Soul Bound

1            Soul Bound

1.1          Finding her Feet

1.1.5        An Inscrutable Mastermind

1.1.5.9      Claustrophobia

Back at CoThEx, Flavio drew his wand and moved it in a precise pattern, leaving a trail in the air behind it, like from a sparkler on a dark night. Inspecting it and satisfied with the shape, he moved next to it and began to speak. His amplified voice echoed through the garden and rattled the windows:

“Flavio here again. Anyone available, I invite you to join me down in Triple. A new type of magic is about to be demonstrated. Bring your hats.”

Flavio introduced them to the first mage to appear. Coleus was in his late teens, full of enthusiasm, and in the process of shoving a tall barber pole striped top hat on his head. The widest stripes were green and pink, but the white stripe was also fairly wide.

Bungo: “If the first demo goes well, it would be useful to have a good quantity of coke, lime and salt. Do you keep any, down in Triple?”

Flavio, shook his head: “No, we keep that sort of stuff over at Sheds. Coleus, be a good journeyman, nip over there, and arrange for a couple of wheelbarrows of each to be brought down to us.” he turned to Bungo “Do you think that will be enough?”

Bungo nodded and Coleus set off at a run.

Alderney asked: “What’s with the hats?”

Flavio: “The traditional method of categorising mages just by their strongest two elemental attunements is too limiting for our purposes. When you’re trying to cast poly-elemental spells or assemble formations, it speeds things up if you can tell at a glance who can do what. These hats also double as protective headgear. Efficient.”

Alderney looked curious: “But why swirly stripes rather than horizontal ones?”

Flavio grinned: “That was my idea. There were too many arguments over which element was most important and should have its stripe at the top. I do like your questions. So many people just accept things without really thinking them through all the way to the end.”

By now quite a crowd had gathered. Flavio dispersed the remains of his sound amplification spell, and led the way along the path. The route grew darker as they passed under a tunnel of trees which became a tunnel of rock leading into an underground cavern about 2 kilometers in diameter and maybe half a kilometer tall. The air was cool, and smelled of ozone. Kafana felt her ears pop, like she was in a descending airplane. Everything was a bit muffled. Not exactly oppressive, but she did wonder just how deep underground they really were, and tried not to think of all the rock above them, and how trapped they’d be if the route out got blocked.

Alderney looked at Flavio, appearing a little sick: “We don’t have hats. Is one of those questions I should have asked ‘Protective headgear against what?’?”

Kafana asked quietly: {Alderney, you ok? We don’t have to do this.}

Alderney: {It’s just a touch of claustrophobia. I’ll be fine once I start crafting. If I concentrate hard enough on making stuff, I can use it to blot out everything else.}

Kafana went over to Alderney and gave her a hug:

“Here, take Harlequin’s +5 pendant, eat a bit of Columbina’s buff food, and give me the rest of it. I’ll sing you a few buffs, and then you head over to the workshop area over there and get on with anything on your ‘to make’ list that doesn’t require rubber, runes or cold chemicals. We’ll spare you Wellington as soon as we can, to add runes, and get you the rubber and cold stuff when we’re able.”

Alderney gave a little nod, handed several labelled platters over to Kafana, and ate a slice of moist carrot cake, licking her fingers. Wellington snagged Flavio for a minute and all three of them ate a slice as well. Kafana kept her +3 ring on, and loaned the other to Flavio. Then she started to sing. She wanted these to be a long lasting buff, that she could maintain for a couple of hours.

The first she sang was her buff to skill levels. All the practice she’d been getting at it seemed to have helped. She took the time to use holy inscription to place the runes on each of them by hand, similar to the way Flavio had used his wand, but by using her Cov’s pendant instead. Then she sang the song all the way through, three times, once aimed at herself, the second aimed at Alderney, the third aimed at all of them, trying to pump in as much mana to the effect as she safely could. It cost her 5000 mana each time, and 15 blue potions all together, but she got a +8 effect with a 30 minute duration. By her calculations, the buffs from the food, ring and song should put Alderney on par with a High Master crafter. Which was fair enough; in arlife, Alderney would count as at least that skilled, if not a Grandmaster.

Next she sang a good working speed buff targeted just at Alderney, and was pleased to see it produce bonuses to DEX and INT too. She wondered what her own effective casting level was right now? She looked at Alderney. There appeared to be an electric blue light, crackling from her eyes. Yikes! Was that a good thing?

