Magic is Programming

Esmorana stood with her eyes closed, her eyebrows furrowed and tense with focused concentration. Her dress and long hair blew in a wind that did not touch her surroundings, and she slowly moved her hands in a circle around each other in front of her, barely aware of the physicality of the gestures she was using to aid her visualization. A continuous rumble came faintly from far away, but she paid it no mind. Her attention was on the winds she was directing, miles distant, blowing the frightening scent of a terror tyrant to precisely where it was needed, indirectly guiding the great stampede she had set in motion.

It was easier now that all the stampeding creatures were gathered in a single horde, and she had dropped the dome of muffling around her targets when the stampede reached it, but manipulating air in so many places across such a large area to gather that horde in the first place had been tiring. Much of her reserves were spent, but the mission was not complete, and she was determined to see it through.

A small stone attached to her waist buzzed twice. A few seconds passed without reaction, then the shorter woman beside her gave her a hard slap on the shoulder. "Hey, Es! The signal! Double buzz."

"Huh?" Esmorana blinked. "Oh, right." She concentrated, and slowly widened the circling of her hands, raising her hands higher bit by bit at the same time, until with a final flourish she stretched her arms wide and high above her head. As her hands moved, great currents of wind across a miles-wide section of Wilds blew quietly upwards, laden with a terrible stench that was infused with mana of its own, and carried that scent high into the sky, to heights that only birds and other flying creatures would ever reach. Once there, the winds split and blew outwards, dispersing the stench and allowing it to begin dissipating.

She breathed in deeply, then let out a long, slow sigh, as she relaxed and lowered her arms to her sides. "Phew. It is done."

The man in front of her idly flipped a dagger in his hands, and spoke gruffly. "And you're certain they won't trace it to us?"

Esmorana glowered at him. "I don't tell you how to throw your daggers, Haftel. Don't micromanage my wind weaving."

"I'm allowed to be worried about what their noble house will do if they figure out it was us, aren't I?" Haftel returned her glare resolutely.

Esmorana let her glare drop after another tense second. "Oh, fine. The scent and the traces of my mana in the air will be gone before they even respawn, and they'd have to search high in the sky and well away from where the stampede hit them to even be looking in the right place. All they'll ever actually know is that a stampede happened and made the Wilds here more dangerous than they expected. Sure, they'll suspect someone arranged for it to happen, but they'll never have proof of who."

The shorter woman crossed her well muscled arms, scowling, and muttered loudly. "As if nobles need proof."

Haftel glanced sharply at her. "We discussed that part already, Noralt. Do I need to remind you again?" He shook his head. "In their own territory, you would be right. Here in Crown lands, however, they cannot act openly without admitting their trespass to the Crown."

Noralt huffed, then shrugged and sighed. "Yeah, yeah, and they'll suspect the other groups that could pull it off too, and we can fight off any covert agents they're likely to have anyway, and yada yada. I still don't like it. Especially if we have to do it again before they get the hint to go somewhere else."

Just then, the stone on Esmorana's waist buzzed again, three times. All eyes turned to it, all three people frowning. Esmorana picked it up in her right hand. "Complications?" She cocked her head. "He's on his way. Moving fast."

Haftel nodded grimly. "Only three buzzes, not four." He sighed. "Good to know it's not disaster, but I hate waiting for details. Damn enchanters guild, hoarding their best stuff for exorbitant prices. Well, settle in."

The stampede finally passed almost as suddenly as it had arrived, the frequency of impacts on the bubble of force around Amber rapidly trailing off to nothing. The shaking of the ground grew less intense, and the thunder-like rumble of so many hooves and feet repeatedly hitting the ground hard began to fade. About half a minute after the last stampeding beast ran over her, the protective bubble of force vanished, and Major Ordens pushed off of her, allowing Amber to sit up unsteadily and look around.

The directions the stampede had come from and gone to were blindingly obvious. On two opposite sides of the clearing, all bushes, flowers, and other underbrush had been completely stripped and pounded flat, trampled by innumerable beasts. Even a few trees had been uprooted and knocked over, or simply broken and splintered where they stood. On the edges of the stampede's path, there were some hoofprints distinct enough to be seen individually, but most of it was a mingled mass of overlapping prints, the dirt packed down so hard that the last impacts had mainly just obscured the rest and left barely any marks of their own.

Lorvan stood in a small zone of less hard-packed dirt, shield hanging by his side as he stared motionless at a mangled body nearby. The body was clad in leather armor that now had many holes in it, just like the body itself did. Blood oozed from more wounds than Amber cared to count, and bones stuck out from arms that bent in too many places. Amber gasped at the sight, reflexively raising her right hand in front of her mouth. "Carlos!"

