ocean-life Book II. Chapter 74 -
Book II. Chapter 74 -
Ardan tossed a pencil into the air and caught it again. A current of air from the ventilation system—finally adjusted and tuned to perfection—stirred his hair. Finally, he no longer had to endure a stifling heaviness that alternated with an overly sharp, cold draft in the “Stables.”On the shelves of the bookcases in this laboratory—which doubled as a training ground—treatises were piling up. Ard brought any books he didn’t want to keep at the apartment on Markov Canal here, which was practically everything related to Star Magic.
Lately, he’d been trying to spend less time doing research at home, and more time with Tess. At first, he’d thought that would mean devoting less attention to magic, but he soon realized it was the opposite. It was much easier to focus on his futile attempts to unravel scientific intricacies while at the “Stables” than at home. Here, he was distracted by neither the noise of the street, nor any abstract, distant thoughts, nor—most importantly—by his own urges, which were far more eagerly drawn to a certain red-haired beauty than to any book.
The alchemical equipment had also grown with new devices, distillation apparatuses, and a whole array of second-hand but still serviceable flasks, test tubes, beakers, and crucibles.
The one thing that still troubled Ardan was the fact that he would soon run out of accumulators for the generators powering the complex system of shields, after which the testing platform would shut down.
“By year’s end, I need another sixty-eight exes for two accumulators and fourteen exes for fuel,” Ardan mumbled under his breath.
Aside from the obvious generator issue, at the start of the next month—when the lease on the contract Bazhen had drawn up would come into effect—they would have to buckle down and get to work on their apothecary in the Firstborn Quarter. And there, beyond the obvious financial costs, complications of a completely different sort could arise, caused—albeit unintentionally—by the interview that Her Imperial Highness, the Empress-Consort, Duchess Oktana Anorsky, had given in the paper.
“The aristocracy and their titles...” Ardi whispered, recalling one of the pamphlets of the socialist party that Lord Boris Fahtov had been toying with joining.
Speaking of Boris and Elena—because of his journey to Angel’s Tear, Ardi had nearly lost touch with his friends. He needed to pay them a visit. Not to mention the Grand itself, where Ardan had missed nine days of classes.
And then there was the deciphering of Driba’s grimoire, which was hidden in the cellar right next to Aversky’s treatise titled: the Magical Boxing qualifiers and his preparations for them; and his own research besides, which, for now, had yet to yield anything particularly satisfying.
In front of Ardan, who was sprawled out in his chair, lay a half-filled, hundred-and-twenty-page notebook containing notes dedicated to one single thing:
“This will take years...” The young man exhaled.
In all honesty, he made a bit of progress in his investigations into the possibility of transmuting runic links, which might allow for more freedom within the rigid parameters of Star Magic. But so far, all he’d managed to do was use computational crutches to organize a complex interaction among all four types of runic links in a seal.
And this complication had not only increased the Ley expenditure by nearly one ray in each Star (), it had also added considerable weight to the resource that was the least significant for the first two Stars—namely, concentration. Or, in the language of non-Star science, mental load.
This referred to how much strain a mage’s brain could endure before it lost the ability to process information.
“Artificial Stars...” Ardan repeated for the umpteenth time, tossing and catching the pencil. “None of Lea Mortimer’s research that we managed to salvage from the vampire’s manor had any direct connection to artificial Stars.”
And what did that tell him? That the Spiders, and therefore their masters—the Puppeteers—had not made it their goal to create an entire army of short-lived but relatively capable mages that each had only a single ray in their Stars.
Realistically, the igniting of an artificial Star with one ray didn’t really upset the balance of power all that much. That was because creating such a Star was one thing, but learning how to manage it was another matter entirely.
What would be the point of a mage of the first two Stars suddenly igniting four more if their untrained mind proved incapable of withstanding the load of, say, a four-Star seal? That phenomenon alone accounted for the vast difference between Lea Mortimer, with her artificial Stars, and someone like Mshisty.
But then why did they need artificial Stars?
“There’s something here...” Ard encouraged himself quietly. “There’s definitely something here...”
