Millennial Mage

Tala was the last one out of Khesed’s cell, as was her role as the physical and magical interceptor for her unit.

She backed out slowly, keeping the prisoner in sight as he floated above the forest floor, suspended in his restraints.

Around her, incredibly intricate, interlaced magics were finally fully formed.

From what little Tala could interpret—when they were activated—they would repair the hole into the cell and seal it once again for the foreseeable future.

Mission more or less accomplished. All things considered, it was a successful first mission to a cell.

She took the last step out, onto the stairs, and she saw the magics flash with power, reality folding and twisting on itself to render the contained space stable but contained yet again.

The entrance within the expanded roof tile vanished entirely, the only evidence being the smallest of pin-pricks through which she saw the reality-thread connections that were coming from Khesed, and the fading wisps of the magic that had enacted the change.

Even those reality-threads faded, seemingly shifted into the Doman-Imithe, or some other place, for a more expedient path between their linked pairs.

Mistress Kep looked exhausted, and Mistress Vanga helped her down the steps, even as Master Girt did the same with Tala. It was only then that Tala noticed how exhausted she felt.

She felt… strained?

No, that’s not right.

She felt almost disconnected from herself, as if she was walking around in someone else’s body.

-Tala! You still have your defenses up. Drop them.-

She didn’t see why she should, but there wasn’t really a good reason to keep them up, and Alat was her, so she probably had good reasons. Thus, Tala shrugged to herself and dropped the ‘existence field.’

The world came rushing back to her in an oddly existential way, staggering her.

She’d have fallen off the stairs if it wasn’t for Master Girt’s support. “Hey, now. I’ve got you. Are you going to be alright?”

That seemed to get everyone’s attention, even as Tala stepped free and the staircase and platform folded back into the tile as it shrunk back into place, vanishing into the expanse of other roof tiles.

Tala shook her head. “There was some odd backlash to the protection I was using.”

Mistress Cerna walked forward, along with an exhausted Mistress Kep, the unit leader speaking up, “Tell us the details of what you did.”

So, Tala did.

She didn’t mention the prisoner’s actions, simply what she had done and seen with regard to the unit members.

Finally, she explained how she’d released the barrier and felt like the world was around her again, even though she hadn’t been blocked or inhibited beforehand.

It was Mistress Kep who answered, “It sounds like you were isolating yourself from the rest of the world on the level of existence itself. It obviously wasn’t a perfect seal, but it was enough to give you the feeling of wrongness and isolation. There have historically been curses like that: ‘May you never love again,’ comes to mind. Conceptual magics in those cases were used that prevented the target from ever forming bonds with another human. In the most extreme case I’ve heard of—though I doubt its validity—it was so powerful that people would forget that they saw the person or creature as soon as they lost sight of them. It went both ways in the tale, so the subject of that curse eventually killed themselves for lack of social connection and out of confusion as to the strangeness of the world they now inhabited seemingly on their own. Once dead, the magic persisted and their body rotted in a public square, unable to be noticed enough to be removed.”

Tala felt her eyes twitch. “That’s… awful.”

The Paragon cleared her throat, scratching at her collarbone briefly. “My apologies. I’m a bit out of it myself. That was callously said. In your case, you seem in full control of the cause, so you can avoid it when appropriate or undo it as needed. But…” She hesitated before pressing on. “I’d probably recommend that you don’t do anything to make that a passive or permanent effect you are constantly under.”

Tala nodded in eager affirmation. “Understood, and I agree. Thank you for the advice.”

She shook her head and took a long drink from a waterskin that Master Limmestare offered her.

“On a different subject, which I meant to ask earlier, why aren’t cells made inhospitable? I mean I know why this prisoner couldn’t be starved of food or air, etcetera, but why couldn’t others?”

Smiles passed around those nearby.

Mistress Vanga voiced what they were thinking, “Well, if you’re asking questions like that again, you’re going to be fine.”

Tala found herself chuckling with the others.

Mistress Cerna pointed them toward their next task, “Let’s get some food, and we can see if we can satisfy your curiosity. Then, we’ll button up here and head back to Alefast.”

Once Kit was retrieved, and Tala had communicated with those inside, Mistress Petra had their midday meal ready shortly, and they all gathered to chat and eat.

I’m so glad I increased her pay and gave her a supply budget. It would be really awkward to be eating a really nice meal with everyone else in my unit eating rations, or the like.

-Yeah, that wouldn’t be the best unit-building way of doing things.-

Kind of the unit to help fund the process, too.

-Makes sense, it’s for them, and gets the Zuccats much better paid across the board.-

The meal for everyone but Tala was a garlic chicken over brown rice. The sauce was thick, and the asparagus, mushrooms, carrots, and snap-peas were prepared to perfection.

