Magic is Programming

Esmorana soared through the sky above Dramos, exulting in the exhilarating feelings of speed and freedom. Up here, she was in her element, supreme over nearly all who might try to challenge her. She could go nearly anywhere she wished, at speeds even the fastest runners would envy, and she could sense and counter the approach of nearly any attack or foe long before they might actually reach her.

She impulsively strengthened the wind blowing in her face for a moment. The flapping of her hair behind her grew more frenetic, and she laughed joyously at the feeling. She had loved that sensation since childhood, when her father used to carry her on his shoulders as a treat while he ran. He'd always said he would outrun the wind someday, and she had set her heart on commanding winds too fast to ever be outrun, and on flying with those winds so she'd never need to outrun them. Then she'd finally made her first soul structures, produced nothing more than a light breeze with her greatest efforts, got annoyed at having her hair blown into her eyes, and decided she needed a better way to fly than being blown about by wind.

Sadly, she had a mission too important to delay for personal indulgence. Esmorana scanned the familiar layout of Dramos's many buildings and streets below her, tracking landmarks as she flew past them. A few city guards were looking in her direction, and most likely scowling at her. The guards didn't like having anyone fly above the city; she'd even been reprimanded for it a few times, until she'd started flying so high they couldn't spot her. Too bad for them, this time their boss would surely endorse it as justified. Their new super-bosses, even! Maybe she could convince Carlos Founder to set a policy that she could fly over Dramos anytime.

She just had to help rescue him, first. And for that, she had to reach Stelras to explain to him, in his office right over… there! She reached out with a grip of briefly solidified air to turn the doorknob and open the door before she even arrived, and actually flew through the entrance and even right past the guards in the lobby. Now that was a fun new stunt! She let her weight return to normal and released the bits of solidified air that had been supporting her as she gently alighted on the floor just outside the mayor's reception room.

Esmorana didn't waste time knocking, or waiting for a question. She opened the door and took long strides in, and pre-empted Liafra before the ever-dutiful receptionist could even voice her surprise. "Emergency. It's about Carlos."

Liafra blinked and stared for a moment, then nodded. "Go on in, then. He's doing paperwork."

Esmorana had already opened the inner door, and saw the paperwork immediately. Stelras was bent over his desk, shuffling papers around and taking notes on another sheet. He looked up as she walked in, and straightened as he took in her expression. Esmorana again spoke first. "Carlos and Amber were abducted from their beds. Lorvan is following their aura trail. Ordens recruited us to help."

"Shit." Stelras slammed down the pen he was writing with, shoved his chair back, and stood up. "Did they send you with any specific request for me?"

Esmorana shook her head. "Ordens just said to inform you. Haftel is with her, and probably Noralt too by now. Sconter may take a little longer to join them."

"I see. Then I can only think of one way for me to help. Come with me." Mayor Stelras rushed out of his office, Esmorana following half a step behind.

Purple's thoughts kept going in circles. His friends needed his help, but the only way he could help anyone outside his domain was through his friends. There might possibly have been something he could do through his bonds with them, but those bonds were blocked. Maybe Carlos could have helped him think of something, but he couldn't talk with Carlos right now. Surely there was something he could do, but what?

It was fortunate that calming mana enough to make a soul structure was so easy for him. Otherwise he would have released most of it by accident by now. His anxious and helpless cycle of thoughts had stirred up some of it back into a more chaotic mess, and he'd had to spend some time fixing that. He actually had more on hand now than he needed for the next structure, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to properly focus on its concept, or if he even should follow through with Carlos's plan for it. A repository of knowledge that people he bonded could access and contribute to didn't seem at all useful for helping Carlos right now, and maybe he could use that mana to make something more immediately important instead.

He probably wouldn't be able to fill out every single synergy like Carlos wanted if he did that, but how important was total synergy and orichalcum rank anyway? Not as important as Carlos being ok, certainly! But Carlos was clever, and had other people to help him too, so maybe he'd be fine even without Purple's help. And if Purple spoiled Carlos's plans for their future, all for the sake of something that hadn't actually been needed after all, that would be bad. Maybe he'd be able to fix it afterwards? He wasn't sure about that, though.

Suddenly something changed in Purple's domain without him doing it. The door of the small safe he was in had abruptly opened, and someone reached in, grabbed something, and closed it again before Purple could think to react. He realized a moment later that it was Stelras, and the object the mayor had grabbed was the Carlos house plate. The safe hadn't been opened since Carlos and Amber returned their platinum rings several days ago, and now Stelras had come for something specifically related to Carlos less than half a day after whatever had happened. Stelras must be already trying to help, then.

…And Purple had missed his chance to make a bond and talk to find out details. He was not going to let such a chance pass by unused again. He might not be able to react normally in time if the next opportunity passed that quickly, at least not without spending all his time watching and waiting for it, but he didn't need to. He could use his automator.