He cast a sidelong glance at another notebook, where he kept his records on the spell, which was intended to give him a sort of numerical superiority in battles. If Ard could manifest and maintain his concentration when controlling even just two “Dolls” while simultaneously dueling and using other seals, then… To some extent, that could, if not outright nullify, then at least bridge the gap between him and the many dangers he had found himself facing.
“I need to find out...” Ardan mused, setting the pencil down on the table and rubbing at his stiff neck. “Can other Star Mages use the spell?”
Ardi had suspected for some time now that Nicholas the Stranger had perhaps never come anywhere close to tightly interweaving the art of the Aean’Hane with Star Magic. His book had been gathering dust on the shelves of the “Stables” for a while now, since Ardan hadn’t been able to find any information in it that would be useful to him, aside from some expansive musings on magic and seals.
For his era, Nicholas the Stranger had been a groundbreaking researcher, gingerly treading on the very cutting edge of progress. But these days, so many years later, his notes were of no particular interest.
Except, perhaps, for one remark that Ardi still occasionally puzzled over:
When he’d first read those lines, Ardan had only briefly dwelled on the discrepancy, but had never returned to ponder that strange passage. For one thing, a year and a half ago, he hadn’t been all that concerned with Imperial history. He’d finished school, received his certificate, and had no longer had the threat of a bad grade or a failed exam hanging over him.
And later on... The whirlwind of events had swept him up entirely—not to mention the fact that, on the very same day he’d noticed that inconsistency in Nicholas the Stranger’s book, he’d met Yonatan and Cassara. That day, his grandfather had died, paying for his many sins with his life.
It was no wonder that Ard had forgotten about that discrepancy for almost eighteen months.
“How could he have known about the Dark Lord if several centuries separated them?” Ardan drawled, casting a thoughtful glance at the dusty book.
After coming to that realization, Ardi had pored over the ancient grimoire several more times, from cover to cover. But nowhere else—not a single page—did he encounter any mentions of a Dark Lord.
Back then ), Ardi had chalked it up to Nicholas being an Aean’Hane, and thus having lived long enough to witness both the Empire’s founding and the Dark Lord’s rise. But... but! In that case, Ard would have noticed signs of the evolution of Star Magic in the grimoire’s pages, yet everything Nicholas had worked on was, as Mart had once pointed out, outdated by a good five centuries.
So how, then, was such a thing possible?
“Either someone edited the grimoire,” Ardan murmured, drumming a simple rhythm on the tabletop with his fingers, “or there was another Dark Lord and another civil war that no one besides Nicholas knew about, or... It’s yet another riddle with no answer.”
And he remembered it every time he even so much as thought of the book that had, in the past, laid the foundations for his development as an Imperial Mage. Without Nicholas the Stranger’s legacy and the years Ardan had spent studying it, he likely wouldn’t have managed to avoid flunking out of the Grand after his first exams.
“But if someone did edit it, then... why? And, most importantly, who?”
Alas, those questions weren’t just “thoughts for tomorrow,” but “thoughts for some other, entirely different time.”
For now, Ard was more worried about the and their incredibly high demands on a mage’s mental endurance, and the feeling that he might’ve found one of the threads in the Puppeteers’ web.
In recent months, the young man had arrived at some musings regarding Star Magic and the art of the Aean’Hane. Were there further differences, beyond the obvious ones, between the two branches of arcane craft? Ardi could often handle things all on his own in situations where even Yellow Star Mages required external apparatuses and instruments.
The most obvious example of this peculiarity was how Ardan could sense and, at times, even stationary shields. Of course, one could claim that this was due to their high Ley-saturation, but...
“Klementiy and Parela need complicated contraptions,” Ardan murmured aloud, repeating his own thoughts. “And they have four Stars each... And what Anita said, about being able to see a seal with more than just your eyes... That’s reminiscent of how Speakers and the Aean’Hane can see the Paarlax field.”