Both the food for the unit and Tala’s own fare were served alongside a nice, spicy, chilled tea.

Is this ginger based?

-I think a ginger honey tea, yeah.-

I would not have thought this would be good, but it really is.

While none of them needed the cooling effect from the chilled tea, it was a nice, refreshing beverage for an early-summer’s day.

As the others wound down—and Tala continued apace—there were a few words exchanged before Master Limmestare actually began to give the requested explanation.

“So, in regard to the habitability of the cells, it generally isn’t up to the creators at all. It’s important to realize that these aren’t created spaces that the prisoners are shoved into, at least not for the most part. You see, in most cases, the prisoners are too magically or conceptually weighty to be directly acted upon, that’s one reason why we can’t simply bypass their forms of indestructability. Thus, the enactment—the working—grabs a large portion of the world itself, encapsulating it and isolating it.”

“Oh! Like a world fragment?”

Master Limmestare frowned, glancing to Mistress Kep. The Paragon nodded, “Yes, but it is a world fragment of this broken recreation, not a true world fragment of what was before.”

Tala found herself nodding too. That made sense. “Alright. So, because it’s a world fragment of this world, it matches the conditions of this world.”

Master Limmestare smiled. “Yes! It matches the conditions of wherever it was taken from, give or take. We actually have similar things happen with expanded storages. If we created them from scratch, here, we almost never have to concern ourselves with ventilation and the like, but we do need to be careful with insulation, but that’s getting off topic.”

Tala tilted her head to one side, remembering back. “That’s why they had to be careful with the inside of Kit, my sanctum”—she clarified, then realized she’d used the wrong word—“dimensional storage.”

Master Clevnis grunted. “Because it was an artifact, a spawning of the void where there isn’t necessarily anything to breathe.”

She frowned. “‘Not necessarily?’”

He shrugged. “The void is strange. We think of it as ‘emptiness,’ but it’s not truly nothingness, and there are pockets of all sorts of things in there. Who knows where a given artifact spawned from? When you think about it, isn’t all existence within a void?”

That… was a really excellent point.

She supposed she was glad that Kit didn’t come from a place where the atmosphere was actively toxic to plant life or was defined by some other inconvenient feature. I suppose we’d never have gotten along if that were the case, though.

Tala cleared her throat, swallowing another bite of her feast. “So, if I understand correctly, we grab the world just outside the prisoner-to-be’s range of resisting the working, and bundle the whole thing up and tuck it away as a cell?”

Mistress Kep considered for a moment then nodded. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“But… what about whatever else was in there?”

The Paragon grimaced. “It’s trapped too, usually specifically something, someone, or some group of people and things to entice the target and keep it in place long enough to be captured.”

Tala’s eyes widened. “We offer up human sacrifices?”

“What? No! No. Generally it’s an Archon or some other Mage who can engage the being well enough to keep it from fleeing if it senses the magics being enacted around it. The worst cases—and some of the only exceptions where we sometimes have to abandon innocents who can’t be saved—are for the Tides of Dead.” The Paragon actually shivered. “I don’t think we have any of those cells in need of maintenance this cycle, but I might be remembering wrong.”

Tala glanced at her various unit mates. “Do I want to know?”

Master Limmestare shrugged. “It is what it sounds like. Necromancy on a horrifying scale.”

“But… it sounds like it’s in more than one cell?”

“Oh, yeah. The story goes that a Sovereign snapped and directed all her power to bring back those whom she killed, and those they killed, and so on. She also ‘didn’t want things to get out of hand’ so she bound her will and mind into working, to keep them all under her direct control.”

Tala leaned forward, food momentarily forgotten. “What happened?”

“Well, all seemed to go well for a while. All who opposed her were simply added to her army, but those close to her began to notice her mind deteriorating as even the mentality of a Sovereign isn’t unlimited, and she was spreading herself out through the entirety of the ever-growing force.”

Master Limmestare glanced around and grinned. Everyone was focused on him, even though the others likely knew the story already.

“Soon, the only thing remaining of the Sovereign was her power, spread among the growing hordes, and a drive to kill and add to the Tides.”

Tala waited for him to continue, and he did after a theatrical pause.

“Even her old allies rose up against the Tides, but the dead were too strong to defeat, too strong to contain together. After all, they bore with them the diffuse power of a Sovereign.”

Tala shook her head. “Why wouldn’t the other Sovereigns have intervened?”

He shrugged. “No one is quite sure, and no one has wanted to waste a boon on asking. The theory is that they would have stepped in eventually, if things had gotten bad enough, but since there wasn’t really an existential threat to all of Zeme, or to any of their domains directly, they didn’t bother. But, as I was saying, the joint forces that did work against the Tide lost several ancient and powerful imprisoners, attempting to bind the horde into one or more cells. It was only when her kingdom fractured, the armies pouring outward in all directions that there was a chance.”

