akasoindustries
patreon
174 - Chipping Away
🕑 Added 2021-10-28 17:04:21 +0000 UTCGrasping in the recesses of her mind, trying to grab for the right gesture, she found nothing.
Nothing, and yet everything.
Zelsys emptied her mind, allowing her gaze to wander as she calmed herself and slipped into a far slower than usual mode of engine breathing.
Her first prod at the seal was simple, as she mustered a battering ram of willful intent and smashed it against the bulwark wordlessly invoking her authority over the sect the same way she had done when commanding the perception ward to lower.
One seal on the very outer edge flashed a blinding white and turned to dust.
One.
Again.
Another command.
Another seal burned up, yet beneath it sat even more. The door and its surroundings weren’t just covered in sealing talismans, but in multiple layers of them. Hundreds, perhaps thousands.
Not willing to give up just yet, Zelsys tried again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
One by one she chipped away, not even trying to open the door anymore, but prodding and probing to see just how many layers there were. Considering the way the seals on top overlaid those underneath, she estimated there to be three layers in total.
It was clear she wouldn’t get through to the other side any time soon at this rate, and had she not been short on time already, she might’ve considered a more patient approach. That is not to say she would’ve employed it even then, but she would’ve considered it.
Instead, she thought on the tenets of the Black Horse Family, and therein found what she was certain to be the answer. It only seemed obvious that their own methods of relentless, overwhelming assault would work to open a seal that closed off what was obviously an important room in the sect. Zel was almost certain that beyond the door waited either some secret library, or a treasury, or the sect leader’s chambers - she also knew that those three very well could be the same room or entire wing of the building.
So it was that Zelsys took to expelling progressively more and more Fog with each command impulse, progressively ramping up the amount in an effort to estimate the correlation between her effort and the number of seals destroyed. After dozens of attempts and over at least two-hundred seals destroyed by her estimate - making for an altogether small amount of progress - Zelsys had come to a conclusion.
There was no direct correlation, unsurprisingly so. Among these myriad seals there were many distinct types distinguishable even at a glance.
Size, proportion, complexity, even the overall style and handwriting differed greatly, with those closer to the center growing more elaborate and, for lack of a better term, cleaner.
As Zel took a moment to gather her bearings and try to plot a path of attack other than “just hammer at it until it gives”, Zef came up from behind and offered to help, citing that, “Let me take a look. I know some basic seal-breaking methods, but first...”
Leaning in a bit she opened her other eye, and its sole burning point of light erratically jumped around as it looked at every-which spot of the great conglomerate seal. Zef nodded, reassuring her counterpart that, “Well, at least it’s pretty clear these aren’t meant to keep something in. I’d bet you could just open the door and rip the seals open if you were somehow on the inside, even the big central one is just an oversized magical “stay out” sign.”
She then, without asking, reached into Zel’s back holster, retrieving the Tablet and from its storage taking a fabric pouch. It was obviously just a single strip of olive-green cotton stitched into the shape, and from it the blonde pulled a stick of softly glittering chalk. With long, smooth, unnervingly precise strokes, she drew a large double-layered semicircle around the door, then began filling in the gap with runes that… Almost looked like letters.
“Just a question of whether these seals will respond to me…” added the markswoman as she worked, intermittently pulling away and opening her left eye, correcting the odd symbol as she went.
Though perfectly content with observing, not to mention the offer of aid, Zelsys felt that Zef’s knowledge of such an arcane thing - rudimentary though it was - contradicted with the fact that the blonde, up until recently, could not channel the arcane arts under her own power.
So, she just asked about it after she caught her breath: “Why do you know that? The seal-breaking thing, I mean.”
She continued, adding another statement of whose correctness she wasn’t even a bit certain: “Forcibly breaking a seal doubtlessly demands a good bit of magic no matter what, and as far as I’m aware you had no way to generate your own until I taught you.”
“...You’re right in that it demands a power source, yes,” Zef nodded, now halfway through filling in the glyph semicircle. “Sometimes we’d get Fog-breathers to fill up a physical container or a Essentia Storage bottle like the one Makhus uses for Rubedo, but a Fog Can was usually enough. Hell, I used to know a quite powerful wizard who switched entirely to using those to power his spells when his lungs got screwed up.”
“I’m sorry, Fog what?” Zel asked, utterly flabbergasted. Nowhere in her memory could she find anything remotely pertaining to something called a “Fog Can”.
Zef stopped at the three-quarters point, looking up at Zel with a look bordering between surprise and actual shock, “Wait, you don’t know about Fogging Canisters? That… Explains quite a bit, now that I think of it. Remember the mask I had around my neck when we first met? The can attached to it was a Fogging Canister. I’d actually spent the last of it fending off that thrice-damned bear the first time it showed up.”
“They uh… Basically allow normal people to use a sort of Fog-breathing, I think it’s something to do with the filters exciting the essentia in the air a little bit so that by the time it gets into your lungs it’s already partially broken down and your lungs just finish the job. I’d ask Makhus about it, he used to recycle spent cans for good filters to make new ones.”