And what if the key similarity lay in precisely this realm, where the differences seemed plain for all to see? What if it wasn’t just Star Magic that directly affected a mage’s brain, forming within it Ley nodes that scholars had dubbed “Stars?” What if the art of the Aean’Hane also, in some way that was far more subtle and imperceptible, affected the mind?
“Then one could find a connection between artificial Stars and the Homeless Fae,” Ard said, rising to his feet and beginning to pace alongside his desk—much as Edward once had. “What kind of connection? I have no idea. But it exists... It must exist.”
And, in order to confirm his theory, Ardan—despite how absurd it might’ve sounded—needed Agatha Spree. The same Blue Star Mage whom, later this very evening, he was slated to face in a duel. And if he didn’t score at least one point, he could frankly forget about advancing out of the qualifying bracket and into the main tournament.
Losing to Agatha without scoring a single point would doom him. Not even a total victory in all his duels after that would be enough for him to advance.
“Marvelous,” Ard sighed, surveying the papers strewn across his desk.
Seal schematics, notes, the scattered sketches of future research projects, and personal conjectures—all of it lay in a wild disarray that even Ardi himself was sometimes confused by. And, most unpleasantly, his own mind looked much the same: a jumble of separate, disjointed thoughts and ideas. In barely fifteen minutes, the young man had managed to ruminate on the Puppeteers, Nicholas, Magical Boxing, and transmutational runic links.
“I need to learn how to set some priorities,” Ardan pronounced his own disheartening verdict. “You can’t grasp the ungraspable. I tried last year. That’s enough of that.”
With those words, Ard grabbed his coat, hung his grimoire at his belt, checked the accumulators on his fingers, and, leaning on his staff, headed for the exit. Agatha had, after all, offered to spar with him before the match, so why not take her up on that offer quite literally?
Especially since Ard, after their last get-together at the club, now knew where the Blue Star Mage lived. He could only hope that on the day before their match, Agatha wasn’t galivanting across the entire capital, but had stayed home. Otherwise, the trip would be wasted.
***
The taxi, biting off coin after coin from Ardi’s outstretched hand, pulled up in front of one of the high-rises of the New City. Ardan was not very familiar with this district, so he relied on his internal compass and the one landmark by which he always found his way.
The high-rise where Agatha Spree lived with her husband and children stood a few intersections away from New Time Avenue—the main street of the New City district of the Metropolis and also the longest and widest street in the entire world. In second place, surprisingly, was one of the boulevards in Dunsfield, the capital of the Confederation of Free Cities. But that was only because it served as the main commercial artery of a city that lived and breathed trade. Dunsfield boasted the largest port in the world, the longest loading docks, and the most-
“Thank you,” Ard interjected. Rubbing his temples, he cut the driver off and stepped out onto the street.
After half an hour of listening to a lecture about Dunsfield from a former Confederation resident who had moved to the Metropolis a few years ago, Ardan was in need of a respite. Unfortunately, the humming, clanging district of endless high-rises, thousands of pedestrians, and hundreds of automobiles did not really encourage peace of mind.
Catching curious glances from the passersby who weren’t all that accustomed to the sight of a staff and the regalia of an Imperial Mage, Ardi cut through the throng on the sidewalk and approached the doors leading into the building’s foyer.
No doorman greeted him, and everything inside looked far more modest than, say, at Le’mrity’s Castle Tower. There were no polished marble floors, no attendants in ornate livery, no coffee tables with plush sofas.
Clicking his heels across a floor that, while clean, was simple wooden parquet—scuffed here and there, and pleading for a new coat of lacquer or to have its scarred patches hidden under rugs—Ardan walked up to the elevators. The lone concierge, who sat bored behind a worn information desk flanked by rows of mailboxes, did not bother to stop him.
Agatha Spree lived in a perfectly decent area; it was just that her building, which had been constructed at the dawn of the first industrial boom—when rooftops had first begun to climb above the eighth floor—now paled in comparison to its younger brethren.
What bothered Ard the most was that in older high-rises, which “only” had up to twelve floors, the interior stairwells were accessible only by key so strangers couldn’t get in. This practice constantly sparked debates in the Firefighters’ Guild, but for now, it remained unchanged.
