Millennial Mage

Mistress Holly sank deeper into her trance, funneling her power and self through the modifying scripts as she delved the Archive, looking for any hint of—

She jerked back to full wakefulness, feeling the surging authority from the south.

So, the old elk had detected them after all. She sighed, slowly shaking her head. “I told them he would.”

If this were simply yet another foolish assault on the Leshkin spawning trees, she would have let the idiots who ignored her die, but not only were those currently in danger not those who had made the choice, but the stakes were far higher than ever before.

The Leshkin had been joined by the Black Legion, the Mezzanni finally coming back in line with their cousins in purpose, even if not by blood, their spawning trees reverting—at least in part—to the factories that they began as.

They were cut from the same cloth, built upon the same loops and whirls of reality, twisted toward the same goals.

Rust and slag, the Leshkin would never have been able to exist without the framework the Black Legion laid down before them, not that such was very useful information into the current crisis.

Didn’t actually think they’d kept the factories. Mistress Holly huffed. She’d always assumed that the arcanes had destroyed those, then built their own structures based on what they learned. I suppose I can still be wrong on occasion.

Still, the two had always had great similarities, that was plain for anyone to see.

There was a reason that no ending tree was allowed to seed within reach of the southern forest—not within the bounds of a city or even in sheltered grow-caves beneath the surface—such was anathema to the Forest Spirit, anathema to the Leshkin, anathema to the Black Legion… even if each for a different reason.

The Forest Spirit disdained the trees and their magic as they were a refutation of his authority, a sustainment through radical change. He had gained greatly when humanity had left the age of Heroes, and moved away from the trees as a source of power and security.

Mistress Holly had to admit that she’d had a hand in that transition of eras, and regretted at least that knock-on effect, even if in most other ways the move to inscriptions had been a blessing and boon to humanity.

The Leshkin, in contrast, hated the magic of the trees as something that could actually threaten their cycle of existence, which they were engendered to preserve at all costs.

She considered it. While this might have been why the Leshkin hated Mistress Tala so passionately, she doubted that such was all there was to the enmity.

As to the Black Legion? They knew endingtrees to be the herald of their end, a catalyst for their destruction, provided via boon before they’d even been conceived of, a ‘last line of defense’ for humanity against all future adversity.

Mistress Holly chuckled. Humanity had relied—or fallen back—on that ‘last line’ more times than even she could easily recall or count.

But she was far off in the woods.

The Forest Spirit’s power was rising, and there was no signal of success. Their gambit had failed, and their best and brightest—at least in a combat sense—were on the line.

The Inscriptionist sighed.

This wouldn’t push her over the line, but it was certainly flirting with it.

Regardless, she wouldn’t let her favorite test sub—

Mistress Holly cleared her throat, shifting her mindset.

She wouldn’t let such a promising young one fall to the old cervid.

Her power surged outward, tapping into the inscriptions of those Refined or more advanced.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care for the large number of Fused on the field, but most hadn’t done more than encounter her and her work tangentially, and she could not claim universal sway over all inscriptions.

No. Not at all.

Doing so would be madness of the highest order…espeically because doing so would be flawed. She had absolutely no claim on the inscriptions of the arcane, and such a glaring flaw in her claim would make it anemic at best.

Like a single tiny forest in a massive world, and who in their right mind would want that?

She growled, diverting her thoughts away from what she couldn’t do and laying her hand, her will, on that which she could do.

Every inscription she had a hand in designing or inscribing was hers without need of twisted logic or taking a step on shaky footing.

It was obvious where she would place her seeds of power, where she would lay the groundwork for countering the Forest Spirits.

Cognitive enhancement scripts were all but unheard of outside of her schemas, and they were the keystone to true power.

After all, Mistress Holly was not a combat Mage.

She poured herself into the working, leaving nothing behind in the all-but-instataneous counter.

The older woman gasped and staggered, catching herself on the table.

“There.” She panted a few times. “Now you can face the threat. Fighting it is up to you.”

* * *

Tala stiffened as the authority that underpinned this entire region suddenly began to roil, going from a placid, almost mirror smooth surface to the tumult of the sea during a hurricane.

