Millennial Mage

Tala felt somewhat nostalgic as she wove the Archon star within her finger. She directed three void channels into its creation.

“That is fascinating.” Master Jevin leaned forward. “It’s already in a stable condition, with so little power. Truly, we Immaterial Guides have an unfair advantage here, if we are willing to work within ourselves once again. Seems that working with a medium of your own body amplifies that advantage.”

She just snorted. “Is that enough power?”

He shrugged. “I’m gathering all sorts of information from the creation process. It should be fine, though.”

Tala pulled out a non-magical knife, retracted her defenses, and pricked her finger, pushing out the drop of blood containing her Archon star. It dripped free even as her skin pulled closed once more.

The drop began to orbit around her clockwise, caught in the spell-form radiating from below, which encompassed her.

Even as it orbited, completing one revolution every second or so, it moved up and down around her.

“Can you call it this one to you?” He pointed to the drop hovering over the bronze plate on his workbench.

Tala shrugged and pulled. The drop zipped through the air towards her.

She stopped pulling as it came within reach, and it entered into an opposing orbit around her, moving counterclockwise and vertically opposite of the other star.

Master Jevin leaned forward. “That…that is fascinating.” He let out a laugh. “I feel like I’m saying that a lot.”

“What? What did you notice?”

“Your blood is living, and you’ve soul-bound it to yourself, but the blood is too miniscule to fully contain the bond, allowing you to use the blood as a catalyst for the bond you wish to make.” He shook his head. “Which doesn’t even take into account the fact that it should already be bound to you, as a part of your Bound body.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ve done the opposite of what I did. Where I accidently bound myself to something far greater than myself, and that my bond had no right to actually affect, thus making me subservient to its power, you have bound yourself to something so miniscule, when compared to yourself, that it doesn’t really count.” He seemed to be considering. “Did you get your soul-exercises from a book or from an instructor?”

“Well, trial and error, then confirmed by an instructor, finally found in a book.”

He gave her an odd look but didn’t comment on her long answer. “Which book?”

“Soul Work. Why?”

“Good, good. That is an excellent resource. If I’m seeing this correctly, you are going to want to make a lot of these stars. At least you will, when you learn a couple more of the exercises in that book.”

“Which?” She pulled out her copy, holding it out to him. The blood drops altered their orbit to avoid hitting her outstretched arm, even looping around it occasionally without any visible input from either of them.

Master Jevin took the copy and leafed through it. “The most recent, revised addition? And well bound.” He began to nod. “Master Grediv’s work, then. He really did see something in you.” His eyes flicked to Tala’s for a moment, and he smiled. “Here.” He passed the book back, two places held open for her.

“ ‘Perpendicular Manipulation’ ?”

“Yes. When mastered, and if properly utilized, you can move your soul bound items in orbits like those drops are moving in now. But, you can do it on your own, without standing on a spell-form.” He laughed. “Even so, I’d say it would be impossibly complex, however.”

She smiled. “I can reduce their effective gravity.”

“Thus making it a much more feasible technique for you.”

She frowned but nodded. I can see use in that. Moving Flow side to side would give me a lot more options in battle. “Oh! Did I tell you that I figured out a new aspect of my gravity manipulation?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Let’s hear it.”

She briefly delved into Join and Distinct.

“Fascinating. Your foundational understanding of gravity is…something.” He smiled. “Thank you for sharing. That gives me much to consider.” His eyes seemed to unfocus as he began to do just that.

Tala cleared her throat, drawing his attention back, tapping Soul Work. “And what’s this second one? ‘Aspect Mirroring’?”

He grinned. “You can cause any soul-bound item of yours to take on an aspect of you.”

Tala cocked her head in confusion before returning her focus to the book and reading further through the description. As she did so, her eyes widened. “I can give my soul-bound items my same weight of magic and will, so that they are as hard to affect as I am.” She swallowed. “And I can cause my inertia to mirror any of my soul-bound items, and visa versa.”