And so, clenching his teeth and even his small fangs, Ardan had to step inside a demonic iron box suspended over a dark chasm by only a few seemingly-thin metal cables.
“Think positive thoughts,” Ardi panted, trying not to pay attention to the creaking and swaying of the lift car. “Think of something good...”
“Sir?” The elevator attendant eyed the youth with suspicion while Ard struggled to detach himself from the situation—though the shirt clinging to his back hinted at the futility of that effort. “Are you all right?”
“Yes... I will be in a moment...”
When the doors opened on the top floor, Ardan burst out from the cramped confines of that infernal device with the alacrity of a fox springing free of a snare.
Brushing himself off as if he’d been dirtied by something and ignoring the slightly alarmed—even somewhat frightened—expression on the lift operator’s face, Ardan approached the one and only door on the floor. Yes, Agatha Spree’s apartment, despite the building’s now-unfashionable status, occupied the entire top floor.
This clearly hinted that the Blue Star Mage was far from destitute.
Straightening the lapels of his jacket, Ard reached out and pressed the doorbell. Beyond the handsome door of stained cherrywood, a melodic trill rang out. Soon enough, he heard the patter of girlish footsteps—about thirteen years old, roughly forty kilograms in weight, and standing approximately...
The door swung open, nearly striking Ardan in the knee.
What looked to be an almost exact copy of Agatha appeared on the threshold—only the top of her head barely reached Ardan’s navel, and she wore her thick hair in braids gathered into a tight, bristling bun that was a chestnut color.
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“Hello, sir...” A thin little voice piped up without a trace of fear.
“Ard Egobar,” the young man said, reaching reflexively to tip an imaginary hat before catching himself. “I’m here to see your mother. Is she at home?”
“Yes, of course,” the girl replied, showing not the slightest bit of hesitation or shyness. “Please, come in, Mr. Egobar. I’ll go get her.”
Ardan gave her a grateful nod and stepped into a spacious entry hall that was larger than the sitting room he and Tess shared. The pint-sized copy of Agatha scampered off somewhere into the vast apartment, which was furnished simply but tastefully.
This home favored openness and ample light over opulence. A breeze murmured through the gauzy curtains, gladly stealing into the house through windows thrown wide open. Ardi’s nose and ears told him that there were several other children in the apartment—three girls and one boy. Guessing their ages was trickier, since sound conveys size well enough, but doesn’t always betray one’s years. But unless one of the children was carrying a bit of extra pudge or was growing faster than usual, the Spree children had likely been born one after the other.
It was astonishing that Agatha, who’d managed to bear and raise five children, had found time to ignite a Blue Star and hone her magic as well. One could, of course, give part of the credit to the nannies and servants—the traces of which Ard noticed thanks to small details and the faint hints of unfamiliar scents—but many well-off families of both mages and ordinary folk had help of that sort.
“Ard?” Agatha appeared in the foyer, clearly surprised, wiping her hands on a thoroughly ordinary apron and wearing a house dress and comfortable, well-worn slippers.
As always, her iron-gray hair was wound in a tight bun that coyly hid the last few chestnut strands beneath the silver. She had a short neck and a waist gone soft—though that was owed not to overindulgence at the dinner table, but to the fact that she’d birthed five offspring.
“Madam Spree, I...”
“We did agree to use first names,” she said, interrupting him. Stepping closer, she offered her hand.
Ardan was momentarily petrified, unsure of what exactly he should do. Kiss the back of it or shake it? Knowing Agatha, probably the latter.
He gingerly, carefully shook her hand—finding it unexpectedly strong and firm, and taking care not to cause any pain.
Agatha smiled at his brief confusion and gestured down a roomy corridor, which could have served some households as a proper reception hall.
“My pear strudel is just about ready, Ard. The children asked for it... Will you have some? Or are you not allowed to?”
“My apologies,” Ardan declined a bit regretfully.
“A pity,” Agatha sighed lightly. “So, tell me, Ard, what brings you here...” She glanced at the slim face of a not-inexpensive wristwatch. “...four and a half hours before our match?”