A lance of authority, will, and power shot up through the center of the Leshkin-spawning-tree -turned-factory before exploding outward and catching everyone and everything within it.

The entire battle just stopped as every combatant was forced into utter stillness.

She felt as if she should have been locked within her own mind, her neurology unable to move on, her thoughts unable to progress, but instead, her magics continued forward, her mental enhancement no longer as effective, but since they were directly targeted at speeding up and smoothing the progression of thought, those workings moved onward despite the heavy drag on their footing.

Everything else was frozen in a single moment that seemed to continue without end. Tala was even able to perceive several massive slugs of mundane metal stopped mid-flight on their arch from siege engines to trees.

The power wasn’t magic, but neither was it reality. It was authority in its purest form as existence bowed to the edict of one who commanded the cessation of change.

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In that frozen moment, Tala was faced with a true oddity.

This… this reminds me of Eskau De-arg.

But where the little Eskau sought the balance and perfection of a moment in order to set up a better future, this was a moment declared perfect and drawn out overtop other potential futures.

Alat, can you get a message to him? If nothing else, this might help him in his search.

-Done. Soul-bonds aren’t being shielded or suppressed, so our link to the Archive through Bandfast is intact. Thankfully, none of our repeaters are through this area. He’ll have the message within five minutes, likely much sooner.-

Thank you. Continue to give him everything we can from this. Who knows if it could help.

-Understood.-

In the distance, Tala felt the great elk-like creature coming at a pace that made a walk look fast.

This was so unlike the time that she’d been experimenting with Leshkin and the Sovereign had come to investigate existence’s objections.

This was far more visceral than that.

In one sense, Tala half-way expected to see the great trees bending and swaying out of the way for the Sovereign’s approach, but that isn’t how he worked.

Instead, he simply moved in a straight line, nothing affected by his passing in the slightest.

No… that’s not right at all. Tala tried to frown but continued to feel herself locked in place.

Still, her perception was not controlled entirely, and what she saw was utterly clear and made no sense.

Everything the great stag passed through was more solid and locked in place than that which it didn’t interact with.

It honestly reminded Tala of her existence shield in a way but something about it made it clear that that similarity was just in appearance not actuality.

The Forest Spirit did not have powers of existence, but its authority was a rather potent stand-in for the void that it lacked, its magic not in need of any crutch or assistance, and the reality of the region, and those under its sway filling that portion of things.

The proclamation that had frozen the battlefield was one of absolute forbiddence.

No, the planned destruction would not happen.

No, those within its care would not be altered.

No, the world would not change.

No.

Tala railed against that edict, but for the first time in what felt like years, she found herself entirely unable to make headway.

Even in the presence of the united Mountain King, Tala had felt like she could have stood her ground and at least resisted if they had tried to impose their will upon her.

In this case, though, Tala found that she had already put herself under the Forest Spirit’s authority.

All at once, she felt as if a veil were pulled back, and she knew.

The Refining process had come from much, much research, but pieces had come from a boon, possibly more than one.

She knew that one of the Sovereign’s involved had been the Forest Spirit.

Of course, it would have been him.

What was one of the key benefits of the Refining process? An end to aging. An end to physical change. A forced and enforced stagnation of the human body.

Every Archon of Refined advancement or above had taken a solid step into the Forest Spirit’s domain of their own volition. Even those who had Reforged built upon the foundation of continuance as demonstrated for them by Refining.

It was no wonder they’d never been able to drive the great elk out of the forest, or even overcome it enough to remove the Leshkin threat.

Why didn’t anyone warn me?

-I’m not entirely sure anyone knew.-

Shouldn’t Mistress Holly have known at the very least?

-Maybe? We can ask her next time we see her.-

Yeah, we’ll do that.

Neither of them acknowledged the possibility that they wouldn’t have that chance.

To be fair, for them to be slain would be a violation of the Forest Spirit’s authority, so that wasn’t likely. Even so, they knew that Archons in the past had been removed if they opposed the Forest Spirit too extremely.

Alat continued to send all their senses, all their theories, and all their conjectures to the Archive where it would be seen by Mistress Ingrit for distribution, and where it was actively being piped toward Eskau De-arg, if by a round-about way.

