Soul Bound

1            Soul Bound

1.1          Finding her Feet

1.1.5        An Inscrutable Mastermind

1.1.5.8      Mephits

He led them out into the garden and along the gravel path, counting turns left and right. Kafana hadn’t thought the garden was this big. The breeze was getting stronger, and indeed snowflakes were now whipping past them. The terrain beside the gravel was now jagged rock covered in ice. She realised that they were on top of a mountain, walking towards another mage tower. Flavio bustled them inside and handed them each a furry coat from pegs by the door. Alderney’s was much too large, and Bungo’s was too small.

Flavio: “Welcome to the cold lab.”

Metal tubes snaked across the room joining together stations with large glass Dewars inside rune diagrams. The largest tubes were more than a meter wide. The smallest was about the width of a finger. Scurrying around the room, chittering to each other, were short bony creatures, with pointed fragile looking wings, very long noses, teeth like icicles and deep set eyes. They appeared to have been rough hewn from a block of ice then animated. Some were more aggressive, and bullied the others, pulling them around by their ears or pinching them if they didn’t follow orders fast enough.

Flavio produced a wand and spoke to the biggest one: “Zclgab, let’s do a run. Put another three on the ninth tube.”

Flavio used his air magic to draw in cold air from outside, and control how fast it moved along each section past the mephits who were trying to cool the pipes. Into each Dewar fell the fraction that had ceased to be gas, while the remainder flowed on down the pipes. Into the very last Dewar there dripped a thimble full of liquid nitrogen.

Flavio displayed the product, proudly.

Kafana asked: “Impressive. What do the mephits get out of doing it?”

Flavio said, off-handedly: “Oh, we use mind magic on them of course. Otherwise they’d kill us all, and probably each other too. But we do feed them well. They’re quite happy. We tell them to be.”

Kafana: {Oh Gods. I am not selling gelato based on slave-labour. Not even if the mephits are evil little buggers who would otherwise be killed to stop them killing us. Nobody deserves enslavement.}

Bungo: {Leave it to me.}

Bungo: “Well done. You’ve shown it can be done in principle. But to address the further questions this now allows us to ask, much larger quantities will be needed. Time to collaborate. If CoThEx can agree to keep us supplied on an ongoing basis, I believe I can show you a far more efficient method. Have you a couple of bits of paper?”

Bungo: {Wellington, can you draw up a binding agreement while I sketch a diagram?}

Wellington: {Yes.}

Flavio produced two notepads, and Bungo used one of them to sketch out heat exchange coils, expansion and compression chambers, and various other items, while consulting with Flavio on the precision possible with different types of magic. Alderney joined in, adding in engineering details. Wellington drew up a rather comprehensive agreement, with penalty clauses for missed delivery dates, quality requirements and so forth. Bulgaria went to have a chat with the smallest mephit with Tomsk, while Kafana went to look over the Dewars.

Kafana: {Alderney, your design for a gelato machine. Could it be modified to optionally make use of the dry ice and liquid oxygen fractions as pre-cooling stages?}

Alderney: {Sure, not a problem.}

Kafana: “Flavio, I can use space magic to stop the contents of these Dewars evaporating during transportation. Shall I store them?”

Flavio nodded to her, distractedly, and she put them in her inventory box. He was talking excitedly with Bungo:

“This is revolutionary. We have to get started at once. But this isn’t the place. We need the Triple.”

Wellington said “Sign here.” and then immediately asked “The Triple?”

Flavio signed, and shoved the unread papers back to Wellington, as he explained “The Triple Ring. It's our most warded facility, other than the Bunker of course. Formally it's called the High Energy Magic Containment Facility. It’s where we do large scale formation magic that might have unfortunate consequences if it went wrong.”

Tomsk raised an eyebrow: “Define ‘unfortunate’.”

Flavio answered, as they made their way back down the gravel path. “Catalytic conversion of flesh into glass. Sea-Sky inversion. Redefining the curvature parameter. I mean theoretically. We’re very careful not to do that sort of thing, really. Basically anything which would get the Grandmasters annoyed at us for destroying the city and everything within 50 kilometers of it. We’re not nearly as dangerous as the guys over at The Zoo.”

“Oh, by the way” he added, “Make sure you don’t step off the path until we’re back in the garden.”

Alderney, who’d nearly gone off to look at an interesting rock, asked “Why? What would happen if I did?”

Flavio: “Well, um, I guess that depends. How good are you at travelling through mountains in winter? Once you step off, you can’t step back on again.”

They stayed on the path.

Kafana: {Do we really hate Suor Isabella enough to help her end up married to this guy?}

Bulgaria: {Maybe there’s more to him than is apparent. The mephit I spoke to said Flavio risked his life to save them and the only mind magic he’d used on them was to teach them the language. He taught them how to appear cruel, but Zclgab isn’t the chief, just the best actor. No, Flavio is trying very hard to give an impression of being not interested in practicalities or kindness, but I don’t think we’re the target audience. I wonder who he is trying to fool, and what he’s afraid of?}

Tomsk: {Now I think about it, “May I kill you?” Nobody is oblivious enough to start a conversation that way.}

Alderney: {Did you see the diagrams on the wall of his room. Beautiful engineering. Except the weapons. They all had subtle flaws which would make them useless.}

Wellington: {I’ll write him a note.}

Wellington scribbled a note on his pad:

Flavio, I have an Athame that prevents mind magic being used on me. If there’s a location at Triple which would interfere with people trying to snoop on conversations, please arrange to give me a tour of it. I especially liked how unexpectedly bad your siege ballista is. Bungo meant it when he said we like peace. We can help you.

and then passed it back to Flavio and asked Flavio to check his calculation. Flavio looked at it, expressionlessly, nodded once, and nothing more was said for the rest of the trip back.

[You discovered a new milestones in the Lovebirds quest chain.]

[Quest gained: “Learn Flavio’s story” - Find out more about the past events in Flavio's life. Difficulty rank F]