Tala interjected, then. “But wouldn’t every one of the Tide that those who opposed them killed have weakened the whole?”

“No, that simply returned the power to the others, and the Sovereign was bound to death itself as a source of power, so she had no lack in that regard.”

That doesn’t make sense. How would that even work?

-Hush, I’m trying to listen.-

“Thus, all across this continent and all others we know of, the hordes were split and led in different directions until a given group was small enough that they didn’t represent enough of the Sovereign’s power to simply break free of imprisonment. There was no collective organization or catalog or count. Last I checked, we know of—and maintain—more than a hundred such cells throughout the human lands.”

Tala felt herself pale. “More than a hundred? Each containing nearly enough power to break free of one of these cells?”

He nodded solemnly. “Indeed. The power of a Sovereign—especially one so powerfully bound to a functionally limitless, ever growing source—should not be underestimated.”

Tala sat back, thinking. “But… they’re all contained, now. How could it be ever growing?”

“Well, in that case, if the concept of death is the source of power, then every time something dies, more power is acquired.”

She grimaced. “It can’t be that universal.”

He smiled. “You’re probably right. It’s generally assumed that the death has to happen near enough to the Sovereign—or one of her avatars—to grant her power, but there was also a false assumption within your question.”

“Oh?”

“They aren’t all contained. Small groups often fell into sink holes, or got lost in cave complexes, or fell into the deep ocean, or got buried when Mages were fighting them, or any number of other temporary ensnarements. The dead don’t need anything to continue save the power of the Sovereign within them. Thus, every so often, one or more of the Tide surfaces. In most cases, they are slain fast enough that it isn’t a problem, but occasionally…”

Tala felt herself swallow involuntarily at the implication. “What sort of abilities do they have? Are they just people? Are they faster? Slower? Do Mages killed by them keep their magics? Their gates?”

“All excellent questions. Mistress Kep? You’re probably better qualified to answer that.”

The woman smiled tiredly. “I’ll be brief. There are a lot of variations. Generally, though, they are strong in some ways and weak in others. Mages who rise with the Tide keep their natural magics, and their instincts for using them. They are simply powered by the Sovereign’s power after rising. If they’re fast, strong, or some other obvious physical advantage, they generally have to kill someone in one of the usual ways for their victim to rise. The slow ones, though… They often bear a magical plague that does the killing for them. Those plagues range from something any healthy adult can shrug off, so long as they have time to heal, all the way up to something that will ravage a Fused in a matter of seconds.”

Tala swallowed again. “Refined?”

“I’ve not heard of a case where a Refined was subsumed by bite or similar non-lethal injury. That’s one reason Refined are the usual people to engage those inside cells. We are generally resistant and resilient enough that it is a very rare occasion that we lose someone. As to gates, we’ve seen no evidence of gates being incorporated into the Tide. The soul passes on as one would expect upon death. That means that the soul-bound items also are rendered without a power source, though some stick around for just long enough to be quite difficult to deal with. That’s why, generally, a risen Mage is at its most powerful for the day after they rise. They still have their previous magical density to pull from, along with their items.”

“Lovely.”

“Indeed.”

“So… there could be a risen avatar of the Sovereign of Death buried beneath us right now?”

Mistress Kep shook her head. “Conceptually, yes, but literally, no. I could sense them if that were the case, and there are no buried or hidden threats within a couple of miles, even outside of this folded space. There are a few magical creatures, but they aren’t near enough or of a kind to really be a threat or to need to be dealt with.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” Tala looked to Master Limmestare. “Thank you for the tale.”

“It was my pleasure.”

She thought for a moment. “So, for something like a Lich, we’d just package up their whole fortress and make that their cell. No need to find what specific item houses their soul if you trap everything away. Is that right?”

“Just so, yes.”

“Huh… I can see why this method caught on.”

Mistress Cerna cleared her throat. “Now that that tale is told...”

“Oh, there’s so much more that I could tell.”

“I know you could, but I think enough has been conveyed for now.”

He sighed but nodded. “Very well.”

“Now, that settled, I think we should recover a bit before we depart. Master Grediv has asked us to drop by a little research facility on the way back, so we need to be at least reasonably recovered before then.”

They all nodded.

Mistress Cerna gave a triumphant smile. “Good! Until then, let’s do our after-action debriefing, shall we? I think we did well enough—clearly protocol worked and the prisoner is contained—but there is always room for improvement.”

Once again, they all nodded. Everyone here was open to, if not longing for, improvement.

“Let’s get started, shall we?”