Tala had time to realize that—if she were truly stagnant—how could she think at all? Beyond that, the Refined didn’t actually stagnate. True, their physical form was kept from aging, but they could gain scars, alter their physique, have children, and make other physical alterations.

So, was the Forest Spirit really stagnation as a concept?

The idea became laughable with all that she now believed that she understood.

No, of course not. That was the accusation leveled at him by those who opposed his authority.

He might be more accurately called a lack of physical degradation. This forest was a perfect example of that. For any one tree to grow larger, others would be deprived, thus upsetting the balance. Even so, they didn’t freeze, or die and simply remain as husks of themselves.

Tala tried to frown but couldn’t.

Animals still died within the southern forest, humans could kill Leshkin and vice versa, and the Forest Spirit didn’t object.

It was only an irreversible move away from the status quo that he prevented, that rubbed counter to his authority.

So, not stagnation.

Continuance?

A ripple from where their authorities met told her that she was at least closer with that guess than with stagnation, as made sense given all the negative connotations—and even some denotations—with stagnation.

The elk finally finished his glacial approach, coming to a stop before Tala.

He regarded her with clear exasperation. You, again?

Tala thought it was important that she could now hear his conveyances as two words, but it really wasn’t the time.

Tala didn’t respond, but the Forest Spirit didn’t mind. After all, he wasn’t letting her, her silence forced to continue.

Offspring, living.There was irritation in that. He both wished his offspring to not continue, while also being conceptually unable to desire or accomplish that?

It was far more than she’d understood before, but she still didn’t actually understand. Regardless, again, she was not permitted to respond.

Forest, unchanging. This was his domain, and it would not be allowed to shift trajectories. Sapience, flawed.

Magic, flawed.

End, both.

That… That wasn’t good. It seemed like it agreed with the Black Legion, at least to some level.

Tala felt a deep, resonant building of authority, and momentarily feared that even her ability to think would be paused, her mental processes locked in a perpetual ‘continuance’ of their current state.

But then, everything changed.

The Forest Spirit’s eyes widened as his head turned so that he could gaze directly southward… maybe a bit to the west. Balance, perfected?

Tala was finally able to frown. She and Alat quickly did some calculations, and they realized that the swelling power came from the region of Croi. What—?

The rising power and authority hit a crescendo, and the world jerked.

The Forest Spirit was gone, his authority in the near area cracked—but not shattered—not overthrown entirely.

Still, the allied forces were free of his will for the moment, and his physical form was nowhere to be seen.

Yet, that isn’t what held Tala’s attention.

Her face was tilting downward toward her now upraised hand, her eyes—even through her faceplate—locked on a note she hadn’t been holding before, containing just four sentences.

‘There is little time for you. Retreat, find a better path forward. Rise to your task, your purpose.’

Tala felt tears welling up in her eyes even as she knew Alat was sending commands for their forces to pull back and get out of the Forest Spirit’s territory.

The authority and power that had surged so powerfully in the south was already all but gone, its moment come and gone.

Even so, her eyes were locked on the final, one word sentence.

Her threefold perspective saw the Black Legion automata in the area were simply gone from the least legionnaire all the way up to the senior commanders, as were most of the allied forces, though Alat had already verified that those were simply somehow moved to within the Pack forest behind them.

Everyone of Refined or higher was still in place—be they gated or arcane—but they were capable of faster retreat without the Fused and Mature.

No one seemed inclined to attack the tree again and for good reason. Doing so would put them in direct opposition to the Forest Spirit’s authority once more and possibly undo whatever had just happened.

Tala found it difficult to truly think that through, to truly care.

Alat scooped up Tala’s fortifications, willing them to disconnect before being drawn into their place within her expanded space. Her body then began to move, she and the others of Reforged or Revered advancement forming the rearguard, their power interlinking within her authority to keep any return of the Forest Spirit in check.

Tala’s consciousness was still struggling with the final word, written in an all-too-familiar hand.

Eskau De-arg had done something and gotten her this note.

Whatever it was, she might never know, because the last word was simply, ‘Goodbye.’