HankTheMoose
patreon
3.2 New Normal
🕑 Added 2024-11-02 13:41:16 +0000 UTCJori dove off of the outcropping over the steep river valley, letting the searing updraft carry her up high over the burning river. Flying was great!
She’d always hated scampering over the sharp rocks that covered the landscape here as a spawnling. It was slow, uncomfortable and dangerous. Ambush predators like fiends liked to hide in cracks to snatch young imps as they passed. By contrast, watching the gray and black landscape pass by underneath her felt indescribably liberating.
Too bad she couldn’t really enjoy it. She was in a race against time.
It was hard to tell time precisely, here in the hells, but she thought it must have been at least a week since she’d set out to find Ed. The pouch was small enough to strap to her back without interfering with her wings, but she knew it was much bigger on the inside. It was like Bernt’s bag, except this one was full of tasty food for the Great Mage. That, and some spicy jerky and wraps for her. The jerky wasn’t really the right kind, but they’d tried. It was good enough.
She banked right to follow the course of the river and found a vast plain stretching out in front of her. In the distance, high walls rose from the black, stony ground—Varadon. The hellfire river terminated there, flowing into the enormous structure and disappearing.
The entire city… wriggled. Jori shuddered in disgust. That was just wrong. This was supposed to be where Varamemnon lived. Maybe those were his limbs. His servants would be in the city, or somewhere nearby. This was where things would become more dangerous. She would need to find out where exactly Ed was, and that meant asking questions.
Jori had never tried to infiltrate a demon city before. She was very sneaky compared to mortals, sure. But would that work here? She had her doubts.
As she approached, though, she noticed something. A piece of the wall, just left of her approach, was missing. A massive web of cracks radiated out from the damaged section and the entire area was covered in rubble. The stub of a gigantic tentacle waved back and forth crazily nearby, healed, but obviously no longer whole.
Behind the hole lay a path of destruction, cut indiscriminately through a combination of stone and oddly organic structures—likely grown from the alien flesh of Varamemnon himself, if Jori didn’t miss her guess.
The imp knew intellectually that this was her home, in a sense. She came from a place like this, and this enormous monster was the sort of thing she herself could transform into one day – assuming that she somehow lost her mind and all sense of good taste along the way, anyway. She would never understand why someone would root themselves into the ground like this. And why all the tentacles? Ick!
Well. At least she knew where to start looking. Now she just had to hope they hadn’t killed him already.
***
“I just can’t figure out what this means for my architecture.” Bernt said, rubbing at his face in frustration. “If I just go ahead with the next investiture as normal, it might not fuse into an augmentation. On the other hand, maybe it will, and my entire mana network will fuse into my body like the perpetual flame did. Or maybe it’ll work perfectly and I’m just overreacting. What am I supposed to do?”
Pollock leaned back in his chair and scratched at his beard, mulling it over.
Bernt had decided to work on his development and growing reputation as a wizard. After all, he’d come up with a way to fix spiritual damage—even if no one was using it, and he’d developed banefire. Unlike his first contribution, the Duergar invasion had made that second spell very relevant to the defense of the realm. Mages all over the country were learning it, and if he’d understood Iriala right, there was a bureaucratic process underway now to add it to the standard repertoire of military pyromancers.
That meant that quite a few mages might recognize his name now, but it wouldn’t translate to anything like influence or power unless he could build on that notoriety. Lots of wizards invented useful spells. Unfortunately, though, most didn’t grow into influential or powerful figures. For Bernt, power had always been part of the goal—a great adventurer had to be powerful. But, it had felt a lot more abstract until now. Now, he needed it. Unfortunately, when he’d tried to work out his next steps, he’d run into a wall almost immediately.
How could he plan for his next investiture if he had no way to predict what would happen? He had an architecture to work from, but no guarantee that it would work. The last material – a magical tar produced by firing and distilling Illurian salt-water cedar – didn’t feel right anymore. He didn’t need his flames to be more waterproof or to burn hotter. If anything, he should be looking for something more compatible – but what was compatible with a sorcerous investiture? It was intensely frustrating.
In the past, he might have spent weeks or months speculating and trying to work out ways to test his mana network. He might still have to do that, but he’d learned that sometimes, it was better to ask someone with more experience first.
“I don’t think you’re going to accidentally fuse the rest of your mana network.” Pollock finally said. “That was a result of treating your channels with your hellfire derivative, no other part of your mana network was affected, and it’s not as though they’re disconnected from each other. If it were going to spread to your other channels, it would have done so immediately.”
“Alright,” Bernt nodded slowly. “That makes sense. But what if I can’t get the three investitures to fuse?”
Pollock shrugged lightly and smiled, a glint in his eye. “If it doesn’t work, you can just get another normal investiture to make three that can fuse into an augmentation. From there, I suppose you would need to try to expand your sorcerous investiture if you want to become an archwizard.”
Bernt frowned. “Wouldn’t that make all my non-fire spells weaker? I worked out how to cast a few normal cantrips with my right hand a few days ago, but it’s extremely slow, and I have to close off practically all of that part of my mana network to do it. It reduces the amount of mana I can channel.”