Kafana: “Alderney, we’re done. Get in your headspace. Go craft for all you’re worth!” she rotated Alderney by the shoulder to orient her towards the forges, and pointed at them, dramatically. Alderney streaked off, no further prompting needed.

Bulgaria whispered softly: “Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war.” then, more loudly, “I think I better go follow her.”

Flavio was back with Bungo, organising the mages into teams. Since there were enough people, they’d decided to skip using physical pipes entirely, and do everything with glowing lines marking out routes, and magic to keep the fluids flowing as desired. One mage had proposed moving out to the harbour and using full scale tornadoes to produce the pressure changes, but was vetoed by Wellington, who pointed out that he didn’t have a way to draw runic diagrams that large, yet. The proposal was tabled for further discussion another day by the mega-scale group.

Tomsk: {I think I’ve worked out why the Mage Tower uses a strict categorisation system that prevents mages from different areas working together.}

Wellington: {Because that’s the only way to avoid the planet being destroyed?}

Tomsk: {Yep.}

Once they’d got the mage formations set up, Bungo had Kafana produce the Dewars, and carefully put a sample of each pure substance into different metal spheres, designed by Flavio to resist pressure. He labelled each one with a chemical diagram, and asked Wellington to set up a rune diagram that used the Law of Contagion to guide fluids similar to the one in a sphere to pass along a route the sphere was next to.

Kafana sang a group buff for all the teams, and then practiced mana regen meditation humming while walking over to Alderney to renew her buffs.

Bulgaria was hamming it up as her minion, even going so far as affecting a hunched back and a lisp. Alderney was addressing him as Igor. The pile of completed items surrounding her was astounding. Kafana could spot a volleyball net, Bungo’s shield, several costumes for children (including what looked like a Ninja uniform), what might be a collapsible hang-glider crossed with a dragon and many items she couldn’t identify. A group of awed looking crafters were heating items in a forge for her, and another pair were busy with molten glass. She was just turning her attention to a man dragging a cart of lumber towards a lathe.

Kafana maintained Alderney’s buffs and, while she was here, sang a supporting one covering the teams assisting her, trying to add luck:

[Skill gained “Luck buff” - increases the chance of critical successes]

That sounded positive. She left some food with Bulgaria to feed to Alderney and trotted back, glad of the practicing Vessel-Kafana had done on singing while being energetic. She maintained the skill buff on herself, Wellington and Flavio. Then she maintained the buffs she’d done on the teams, checked her mana, drank some more potions, and settled down to wait for her next timer alert from system while meditating to regain mana. She was certainly getting a lot of practice! Her stomach felt uncomfortably full. She wasn’t sure she could drink any more potions for a while. It looked like mana regen rate was more important than the initial size of your mana pool, when it came to this sort of prolonged activity. It had been easier when she’d had members of the party playing drums or singing chorus, and mana usage had been spread between them all.

{System, please remind me to send a message to Captain Nafaro, asking about ways of storing up mana.}

The mage groups were starting now, some heating fluids, some pushing them, some moving them from warded chamber to warded chamber. She wished she had a way to see the mana flows.

{System, how do I acquire a mage sight skill, so I can see mana?}

[Skills are acquired through practice. The manual recommends indicating the result you wish to achieve through verbalisation or other means, visualising the process clearly aided by learning, and then repeatedly expending effort through appropriate actions.]

Hmm.

{System, I intend to perceive mana flows through attuning my senses to the resonance between the mana inside me and the mana beyond me. I am now going to expend effort to defocus my eyes and direct my awareness.}

She suited action to words, by screwing her eyes shut, staring at infinity with them still closed, then slowly relaxing and opening them while trying to feel a thrum with her ears, a vibration on her skin, the scent of ozone in her nose.

Nothing.

She tried again.

Nothing.

“Aided by learning”? {Minion, anything in the books I read about what to visualise to perceive mana flows?}

[Nadine, according to my reading of the texts, I’d suggest invoking air and light runes. You have some air attunement, and very good light attunement. If that doesn’t work, try adding in a bit of earth crossed with order.]

She brought up orglife mode and had System sketch two interlaced circles of runes on each eyelid, saving the template under the label “Mage sight”. She tried again, saying “enable mage sight” under her breath as she tried, pushing each of her 8 flavours of mana into the runic diagram.

[Skill acquired “Mage Sight”. Well done, friend.]

Success. {Thank you, System. It was a satisfying puzzle to solve.}