Lorvan stood in front of the Adventurer's Haven with Ressara on his back and looked around. "Which way?"

"Right." Ressara pointed as she spoke, and Lorvan sped off in that direction. Two seconds later she was waving her hands in front of his face and slapping his shoulder. "Stop, stop! Too far. They turned."

Lorvan turned around and dashed half way back, then paused and turned his head towards his passenger.

"Just… go slow enough that I can react, I guess? I'll keep pointing the way, and I'll try to start turning my fingers right before we reach a turn in the path." Ressara sounded a bit short of breath, even though she'd done none of the running herself.

"Ok." Lorvan nodded. "Make a fist if I should stop, and partially close a fist to signal I should slow down. Now, which way?"

"Um, behind us again."

Lorvan snapped around to face the other way in an instant, and after a moment's hesitation Ressara extended her right hand to point ahead and slightly right. Lorvan started jogging, and nodded when he noticed Ressara's finger gradually angling more to the right, steadily maintaining its aim on the upcoming corner with another street. He turned the corner, and she smoothly transitioned to pointing straight ahead, then slightly toward the left.

He gradually sped up as they went through several more turns. He had to weave around a few people, and they got many odd looks from bystanders, but he ignored them. After about a minute Ressara started curling her index finger towards her palm, and Lorvan slowed down just a bit, then maintained that speed as she continued directing him through a roundabout path to another section of the city.

Finally, they reached an area filled with several warehouses, and at an intersection of streets surrounded by four warehouse buildings on all sides Ressara finally closed her right hand into a fist. Lorvan stopped and looked around. Four people in heavily worn but well patched and durable clothes were unloading a large cart into one of the warehouses. Someone was curled up under a makeshift blanket against another warehouse wall. The warehouses themselves had no identifying markings, though a fair amount of graffiti, and all of their doors were closed except the one being used for unloading the cart. There was no sign of Carlos or Amber that he could detect.

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Ressara sighed. "The trail ends here. Same way Carlos's and Amber's aura traces just stopped in the Haven."

"Hmm." Lorvan frowned and continued scanning his surroundings. He activated a small scale privacy ward before speaking. It would prevent their voices from being overheard, and make their mouths look too indistinct to onlookers for lip reading. "Did their trail join anyone else's at any point? Could they have doubled back?"

"No. I would have noticed doubling back, and…" Ressara hopped off his back. "I'm sorry, but there have been many people through this spot recently. Several different groups, some people alone, going in every direction, and none of them are people I recognize. I have no idea which trail is the right one, and I couldn't follow any of them with confidence anyway. I need to have directly sensed someone's soul to have a strong sense of their trail."

Lorvan nodded. "They must have planned and prepared for pursuit by aura tracing. Not surprising for a group capable of avoiding being caught in the act by us." He considered what his equipment's detection arrays reported. The only people inside any of the four warehouses around them were the group of four currently unloading a cart. But that was according to his equipment, identical to the equipment that had failed to alert Ordens to the abduction as it happened, and that had failed to identify fake souls that Ressara had spotted instantly. "Do you sense anyone currently inside any of these four warehouses?"

Ressara chewed her lip as she considered her senses. She couldn't sense any specific details of a soul from very far away, and she usually didn't have any reason to even try to check for just the presence or absence of a soul. She wasn't sure if she even could sense a soul at the other end of any of these buildings from here, even just to tell whether any existed. "Just those four workers over there, but there could be people farther than I can sense."

"No attention diverting wards?" Usually Lorvan's equipment would overcome such wards by simple power, and by the lack of an actual mind in direct control of the detection to be diverted, but this was not a usual case, and that capability was evidently completely outclassed by Ressara's special purpose soul structures.

"None."

"This is most likely a dead end, then. I expect this was a planned rendezvous distant from anywhere important to them." Lorvan cocked his head and thought. He could try to carry Ressara all around the perimeter of Dramos and see if she picked up a new trail leaving the city, but that was unlikely to succeed; it was an obvious enough use of aura tracing that a group on guard against aura tracing would almost certainly include it in their countermeasures.

This was at least starting to approach the threshold for signaling an insurrection. The scale was still very small, and it was still possible that their enemy might not have realized that they were opposing the Crown itself, but the abduction of two high nobles from right under the noses of royal guards assigned for their personal protection demanded a response. If he sent that signal, well, the problem would be solved. One way or another. A scion of the Crown would come at once to personally resolve the matter, with whatever level of force and resources it might take, and the entire affair would be out of Lorvan's hands. Whoever these mysterious kidnappers were, they would be outmatched by a Prince of Kalor. However, Lorvan's job was to handle things without that whenever possible so that the Crown could focus such direct actions on matters that actually required it. He would keep it in mind as a last resort for now.