“I have a question, madam—Agatha,” Ardi corrected himself a touch awkwardly, and drew from his grimoire a sheet bearing one of the variants. “Here. Please have a look. Would you be able to something like this?”
Agatha studied the schematic for a few minutes, then rolled it into a tube and handed it back to Ardi.
“Do I need to sign something?”
“In what sense?” the young man asked, puzzled.
Agatha lifted her dark gray eyes to peer into his own. “Ard, I know where you work,” she whispered, a little more quietly than the situation truly required. “And maybe I’m not well-versed in Star Engineering, but... I have never seen links like these in a complex seal, nor such a method of attaching them to contours. What this monster, anyway? Something from the Black House’s R&D department? I have no idea how I’d even go about casting something like this.”
Ardan felt a slight dizziness. Could it be that after so much time, he had finally stumbled upon a thread which, even if only in the incredibly distant future, might lead him to the solution of a years-long—if not centuries-long—puzzle?
“I’m sorry for dropping by so unexpectedly, Agatha,” he said, feeling his pulse quicken with excitement, and enthusiasm pounding in his temples. “But could you come with me to the training grounds? I realize I’m pulling you away from your family and your strudel, but this is very important.”
Agatha looked at him again, this time with a blend of excitement, curiosity, and a measure of wariness. Perhaps she suspected that the matter truly did concern the Second Chancery. In the past, Ardan would have hastened to disabuse her of that notion, but now... he remained silent.
What did that say about him?
Probably nothing good.
“Irina,” Agatha called out.
The same slender, miniature copy of her mother who had opened the door for Ard a few minutes ago appeared at her side. As Agatha removed her apron and pulled a coat from the closet, she issued instructions to her daughter.
“Take the strudel out of the oven in fifteen minutes and brush it with melted butter... Also, make sure Georgiy takes his castor oil on time, and don’t forget that when your father comes-”
“I remember everything, Mama,” the girl interrupted her with a cheerful, carefree smile. “And Mama… perhaps you should change into a different dress?”
Agatha, who had just thrown on a well-tailored, dark blue coat made of the Foothills Province wool Ard knew so well, started, then thanked her daughter.
“Give me fifteen minutes, Ard,” Agatha requested, a bit out of breath.
“I’ll wait downstairs,” Ardan replied, not wanting to further impose on the Sprees with his unannounced visit.
Wanting to make use of the downtime, Ardan, jaw clenched once more, voluntarily stepped into the elevator for the second time that day. The lift operator in charge of the buttons and lever regarded him with the same wary look from before.
“Going down?” he asked curtly.
“Down,” Ardan confirmed just as curtly.
Before long, the young man was standing on the street, his collar turned up, watching the crowd. Humans and Firstborn moved past like a living river along the sidewalk, each flowing toward their own affairs. And Ardi watched them and... occasionally caught curious looks directed at himself. Indeed, in the New City, there were almost no resident mages. Those like the Spree family were the exception rather than the rule.
And it wasn’t a matter of cost, since living in Old Town was pricier, and perhaps not as convenient. It was simply that here, amid the endless skyscrapers...
Ard rubbed the pads of his fingers together. The dead Ley here, in this realm of countless kilometers of Ley-wiring and tens of thousands of generators, felt different than in Old Town. It wasn’t like an irritating buzz assailing the ears—which one could, with some difficulty, grow accustomed to—but like something stifling. It felt even thicker and more unpleasant than factory smog.
Maybe Star Mages didn’t sense this influence as acutely as Speakers and the Aean’Hane did, but something on a subconscious level likely still drove them to settle closer to the city center, where the dead Ley was less pervasive.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Ard,” she said as she came up behind him. “I hope you weren’t bored.”
Lost in thought about that curious pattern, Ardan hadn’t even noticed the fifteen minutes fly by. Agatha, who was now dressed in her official regalia and carrying her staff, stood beside him.
She stood there as if... expecting something. At first, Ardan didn’t understand what she was waiting for exactly, then explained with a touch of embarrassment:
“I came by taxi.”
