Millennial Mage

Tala looked up at the wall of the cell antechamber, barely illuminated by flickering flames. The light was reflecting from where their assigned Paragon was working.

“What the rust is that?”

There was a creature depicted on the wall, faded and seemingly translucent by intention as well as time. The effect was likely meant to depict the beast as insubstantial, or an illusion, or something like that. But that wasn’t what had her confused.

“It looks like a hydra, but with eyes instead of heads, and someone has been fighting it who doesn’t get the concept.”

In essence, the creature’s exterior was covered with eyestalks.

The only exceptions were a singular, central eye on its body, its four little legs, and a disproportionately large, fang-filled mouth around the region that Tala would have expected a heart.

Master Limmestare was walking by, and he lifted his face from his book. “It’s an eyedra.”

She turned on him, disbelief obvious in her response, “No.”

But he was already reading once again. Even so, his slightly shaking shoulders were betraying stifled laughter.

Tala turned toward Master Clevnis, not trusting the other Refined at the moment. “What is this called, Master Clevnis?”

The man looked toward his wife before looking back and shrugging. “She always calls things in that classification, ‘Don’t cut that.’ So, it’s a don’t-cut-that, I suppose.”

He was worse at hiding his humor, so Tala rolled her eyes and turned to Mistress Cerna, “Mistress Cerna?”

“I mean, he’s not wrong?” She was grinning openly.

Tala’s mouth formed a compressed line. “Please, Mistress Cerna. What’s it called?”

The co-leader for their unit shrugged. “Uncomfortable Eye Contact.”

Tala grimaced and shook her head. “Fine. I’ll go ask someone more reasonable.”

She walked through the almost maze-like corridors until she found Mistress Vanga.

“Mistress Vanga, have you seen the depictions of the beast held in this cell?”

The woman looked up from her Archive tablet. “Hmm? Oh, yes.”

“What is it called?”

The healer smiled, “Well, I’ve always thought of it as the 20/20/20/20/20/20/20—”

Tala threw up her hands, turning and walking away as Mistress Vanga continued, a massive smile across the healer’s face.

Tala found Master Girt a minute later and skipped the preamble to simply ask, “What’s this creature called?”

“Hmm?” He had been shaping a stone chunk into a mimicry of the thing depicted on the walls. “Not sure, but I’d call it the ‘unfair-seeker.’”

Tala frowned, not understanding. “What?”

“You know, if you’re playing hide and seek, this thing would have an insane advantage.”

Alat burst out laughing within Tala’s head.

Do you know what it’s called?

-Oh, absolutely not. The book containing that is still sealed. I think this is a god-beast, or near enough.-

Great…

“Are you sure you don’t know what it is?”

Master Girt shrugged. “At the level we think this thing is, beasts are too unique to have specific names for the species. I like my name though.”

Tala sighed, turning to go find the Paragon. “Thanks anyways.” For nothing, she added within her own mind.

She knew they were probably messing with her, but it was becoming a burning question. She really wanted to know what it was called.

Her mirrored perspective caught the Refined behind her breakout in a broad grin.

Tala narrowed her eyes but didn’t turn around. I knew that they were messing with me.

-That’s likely.-

No matter. Mistress Suile would know.

The woman was back near the entrance, reading a large slab in a dead language. Two balls of dichotomous fire floating beside her, one over each shoulder.

The fire was dichotomous because it was at once blindingly white, and dim enough to look at without damaging even mundane eyes. Tala felt like the blinking brilliance had to do with something deeper than luminescence, color, or intensity. It was nice and warm, cutting the winter chill from the air. Though, to be fair none of them were in danger of becoming too cold, not with the relatively mild winter they’d been having so far.

Regardless, theorizing about the woman’s magic was not why Tala had sought her out.

The writing being in a dead language said a lot about the cell.

This was one of the cells that had been around for a long time. That meant they’d put in the extra effort to keep it sealed even longer than usual before the first required repair.

Obviously, many things would contribute to when a cell degraded, otherwise there would be regularity to their need of maintenance, but bad luck—or some other confluence—had made this waning an insanely concentrated time for such.

But that was also beside the point. The Paragon who’d come with them for this cell was examining the script, and Tala had a question.

“Pardon me, Mistress Suile, but do you know what this creature would be called?”

“Hmm?” She glanced toward Tala. “I’m sorry, I haven’t laid eyes on the depictions yet, so I don’t know. I’ll get to them once I’m done, here.”

Tala felt her face twitch. It was just an… unfortunate choice of words, Tala. Don’t get frustrated.

Tala took a deep breath, calming herself for a moment.

Finally, she nodded and asked, “Is there anything in the text on what it might be called?”