“Precisely. For most people, there is some powerful, but limited, utility in Aspect Mirroring, based on what they are bound to. For you with your unique set of abilities?”

“I can have a cloud of blood around me, each drop taking hundreds of pounds of force to bypass and magically resilient to boot.”

“Just so.”

She dropped into a seated position as the implications crashed over her. This would mitigate my issue with staying in place. It would be a powerful defense. “There has to be a catch.”

“A catch? No.”

“So, why doesn’t everyone do this?”

“Well, aside from it not being as useful to someone with a different type of Archon star, and lacking your rare view and utilization of gravity, I imagine you will have four hurdles to overcome, for it to truly be of use to you.”

“Do tell?” She leaned forward, hanging on every word.

“First, mastering the movement of even a single soul-bound item into a consistent orbit around yourself is difficult in the extreme. Second, you will need to make it utterly instinctive for it to be anything but a known battle-field tool. Third, you will have to compound that difficulty exponentially to create a small cloud around yourself. Fourth and finally, you will need to find a way to split your Archon stars into smaller stars.”

She frowned. “I followed until the last, why?”

“In doing this, in using this defense, your stars will run into each other. By Master Grediv’s postulation, that means they will combine. That will make the bond to you stronger, but that isn’t useful for this utility. Correct?”

Tala nodded.

“Then, you will need a way to split them back apart, else you will have to be constantly making stars. There’s the additional issue that the strength of the star will affect how it reacts, so you would have to be constantly altering your instinctual orbits for each drop as it changes in power level, unless you can instinctively split them back down to the smallest size sustainable.”

“Ahh… I think I understand the issue.”

“I’m glad.”

“So… why doesn’t everyone want to do something like this?”

He took a deep breath. “First of all, I might be able to do something similar with Archon stars in splinters of this tree, if I could stabilize the spell-form with as little power as you use, which given my aura control I probably could. I could then also use my aura to effectively mimic the results you get from gravity alteration and soul work.”

“So?”

“So, my aura and aura control already render it redundant. Anything that can get through my aura is going to be much too powerful to be stopped by the type of defense we are discussing.”

“So…it will be useless when I advance far enough?”

“Not at all. Most don’t devote themselves towards aura control and power as I have, and I would not recommend that path to you. You’d have to scrap your entire schema and start from scratch. You’d basically be in for a decade of uselessness, until you could fully grasp the nuances of auras. Most Mages are in the same place as you, and only develop their aura to a rudimentary level.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “The same reason most don’t reinforce their body to the extent that you have.” He grinned. “I certainly haven’t. We each have things we focus on, and we cannot focus on everything, even with centuries or millennia to expand our understanding.”

Tala was nodding again. “I guess that makes sense.”

They fell into a companionable silence, then; each consumed in their private thoughts.

* * *

After a few moments of thought, Tala decided to fuse a few stitches and began to work on that.

As she did so, she felt Master Jevin’s attention return to her, but she didn’t want her efforts to be wasted. I’ll engage with him again after at least one stitch.

“Your soul is doing some crazy things. Are you fusing?”

She cracked one eye open to glare, only waiting until she saw him raise his hands in apologetic surrender before closing it once more.

Just one stitch. She exhaled slowly, fully immersed within.

Just over a minute later, she pulled the stitch tight, and opened her eyes, stretching and taking more normal breaths. “Now, what did you want?”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen soul readings on a person, while they were fusing.” He was scratching his chin. “I’ll bet they’ve been taken, but I never really thought to look for them.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Well, yes. I’d have thought that was obvious?”

She gave him an unamused look.

“First of all, as you would expect, your soul-bonds were vibrating in sync with the fusing.”

“Wait…why would I expect that?”

“Because they are linked to your soul, the bond is a part of it; thus, anything that affects your soul affects your bonds.”

“Oh. That does make sense.”