“Oh,” Agatha said, and then she flushed slightly. “Oh! My apologies. Sometimes, I forget that you’re just a student. In that case, let’s go—I’ll drive us to the club.”
They turned off the sidewalk, heading under the archway of a small side street, beyond which lay a parking lot belonging to Agatha’s building. Passing rows of cars of various makes—all of them well-kept, with no room in sight for any rickety “Derks”—they settled into the roomy interior of Agatha’s automobile.
Ardan stowed his staff in a special holder between the seats () and did his best to arrange himself so he wouldn’t bump his head against the roof.
“I hope you don’t get carsick, Ard,” Agatha said as she donned a pair of ladies’ driving gloves and turned the ignition key, “because I don’t like driving slow.”
Not doubting Agatha’s word in the least, Ardan braced himself against the back of the seat. What was it about the Metropolis and its female mages () that made it so every single one of them, or so it seemed like to him, had a penchant for dangerous driving?
Agatha pressed the toe of her autumn shoe to the pedal, and the automobile purred like a hungry cat lunging after a fleeing mouse.
Clambering out of the car and leaning on his staff, Ardan felt genuine relief at the knowledge that this was likely the first and last time he would have to ride with Agatha. It wasn’t that she handled the vehicle poorly—on the contrary, she drove quite capably—but she truly did not like to drive slowly.
As for Ardi, it would appear that he had discovered within himself a great fondness for calm, unhurried journeys in which he didn’t have to silently pray to the Sleeping Spirits every time only a split second and a single misstep ended up standing between him and an accident.
“You and my husband would get on famously, Ard,” Agatha said with a smug, faintly triumphant grin. “He isn’t a fan of speed, either.”
“Y-yes,” Ard stammered. “Th-thank you for the ride.”
She threw her head back and laughed out loud, and together, they proceeded—staves tapping out the rhythm of their steps—toward the building housing the Magical Boxing competitors’ club.
Inside, they were greeted by a few idle café employees, who brightened at first at the sight of visitors, but as soon as it became clear that Agatha and Ardi hadn’t come there for a meal, their faces fell again. The mages swept past the bar, tables and settees, disappearing at once through an unobtrusive door.
After going down a narrow corridor lined with what Milar liked to call “trays on wheels,” inhaling the aromas from the kitchen, the two soon arrived at a reinforced door. It wasn’t as massive as the one in Aversky’s manor (), but it was hefty enough to look formidable even against the backdrop of the exposed concrete floor. Apparently, the attention to décor had been spent on the foyer and dining area, and no further.
Agatha stepped up to the door and pulled a somewhat-rusted lever recessed into the adjacent wall. The door opened after a few seconds of torturous waiting that was filled with the screech of unoiled mechanisms—an almost metallic rasp that sounded like the muffled pleas for help of something that wasn’t quite alive.
“It’s long overdue for repairs,” Agatha said with a little chagrin, as though apologizing to Ard. “But all our dues go toward components for the platform. You may not know this, but keeping a testing platform operational—especially when it’s in frequent use—is not cheap. It really does make one understand why the prices at the Spell Market are so high...”
Ardan silently agreed, both with Agatha and with Professor Convel, who always regarded most of Star Engineering with skepticism, whether it was the mechanical or the more magical side of it.
Beyond the several-inches-thick door was a small control room that doubled as a coatroom.
“Coat off, Ard,” Agatha said, indicating the hangers and a crooked walnut wardrobe. “I’ll handle the settings.”
Shrugging off her coat onto a nearby chair, she approached the platform’s control console. She flipped a multitude of switches and twisted some dials, setting the necessary voltage and resistance. Ard caught a glimpse of a gauge and noticed that the platform could withstand up to a Yellow Star—a rather decent capacity, given those same steep prices at the Spell Market. He cast a disapproving look at the crates of miscellaneous equipment, the racks of clothing, and the poorly-assembled walnut wardrobe.
All of it sharply contradicted proper control room standards.
“You, Ard, will soon have to forget the rules your professors teach you at the Grand,” Agatha said.