Mistress Suile grunted, not looking away from the ancient words. “As a species? Not really. Individually, it is referred to as the ‘Seer of Dreams,’ but that could be bit of an oddity in the translation.” She took on a bit of a lecturing tone. “You see, the culture that this language came from seemed to think that dreams were a look into the infinite. Additionally, they saw all those who had eyes as those who could see. Thus, their word for ‘seer’ is the same as for ‘one with eyes.’ Together, that means an equally valid translation could be ‘one with infinite eyes.’ It’s really rather fascinating.”

Tala sighed. “Thank you any… ways.” She narrowed her eyes as she trailed off, seeing the side of the woman’s mouth twitch. “Wait a moment.”

Mistress Suile grinned, then tried to suppress the smile, failing utterly. Finally, she shook her head. “I’m sorry; I ruined it.”

Tala threw up her hands. “What is the thing’s name, then?”

“I truly don’t know, but your unit asked me to put forward a silly one, if you asked me.”

“How, under the stars, did they know I would ask?”

Mistress Suile shrugged. “It’s an incredibly odd beastie. It’s quite reasonable for anyone to ask about what it’s called. It is referred to as Lord of Dreams, Seer of Dreams, and things like that. I just made up the dual translation bit.”

“So, it has magic relating to dreams?”

“It seems likely, though it might be more closely understood as drawing power and sovereignty from dreams. Though, that is us imposing humanoid notions on beasts. Beast-gods don’t really function as humans or arcanes do. Also, all of this is just from what I can tell so far, and the translation is a bit slow.”

Tala shrugged. “We’ve only been here, what? Two hours?”

-Just under, but yes.-

“Yeah, two hours or so. We have time.” Tala smiled at the Paragon.

Mistress Suile smiled in return. “Quite true. I’m not in a hurry. We’ll do this right and keep this god-beast contained.”

Tala hesitated at that. It was the second time that Paragon had mentioned those things. “So, it is a god-beast?”

“It seems very likely. From what I have gathered, as it drew power and authority from dreams, it was drawn toward human and arcane civilization, greater concentrations of dreaming beings being too tempting a target to ignore.”

“I see.” She winced, and Mistress Suile smiled. “I mean, I can understand that.”

“As it stands now, I don’t have any actionable information, so I’ll get back to work.”

“Certainly.” Tala bowed. “Thank you for your time.”

As frustrated as she was, thinking about them playing with her over the name, she felt herself smiling just a bit at their antics.

I am glad to be a part of this unit. Her smile grew as she went back to her own investigations.

* * *

Mistress Suile was rather faster than some of their previous Paragons had been, finishing her analysis and consultations in just two days.

They still didn’t have a name for the beast’s kind, but the Paragon confirmed that it was regarded as the Beast-god of Dreams.

Apparently, the creature had dominion over all dreams within its domain, but in order to achieve that, it was asleep and would never reawaken.

In order to interact with the waking world, it could manifest creatures of nightmare, specifically the creatures depicted in the wall-paintings.

No one had recorded what the beast-god itself looked like.

The beasts—mere figments of a god-beast or not—were deadly, easily rivaling Refined in power. Though, that was Mistress Suile’s interpretation, not what had been recorded.

Each eye was the origin of a magic attack, each of a differing type. What made them truly dangerous was that all the eyes could fire at once, but at very minimal power expenditure. Once the attacks landed, they acted as defense testers. Whichever magic seemed to have the best effect was immediately amplified to slam into their target, the ineffective magics cutting off to allow for the powerful strike.

Thus, anyone they assaulted was peppered with more than a dozen lesser attacks before a vastly stronger version of the attack they were weakest to would follow.

The attacks were too quick to dodge once they were activated. Obviously, if a Refined could anticipate where the beast would be aimed, she could dodge that, but that wasn’t the same.

Sadly, things like darkness or fog were useless. Unless it was a real, tangible barrier, the ocular attacks could penetrate with ease, and the main eye of each creature was endowed with some sort of vision that could see through illusion or other obscurement.

Though, apparently the description had been something along the lines of: ‘Since the beasts are imposed upon reality, only that which is most real can defeat their sight. Nothing temporary will blind or inhibit them.’

The creatures’ fangs carried a venom that acted upon any sapient mind, fundamentally rewiring it to put the affected creature into a permanent sleep within seconds of the injection.

To add insult to injury, once the being was asleep, their body could be used as an additional puppet.

And the final important piece of information was that, because all of the creatures were projections of one being, they all shared one mind, one purpose. Blessedly, in this case that seemed to mean that they were relatively connected autonomous beings, rather than acting as limbs on one beast.

The individuals could be killed, but that would immediately let all the others know where the successful attacker was.

All told, it was an incredibly powerful and annoying defensive swarm.

On the positive side, there should only be a few to start with, and the unit didn’t have to keep anything contained.

The god-beast wouldn’t be leaving; it’s manifestations couldn’t move its body, and the very nature of its power kept it in place.

In the case of a manifestation escaping, it would be destroyed when the cell was resealed.