“The best way I can verbalize these results, succinctly, is like this: The cord binding you to your knife just had another thread woven through it.”

“That’s…” she frowned, “I suppose that makes sense.”

“Alright. Now, your soul, itself.” He was nodding. “Your gate and your spirit, the two parts of your soul, both surged with power, intermixing before resettling back as they were, slightly more linked than before.”

“Why is that unexpected?”

“Well, the way you described your fusing process. I would have assumed that you were slowly bringing the two into better fusion with your body, little by little.”

“But it’s more like three liquids in a jar. I shake it up, and they separate less each time.”

“Interesting metaphor but sure.”

“Is that bad?”

“I don’t believe so. It is likely just that your spirit and soul are being disrupted by your efforts to fuse, and it gives the described perception.”

“So, when I’m done, the liquids will be fully mixed?”

“In the terms of your metaphor? Yes.”

What would that look like? Well, she could see what it would look like, in Master Jevin. “Wait… I can still see your gate. It isn’t filling your whole body or anything.”

“Ahh, yes. The joining is not at a physical level.”

She nodded. “Right, but I’d still expect evidence throughout.”

Master Jevin contemplated for a moment. “Think of the physical world and the next world as two cliff faces, bracketing an abyss.”

“Alright.”

“So, your gate is a platform on the other side, which throws power across that chasm. Your spirit is a platform on the physical side that catches the power and allows you to work with it. With me so far?”

“I think so.”

“So, what is your physical body, in this analogy?”

After a moment’s consideration, she smiled. “The portion of the physical world’s cliff my spirit is anchored to.”

“Precisely. So, then fusing is building a bridge between those platforms. Making them one. They are still distinct, like the legs of a tripod, but they are now unified into a whole, which is greater than the sum of its parts.”

“Wouldn’t that mean that I have a ‘next world’ self, similarly linked in?”

He shrugged. “It isn’t a perfect analogy. Such things never are, but some have theorized that, yes, we each have a spiritual body that is a mirror to our physical body, in which our gate is anchored.”

“So, our spirit is anchored in our physical body, and our gate is anchored in our spiritual body?”

“That is the theory.”

She grimaced. “That’s a bit esoteric for me, right now.”

“Fair enough.” He grinned. “I’ve never really dug too deeply into it.” After a moment’s hesitation, he added. “Well, I did see if I could use the spiritual body as a template to recover my humanity, but I couldn’t find a way. I don’t know if that is because it doesn’t exist, can’t be used that way, or I simply never found the trick of it.”

Some of the heaviness returned to the room at the mention of his nature.

Tala cleared her throat, searching for something to discuss. We’re talking about gates…oh! “You know, I’ve never asked.”

His eyes came back to look her way. “Yes?”

“Humans without gates…”

Master Jevin tilted his head, waiting. When she didn’t continue, he prompted, “What about them?”

She grimaced, again, but this time at her own lack of words. “They are what we were, but every means we have to verify humanity seems predicated on our gates.” She held up her hands, trying to express her feeling of helplessness, and lack of ability to articulate what she was asking.

He smiled, gesturing back to the chairs. “Come. Let’s sit.”

She nodded. As she stood, she pulled out two iron vials and pulled the two drops of blood into their separate containers. Another thing to practice. But that was for later.

She moved over to have a seat, and he sat opposite. “Humanity is a broken race.”

Tala sat up straight, fully focusing on the Paragon.

“We were enslaved, this is widely known. What is not widely known, because it runs counter to the popular narrative of humanity’s overcoming all odds, is that this was done to us.” He gestured to his chest, to his gate.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s theorized that in ancient days, a war, the likes of which we cannot conceive of, tore apart the planet, and so many beings died that the barrier between this world and the next weakened, letting magic in for the first time.”

Tala found herself reaching for her tea once more as she listened intently.