“Madam, how-”
“Your outfit just screams it,” Agatha clarified with a smile. “By the way, let’s finally drop the formalities, shall we?”
“Certainly,” Ard agreed, and he laid his coat beside Agatha’s.
“Honestly,” she continued, “all those standards and requirements for Star Magic didn’t arise out of thin air, of course”—she opened a panel listing the configurations and began raising some levers and lowering others, and from somewhere below them came the growing roar of the shafts that were spinning in the generator room—“but if you follow them to the letter, then the cost of… well, practically everything, really, will soar. Engineering bureaus would either go broke or lose out to those who, shall we say, find loopholes in the Guilds’ requirements.”
“And in doing so, they increase the number of accidents.”
“Not denying that,” Agatha said, not about to refute the obvious. “But that’s life, Ard. If you conduct yourself honestly in a field where some cut corners, you’ll always lose to them. Those who don’t abide by the rules of fair play will always beat those who are bound by them.”
The last eighteen months flashed through Ardan’s mind, making him shiver involuntarily.
“I’m sorry, Ard,” Agatha said suddenly, straightening up and stepping away from the console. “I wasn’t thinking... My words likely struck a nerve for someone in line of work.”
“No, not at all,” Ard sighed. “It’s fine...”
For a few moments, they stood in silence beside the blinking, faintly rattling console—a massive control panel that outwardly resembled an elongated shipping crate, only made of iron instead of wood.
“Well then,” Agatha said a bit stiffly, though with feigned nonchalance. She was clearly trying to lighten the mood. “Hand over that monstrous schematic of yours—I’ll give forming it a try.”
Ardan nodded and, opening his grimoire, drew out the copied schematic. Initially, when planning his visit to Agatha, he hadn’t even encrypted the core nodes—but he’d caught himself in time and managed to conceal his work.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, but it was important to cultivate good habits.
“What a strange cipher,” Agatha remarked, raising her eyebrows in surprise, which caused her bun of gray hair to dip closer to her neck. “I didn’t pay attention at the house... fascinating. The Black House hasn’t been idle, I see...”
Ard sighed. Wonderful… After this, unless he specified otherwise, all his ideas would be credited to the Second Chancery. Then again, that was only to be expected. To Agatha, the person standing before her was a young student who’d possibly been recruited by the Black House to keep an eye on things at the Grand. It would be silly to expect her to think otherwise.
Ard felt... a sting. Could Milar have been right? Had he spent so much time around Edward that he’d caught some of the man’s pride? A predator would be glad to remain unseen and misunderstood by its prey, and so Ardan should’ve actually felt relief that he could so easily hide behind the Black House façade.
And yet, for some reason, he felt something else. A twinge of discomfort. It was minor, but new—and therefore quite noticeable.
“Alright... We have bridges... All four links... The vectors... transferring tension through the nodes and... some kind of parody of a matroid, and without a second, nested seal,” Agatha muttered as she deciphered the encrypted portion of the seal necessary for casting. “And the links themselves... did you express them somehow? In the encrypted part. I don’t see where the Ley feeds into them. It almost looks like it just disperses throughout the seal... Are you sure it can be manifested at all, Ard, and that it won’t Break right in my face?”
“I managed to do it,” Ardan answered simply.
Agatha shot him a slightly skeptical look, one that contained a fleeting hint of condescension. After all, she was a Blue Star Mage, and he only a Green Star one.
“By the Eternal Angels, Ard,” Agatha said, waving the schematic. “It feels like there ought to be seals here, not just one!”
Ard nearly choked. She had almost immediately stumbled upon the very essence of transmutational runic links. If he ever—no, Ardan eventually, in the far future, succeeded in creating a new principle for forming links, then the need for nested seals... wouldn’t disappear. But! What had once required, say, two seals and a complex bond between them, would now require just one. Which meant that wherever two of them would still need to be used, you’d have needed four in the old system.
And, crucially, such progression could continue practically without end. However, while Ard could, in theory, analyze Blue Star seals, beyond that, his mathematical knowledge stalled out, and he couldn’t rely on empirical experience with Stars above the green one for obvious reasons.