Thus, the only thing that the unit had to do was keep as many of the things from bothering Mistress Suile as possible.

That sounds easy enough that things are sure to go sideways.

-Yeah, that’s all but guaranteed.-

Once Tala had explained the situation, Terry had insisted on joining her, and the unit had been on board, given his abilities.

The entrance to this cell had been sealed into one of the eyes of one of the myriad wall-carvings, and they all gathered around for Mistress Suile to begin the process.

Of course, it’s there.

The passage began to open, and Master Clevnis spoke into the momentary silence, “Eyes up everyone.”

There was a round of chuckling.

“But seriously, we follow the plan. Remember to keep your sight lines clear.”

More laughter.

“Don’t let your eyes be bigger than our stomach. These will be hard beasts to swallow.”

Master Girt added, “Obliterate them with extreme prejudice. If we let them trade us an eye for an eye in there, we’re going to come up short in a bad way.”

Mistress Cerna shook her head, “Stay focused, stay sharp, this whole thing will be done in the blink of an eye.”

Master Limmestar grinned, “Don’t forget that they’re going to be hard to surprise, those things have eyes in the back of their heads.”

Mistress Vanga even got in on the fun. “Even though they might be sapient, I doubt there will be peace. We just won’t be able to see eye to eye.”

Tala was chuckling along with everyone, and she was the last to speak, “I see what you all are doing. Well, this mission is more than meets the eye. Let’s be blindingly brilliant at our jobs.”

-Not a bad effort.-

Hush, you. I’m trying.

But it was time to be prepared.

Her iron roiled into existence, covering her from head to toe, her white steel encasing that all under her scale mail hauberk.

She relaxed a small part of her mind, and her through-spike activated, the illusion smiling at her near-subconscious direction.

The resonance building within her enhanced all of her scripts, making her rise up on the balls of her feet in anticipation.

Connection established?

-Connection established.-

Because these enemies could hear, and react, the unit had decided to have Alat coordinate through the Archive on this mission.

With no further waiting, the entrance was fully open, and the unit stepped through, immediately coming out into a wide, stone-worked plaza.

That was a shame, because if this was one of the tunnel-entrance cells, they’d have had a convenient choke point.

Sadly, that just wasn’t meant to be.

Instead, the entrance was set into a decorative wall of what might have once been a central governance building.

The remainder of the building was lost to time, only this one wall being included in the prison cell.

The open space before them seemed to have been designed for a large number of people to gather to hear from their leaders, and the square was surrounded by low buildings of well cut stone.

The buildings were clearly ancient, though they were less abused by time than Tala might have expected. She supposed that was due to a lack of people physically interacting with them much.

-And no animals or plants-

Tala noticed it then.

There were no plants that she could see anywhere.

Nothing growing up through the paving stones, no gardens, no moss, nothing.

There were even open patches of dirt that Tala now suspected had been gardens, but nothing living remained.

There was nothing in the cell but cut stone and dust.

Master Clevnis took command of the combat situation, drawing all of their attention back to the task at hand. His words came into Tala’s mind, facilitated via Alat on the Refineds’ own connections to the Archive. “Plan Herding Cats.”

The unit always had funny plan names when they let Master Limmestare choose them. Even so, the names were memorable and usually pretty explicative.

Plan Herding Cats was exactly what it sounded like. They would be doing their utmost to herd the manifestations into a kill box, set up by Master Girt and manned by Master Limmestare and Tala.

-I don’t know if I should be disturbed that you think a plan called ‘herding cats’ obviously includes a kill box.-

Hey, this is a plan to deal with enemies, so…

-Excuses, excuses.-

Master Clevnis had wanted to be a part of the kill box team, but there was actually some legitimacy to the silly name he’d given to the creatures. If one of their eye stalks was cut off, they would regrow twice as many as were severed, each new one coming with new magics to increase the effectiveness and breadth of the creature’s arsenal.

Thus, Master Clevnis was on harassment and herding duty rather than tasked with finishing them off.

Terry had also indicated that he wanted to be on herding duty.

Honestly, Tala almost pitied the monsters.

They quickly assessed the terrain, and Master Girt pulled up stone, creating ramps away from them that would have sheer drops on the other side.

He left open a single, relatively level path, then covered the ground through that path with hardened stone spikes.

That—between the defensive positions on either side—was their kill box.

Tala and Master Limmestare took up positions on either side of that passage, sheltered behind machicolations that Master Girt had been sure to include in the defenses.

The others took up their positions, their job simply to keep the enemy from breaching the walls and incentivize them to head toward the gap.

The unit would change plans if the beasts were more intelligent or coordinated than they had planned for, but it was as good a strategy as any to start.

As the first of the odd, purple-skinned beasts came into view, Tala felt her nervousness fade and her focus sharpen.

This was her role. This was her unit. She knew what she had to do.

Alright. Let’s do this.