“Beings and creatures of magic thrived. Whether they were here before, or not, I’ve no idea, but as time passed, the division between worlds began to strengthen, repairing towards pre-calamity levels. That sent the magical races into a panic. Uncountable things were attempted, many of them using sapient creatures as a medium, and humans were a convenient, subservient test group.” He took a deep breath, looking down at his hands.

“We were experimented upon.”

“By the millions.”

She nodded in understanding. “An arcane broke the human soul, giving rise to our gates.”

“Yes. The trait was integrated into our genetic code as dominant and spread through the population.”

“We are living holes to the next world.” Her eyes widened. “Our cities. The rise in magic.”

He nodded, giving a small smile.

“Us clustering together is like thousands of small perforations in a membrane, all close together. It stresses the boundary?”

“Yes, it weakens it.”

“That’s why we move. It isn’t a backlash against our magic absorbing scripts. It is a result of humans clustering together.”

“The scripts are as much to reinforce the barrier between worlds, as anything else. To shore up the membrane in the presence of so many perforations.”

“And that’s why they will never wipe out humanity.”

“They need us to keep the barrier weak or magic will die.” She rocked back, leaning fully against the back of her chair. She frowned. “So, is there only magic on this continent? Is the barrier fully repaired elsewhere?”

He shook his head. “It isn’t well understood, but while certain locations can become incredibly permeable, and then repair, the world as a whole seems to function near an average, held higher by our locations of abundant magic.”

“But if everywhere is at the average, except the extreme highs, shouldn’t the average be higher?”

He shrugged. “Yes, but as I said, it isn’t well understood.” He gave a mirthless chuckle. “It’s not like we can easily travel the world to take readings across the planet. Every great while, an Archon with sufficient power will rise up and suffer from wanderlust. He or she will then travel far and wide, bringing us back news of the rest of Zeme. By this, we know that magic and things of magic exist across our entire starsystem.”

“The…star system? There have been archons in space?”

He gave her an odd look. “Of course. You, yourself could reach the moon with relative ease and only a small amount of equipment, if you so desired. I wouldn’t recommend it, however. The beasts up there…” He shook his head.

She couldn’t process that last comment at the moment, so she moved on. “What about the rest of it?”

“You mean outside our star system? Other stars? Other worlds? Other Realms?”

She nodded.

He shrugged. “To my knowledge, no human has exited this system and returned. It’s possible that they just have failed to come back and are living happily on some far distant world.”

“That…that is a lot to take in.”

“True.”

Find an anchor, don’t let your thoughts get sucked into the magnitude of implications he just put forward. “So, those without gates?”

“Ahh, yes. Humanity as we should be, before we were perverted and broken. They are true humanity. I’ve always seen them much as I see babies. They are defenseless in a merciless world. They are to be protected, pitied, and preserved to the best of our ability.”

“That’s a bit patronizing.”

He gave a half smile. “I feel much the same about you. You may be a toddler to their infancy, but you are still woefully weak in a world that has no love for you.”

“But it needs me.” Somehow, she didn’t really feel insulted by his words. I am less than a child before what he could do.

“But it needs us.”

“Can they ever do magic?”

“Those without gates?”

She simply nodded.

“Of course, but they must approach it as the arcanes do. They must absorb the magic that surrounds us, cultivating it within themselves, hoarding it for use later.”

“But our cities don’t allow that.”

“They do not.” He looked to a clock on the wall. “But time has gotten away from us, and we both have much to do, I believe.”

She stood. “Thank you, Master Jevin.” Tala gave a deep bow. “You are so far beyond us, but you protect us, guide us, and-”

She was cut off as his hand caught her chin and forced her to stand upright. “I’ve already told you,” his eyes were hard but not unkind, and his hand was gentle but irresistible, “I do not want veneration or worship. I will take your thanks and nothing more.” After a moment’s pause, he pulled out a slate. “Well, that and three gold ounces for the darts.”

Tala laughed, verifying the transaction was just that and confirming it. “Very well. Thank you.”

“It is my pleasure.”

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