In the meantime, Ordens was rapidly approaching. She was still a couple minutes away at her current speed, but royal guards could sense each other over vast distances, and she was heading straight towards him. Shortcutting across buildings, even, bypassing the constraints of the layout of the streets! She was running and jumping over rooftops, judging by her height above ground. Lorvan could at least wait to see what information she might bring before making a decision.

There was no need to just wait, though. Lorvan unceremoniously picked up Ressara, who yelped and then hung on fiercely, and leaped up onto a warehouse roof to run to meet Ordens halfway. He saw Ordens had company shortly before they came together on a rooftop. Haftel and Noralt ran beside her, and Esmorana flew right above them. Sconter was nowhere in sight. All of them stopped abruptly when they were two paces apart, and Lorvan put Ressara back on her feet. "Ordens, report."

Ordens saluted quickly. "Innkeeper knows nothing useful. Haftel and party are fully on board, though Sconter hasn't met up yet. Esmorana informed Mayor Stelras, and he retrieved the Carlos house plate for her to deliver to us. He suggests that its sample of Carlos's mana signature might be useful for locating him."

Lorvan nodded. "Good thinking, and we have the means for that, but we will likely have to overcome anti divination wards. Powerful ones."

He looked at Esmorana, who had landed beside Haftel while they talked, and held out his right hand. "I'll take the plate now." She opened her right hand to reveal the adamantine-inlaid steel plate, and it slapped into Lorvan's palm, carried over at speed by a bit of air.

He nodded and placed it in an enchanted pocket on his breastplate. "Good. Now, do any of you know of a more powerful ritual circle in Dramos than the one in the teleportation building?"

A chorus of denials and shaking heads answered him, and he nodded in acceptance. "Then we will use that one. Let's go."

Ressara swayed unsteadily as she recovered her bearings before following everyone into the tiny building in front of her. She took a deep breath as she walked in and stepped to the side, standing against the wall beside the door. Being carried everywhere like this was humiliating and disorienting. She almost wished she had made a soul structure or two for physical speed and endurance, but that was too different from the structures she already had for it to fit. At least the guard stationed at this building had been too overawed by the adventurers and royal guards to pay any attention to her. Oh well, she'd just have to content herself with having perceptive abilities that even royal guards couldn't match. She smirked in smug satisfaction at that thought.

Shaking her head, she focused her attention back on what they were doing here. Lorvan had placed the House Carlos plate in the center of the runed ritual circle, and he and Ordens had taken positions on opposite sides of the circle. This ritual circle was relatively weak, made mostly of gold with just a few spots of platinum, nothing compared to the pure mythril she'd heard that the Crown used in Kalor City. It was also primarily designed to be a beacon for teleportation, easy to fasten onto as a precise destination target to arrive at. Nonetheless, it could still enhance nearly any ritual spell cast with it, including the soulfinder divination the pair of royal guards were setting up.

Watching them go about it was a strange experience for Ressara. She had seen a fair number of ritual spells cast by mages, and they had all spoken various incantations and fed their own mana either directly into the spell itself or directly into the circle. Lorvan and Ordens instead fed their mana into certain enchantments in their armor, and the enchantments passed it into the ritual circle. Instead of speaking, those enchantments drew temporary runes around the circle's perimeter.

The two of them walked clockwise around the circle on opposite sides, feeding mana into eight equally spaced points on the circle. After filling the last pair of points, they extended their hands above the circle in unison, and activated the spell. The temporary runes, originally perceivable only by mana sense, flared with visible light for a moment, and the spell took form. It connected to the provided mana signature, anchored itself to the ritual circle, and… reached out in some manner Ressara couldn't understand. She had general purpose mana sense, but at her level it couldn't sense anything complicated clearly. She had it mainly to improve her more specialized soul structures.

For a moment, the divination seemed to be questing towards something with purpose, but then it started wandering. Ressara couldn't tell much about how it was trying to find the soul that matched its guiding mana signature, but she could tell that it was having trouble. Lorvan poured more and more mana into the ritual, and Ordens matched him. With each step up of providing even more mana, the spell briefly regained its sense of purpose, before being stymied again. The streams of mana fueling the search grew so dense that just sensing them nearby hurt, until finally even Lorvan was panting with effort. At last, he made a curt cutting motion with his right hand held flat, and the two royal guards stopped the spell simultaneously.

Lorvan and Ordens both dropped to one knee, breathing hard. Lorvan's mana touched another enchantment in his armor, and for a moment a small new attention-diverting ward drew Ressara's gaze, but then it disappeared again. She wondered what that could possibly be about, but Lorvan didn't leave her much time to think.

Lorvan took a deep breath and stood up. "Whoever is behind this has resources at least on par with a noble house. Some of the weaker houses are even unable to muster the amount of power it would take to defeat a divination as strong as we just attempted." He swept his gaze around the room slowly, meeting each person's eyes with a grimly serious expression.

"I have called for immediate personal intervention by the Crown."

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