“Well, yes, relatively speaking, I suppose.” Pollock conceded. “But think about it! Sorcerers are supposed to grow their mana networks to form new abilities. You wouldn’t need to find materials to infuse into your soul. That might deprive you of the reinforcing effect of a traditional investiture, but you also wouldn’t need to worry about compatibility! Your spirit is naturally going to be compatible with itself. Just consider what that means!”
That… had not occurred to Bernt. He cocked his head to the side. “Wait. You’re saying that I wouldn't get stuck? If I don’t have compatibility issues, then I won’t have to stop growing.”
“Yes. That’s what I’m saying. “ Pollock gave him a pained smile. “Most of us stall like that—I had to stop at five. Reaching magister as a wizard is an achievement—it’s why we actually use the title. Archwizards are very rare. You’d be weaker than a normal archmage or archwizard, and probably a little less flexible. But you’d be completely unique.”
“And it would validate my hellfire derivative as a viable treatment for mana network damage.” Bernt added thoughtfully. “But the best case would still be if I can get the augmentation to form normally, with the sorcerous investiture. It should make it much easier to use, since it would consider the other investitures a part of itself. The spellforms would almost certainly come out a lot cleaner, even if I still have to manipulate the investiture manually like I’m doing now.”
“Maybe,” Pollock allowed. “But I doubt it’ll work.” He rubbed at his face. “I suppose you could improve your chances a bit, maybe. If you can find some kind of bridge-material... something that is inherently related to sorcery somehow. A phoenix feather, or something else that’s very spiritually stable and highly compatible with fire.”
Phoenix feathers were not the sort of thing a no-account Underkeeper—or even your average archmage—could get their hands on. But it was a lot more information than he’d had when he came in. Bernt rose and thanked the wizard for his help.
He’d need to visit Hallan at the library soon. Maybe he’d have more resources about different pyromancer materials. He wished he could go right now, but he needed to get to work. His shift was starting in a half-hour.
***
“There’s not enough food down here! You can’t expect people to behave with no work and on an empty stomach. The count needs to send supplies down or find work to get them out of here and earning some money.”
The middle aged woman had come out of one of the rough, unfinished units in the new “Refugee Quarter”—the massive new neighborhood built by Kustov and Janus in the days before the battle. She was looking at him expectantly, as if she held him personally responsible for the situation here, and expected him to solve it immediately.
“Yes, ma’am, we’re aware of the problem,” Bernt replied as patiently as he could manage. “Our priority is still just keeping everybody out of the cold.”
“Well, tell the count that people down here are hungry! They’re starting to get into fights and steal from the rich folks on the plaza.”
Bernt swallowed down his irritation. He was currently on his way to “look into” exactly such an incident at an address on the plaza, as they called the large square cavern at the center of the new neighborhood. The homes set into the walls of the space were ideal for use as shops and crafting spaces, and many of the city’s crafters—mostly the non-dwarves who didn’t settle in the Crafters’ Quarter—had moved in here.
Not that he was going to actually do anything. They didn’t have the time or the manpower to worry about petty theft. He was just here to offer people a sense of order.
“Yes ma’am, I’ll put it in my report. I’m sure the count will take care of it as soon as he can.”
Bernt hated doing patrols here. The inhabitants were an odd mix of refugees from the Lower District and the Crafters’ District. Rather, they went to great pains not to mix. While they’d all lost their homes, their circumstances were very different overall. Crafters had savings at the bank—money to buy food, to fix up their new quarters and to buy the tools and supplies they needed to get back to work and move on with their lives.
The section of the Lower District that had burned down—the neighborhood near the docks, where Bernt had lived before moving here—wasn’t like that. They were mostly laborers, and not always of the most reputable variety. They’d come down here with nothing to their name, and they had nowhere to go. It was late autumn, and there wasn’t as much paid work to be had as there might have been a month or two earlier. The fields outside the city were bare and river traffic had already slowed.
Now, they’d moved into the peripheral tunnels of the refugee quarter, and the situation was getting worse as people ran out of food. They really would need to do something soon—but that was above Bernt’s pay grade. That was the government’s job, or maybe they’d end up thrusting it on Fiora.
Disentangling himself from the pushy woman, Bernt made his way down the street and did his best to ignore the unfriendly stares of hungry-looking men and women.
Within a minute, he was walking into the large new cavern—nearly half as big as the Undercity Market. Bernt homed in on the address he’d been given and made his way across. It was a large unit, with a brand new wooden door and a sign that read “Fallan’s Fabrics.” He could hear a voice ranting on the other side of the door.
“What were they thinking, letting those filthy dock rats in where people are trying to rebuild their lives?! And now they want to send us Underkeepers to keep the peace. Underkeepers! Where is the City Guard in all this? Bad enough that they let an enemy army overrun half the city. What did the count think was going to happen when they outsourced the defense of the city to sewer workers! I mean, honestly, who does that?”
Taking a deep breath, Bernt knocked. It was going to be a long day.
