lord would want to see who you were and get to know you.-

But who tells a warrior to kill a servant as a test?

-He could have saved the woman, likely, but maybe he doesn’t care? There are a few dozen founts in this room alone. He isn’t exactly a beacon of morality.-

The City Lord finally stopped laughing completely and was nodding to himself. “Well, if nothing else, you’re observant. I’ll give you that.”

“Thank you?”

“Oh, you’re more than welcome, Eskau Tali. Now, let us be about the business of the morning.”

Tala could already tell; it was going to be an… interesting day.