Lorvan jerked slightly as he turned his head to look at Amber, then took a deep breath, faced her squarely, and bowed deeply. "My deepest apology, my lady. I made assumptions that I should not have, and failed in my duties as a result. I will take full responsibility when I report this to the Crown, and Lord Carlos will be given compensation for my failure. In the meantime, do you know where he will respawn?"

Amber hesitated. "I... am not certain. He might respawn in his room at the inn. If not, then I don't know."

Lorvan nodded. "Very well. If he does not respawn at the Adventurer's Haven, the Crown will divine his location and teleport him back to Dramos free of charge. No one at the third compression would be expected to withstand a stampede like that alone, and I should have protected him from it."

"I... thought you were busy?" Amber thought back and mentally reviewed what she'd seen before Ordens tackled her. "You were first in line to get hit, and fighting Jamar's guard too?"

Lorvan shook his head. "I was holding back. I had options I could have used, but refrained. I saw Lord Carlos hovering above, after having dropped Lady Jamar in her tracks, and I knew he had spent only a fraction of his mana pool to achieve both feats. I assumed that he would be able to continue hovering long enough for the stampede to pass. I was wrong."

"I see." Amber took a deep breath. "So. What now?"

"That is up to you. It is your decision, my lady."

"But... All of... this?" She waved her hands at the hard packed new path, and the other bloody and broken bodies in the area. "Another high noble confronting us? A souls damned stampede? I-I have no plans for this! How could I have possibly expected that?!" She sniffled, and blinked, trying to hold back tears that were gathering in the corners of her eyes. "I-I'm just... Just the book and magic obsessed weirdo who makes plans all the time. And I don't have a plan!" She choked back a sob, and lowered her head, wrapping her arms around her knees as she curled up and shrank into herself, sitting on the ground. "No plan."

Lorvan stood silent and still, watching uncertainly. He exchanged a look with Ordens, who looked at Amber for a few seconds and then looked back up at him and waved a hand all around them at the forest they were in. He nodded, then turned and started vigilantly watching for any new approaching dangers.

Major Ordens crouched down and gently put her right hand on Amber's left shoulder. She kept her voice quiet and gentle. "Hey. It's ok. It will all be ok."

"But-" Amber sniffled again, tears rolling down her face.

"You grew up as a commoner your whole life, didn't you?" Ordens paused until Amber gave a small nod. "And then Carlos came along, and your life suddenly changed beyond all recognition. High nobles. Crown protection. Ruling a border city. Politics. Being important. That's all so startlingly new and unfamiliar, and you've been relying on Carlos to keep you steady and help you deal with it. Haven't you?"

Several seconds passed in near silence, broken only by quiet sniffles and cries, before Amber whispered her answer. "Yes."

"Well. He will be back soon enough, but I believe that if you really try, you will find that you're not dependent on him that much after all." Ordens smiled. "You have no plan for what happened. But you can make a plan for it now, can't you?"

"I... what?" Amber blinked and blearily looked up at Ordens.

"Imagine that you're back in Dramos, early this morning, and you get some weird hunch that maybe you'll be confronted by an angry high noble out in the Wilds, and that maybe a stampede will run through and trample Carlos to death. What plan would you have made?"

"Well..." Amber took a deep breath. "If I'd thought of a stampede this morning, I would have expected you and Lorvan to protect us from it. But I get your point." She wiped a few tears from her face, took another deep breath, and slowly stood up. "Ok. I don't have a plan, so I need to make one."

"Making a plan, first step: What points need to be addressed?" She looked at Carlos's dead body. "We'll have to reunite with Carlos after he respawns, of course. And get him new gear; that armor is trashed. Bring back the money he was carrying, and anything else still worth keeping. And we should meet him as soon after he respawns as possible. He'll be worried, not knowing what happened after he died. How fast can you and Lorvan get us back there?"

"Back to Dramos, and the Adventurer's Haven?" Ordens cocked her head. "Hmm. If we go all out and carry you, then about 15 minutes, maybe 20."

Amber blinked. "It took hours for us to walk out here."

"That was at your walking pace. We'll be running, and going at our fastest."

"Oh." Amber looked at Carlos's corpse for a few more seconds. "Well, that gives us some spare time to work with here. Let's see, other important points..." She looked around and spotted the bodies of Jamar Tostral and both of her guards. "Their equipment, especially Jamar's own, looks expensive. Do we have the right to take it and keep it, in these circumstances?"

"Hmm." Ordens narrowed her eyes and chewed her lip for a moment. "They were trespassing on your lands, attacked you unprovoked, and you were actually not responsible for their deaths. If anyone other than a high noble did that, no one would dispute your right to take anything but a house treasure from their corpses. But for them..."

Lorvan spoke over his shoulder, still alertly scanning the trees. "With another high house involved, it is a matter of politics, not rights. Keeping Jamar's personal armor and swords will anger High House Tostral. Returning her personal items may appease them for any blame they consider you to have for her death. In that regard, you are fortunate that she had not yet advanced to the second stage. Her recovery of the density compression lost for respawning will be swift."

"Second... 'stage'?" Amber raised an eyebrow questioningly at him.

Lorvan shook his head. "Now is not the time for that explanation. You have far more urgent issues still to handle."

Amber took a deep breath and turned back to looking at Jamar. "Carlos will want to hear it too, anyway. Ok. So, other points to address: How will High House Tostral react to this? Why was she even here in the first place? She mentioned a 'rotation agreement' and that it was 'her turn' to be here. Is any of that even something that Carlos and I need to do anything about?"

"Hmm." Lorvan frowned, and paused to consider. "It sounded like a secret agreement between noble houses to coordinate covertly harvesting high density mana from Crown lands. If so, that is a premeditated conspiracy of theft from the Crown, and the Crown will investigate on its own and punish for it accordingly, but that is the Crown's own concern, not yours. Tostral might blame you for it being revealed to the Crown. I will report the possibility, and recommend additional protection against it, but it changes nothing for what you and Carlos need to do for yourselves."

"Alright." Amber squared her shoulders and walked over to start taking Jamar's armor off. "Let's bring her belongings back with us to Dramos, at least, and maybe we can negotiate later to return them in exchange for peace."

Ordens gently but firmly pushed her hands aside, and started quickly and efficiently stripping the corpse of valuables and packing them away into her own backpack.

Amber paused, and frowned, staring at nothing with unfocused eyes as a strange feeling came over her. Something felt vaguely wrong, in a way she had never experienced, and she shuddered. It took her a moment to realize the feeling was coming through her mana sense, and as she focused on that, she remembered that this was the exact spot where Carlos had used his levitation spell in the strange way that he said felt wrong. She had felt nothing from his first experiment where he discovered it, but this time he had used it many times more strongly. Was this some sort of echo of the wrongness he described? Or maybe from a lingering side effect?

The feeling of wrongness was already fading. Any investigation of it this time would have to be almost immediate. She needed a better mana sensor, really, but maybe she could see if it affected other spells. She quickly cast a light spell, and paid close attention to its effect and its mana. Something... seemed ever so slightly off about it, but so little that she might have been imagining it. She sighed. It all came back to just needing more advancement, more compressions to denser mana, to make her mana sense and other soul structures more effective. She put it out of her mind for the moment, and refocused on her physical surroundings.

"Ok. That leaves just one more point: that stampede. That wasn't normal, was it? Someone made it happen."

Lorvan nodded to her, maintaining a wary stance facing outward. "Correct. Some of those creatures came from higher density areas miles away, and it was aimed at us far too precisely and with too little warning. I do not know whether it was intended to kill Carlos, you, both of you, Jamar, or all three, but someone wanted to strike at least one of you, and without revealing themselves."

"Esmorana. The party Mayor Stelras warned us about."

"Likely. They may well be capable of it, and they have reason to try."

Amber glared and clenched her jaw. "They want us to leave. When we do not, they will escalate. We need to stop this before they go too far." She looked at Ordens, then back at Lorvan. "Take everything worthwhile from the bodies here. Then bring me to Stelras as fast as you can. This ends now."

A large man ran swiftly and silently through the woods, leaving no marks of his passage, until he emerged in a small clearing and suddenly stopped in front of the three people waiting for him.

Haftel put away the dagger he'd been idly tossing, and straightened. "Took you long enough, Sconter. You signaled complications?"

Sconter nodded. "Yes. We got Carlos, but not Amber. One of their guards covered her in a force bubble and kept it up through the entire thing."

"A force bubble big enough for a whole person, maintained that long?" Haftel scowled. "...Personal effect, or from an item?"

"Item."

Haftel swore. "That's damned expensive. More than I thought even a high noble would outfit a guard with. Still, we got one. That might be enough to get them to move on."

"There's something else." Sconter's face was grimly serious. "You remember the rich kid who showed up a few weeks back? She confronted them right before the stampede got there. I was too far away to hear anything, but she was pissed for some reason, and attacked. Carlos pinned her somehow, I couldn't make sense of how, and she died too. And she had damn fine armor, way better than I thought she could buy."

"Huh." Haftel's hands fidgeted with the hilts of a pair of his daggers. "I don't know what's up with that, but it does seem odd."

Esmorana sighed. "It's unfortunate I can't see or hear through my winds. Just feeling what the wind touches misses so much information."

Haftel shook his head. "No point wishing about what we don't have. We need to focus on our actual reality. Which is that we need to know how Amber reacts and whether Carlos returns, and we need to avoid too much suspicion. Sconter, we'll need your disguise skills to investigate, while the rest of us stay out. Us returning too close to when this happened would look suspicious."

Sconter nodded. "Right. I'll be careful, and observe what I can." He turned, and ran off as swiftly and silently as he had arrived.

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