“If this is some clever, underhanded trick meant to knock me out of the tournament, Ard,” Agatha said dryly, “I’ll applaud your resourcefulness—but I’ll also be annoyed.”
It took Ardan a few moments to realize that Agatha was joking.
“Alright, here I go.”
She turned, and rounding the console, stepped over the low rim beneath which the heavy cable supporting the platform’s entire structure lay concealed. The moment Agatha stopped at the center of the broad circle, a faintly-shimmering dome flickered above her for an instant.
Ardan now knew that to other Star Mages, it remained invisible, and that he could discern something thanks to his Speaker’s talents. And perhaps because of that, he was all the more in awe of Lord Aversky’s genius—may the Eternal Angels receive him. Inventing something like this as a mere byproduct of other research?
It would sound absurd and far-fetched if it weren’t true.
“Alright, I’m ready!” Agatha called out. “Attempt number one!”
After a few tense seconds spent studying the schematic, she raised her staff and struck it against the platform’s wooden floor. Beneath her feet, the Ley flared in a blue glow. Stretching and thinning, then converging in long threads into an indistinct pattern, it suddenly bathed the platform in a whitish radiance.
The protective dome flashed and, before Agatha could react, the consequences of the Broken Seal effect dissipated and the expended Ley flowed back to its owner.
“Eternal Angels, Ard!” Agatha exclaimed—more with excitement than alarm. “I’d nearly forgotten what it’s like to shatter your own seal.”
“Maybe-”
“No-no,” she cut him off immediately. “I’m trying again.”
Around Agatha’s feet, a blue glow blossomed once more. This time, the mage approached the casting with the caution of a distrustful cat. From a distance, slowly and carefully, she stepped amid the flares of Ley, assembling the runes, vectors and outlines from them. She wove them together, creating the seal’s pattern...
With another flash, the platform’s dome drank in the Ley spilling out due to the Broken Seal effect.
“Curse it,” Agatha hissed. “Once more!”
This time, she rushed as if the speed of casting would determine not the schematic’s fate, but her own life. And so it took less than a fraction of a second before the platform’s dome flared again.
“Perhaps we should-”
“Don’t you say anything, Ard!” Agatha nearly growled. Sweeping a sweat-soaked strand of hair away from her forehead, she raised her staff again. “I can do this! A couple more tries, and I’ll get it!”
few
Ardan checked his wristwatch. For the past thirty minutes—until finally, after mopping her face with her own cloak, she had plopped down onto a chair beside him—Agatha had been attempting to manifest the spell. A few times, she had even come within a hair’s breadth of a successful casting, but inevitably, time after time, the seal had quite literally cracked apart right under her feet.
Breathing hard, Agatha drummed her thin fingers—each adorned with accumulators and a wedding ring—against the console.
“This is some kind of perverse torture, Ard,” the mage groaned. “Like trying to remember a word you’ve just forgotten... It looks like a normal seal, and I could easily cast it, but missing. I can see it. I it, Ard! I’d normally have no trouble manifesting it, but I don’t understand these links of yours that are expressed one through another. And it’s melting my brain. I start forming it and, literally at the very last step, my head starts to pound and everything collapses. I feel like I’m fourteen again, trying to cast something for the first time. It’s ridiculous...”
Ard, who was listening attentively, made notes in his grimoire. His trials would require both Blue Star and, ideally, Yellow Star Mages. Unfortunately, he didn’t know many people who fit those criteria.
Captain Parela and Lieutenant Klementiy?
Not likely. Something told the young man that bringing the unfinished transmutational runic links into the Black House was not the brightest idea.
“Whoever created this monstrosity,” Agatha said, indicating the schematic with a reddened hand, “is either some kind of mathematical deviant, or an outright genius. And honestly, I don’t even want to know the details of where the Black House dug up this... this
Clearing his throat politely into his fist, Ardan slid the schematic back into his grimoire.
He would need more time to analyze everything he’d seen, to mull over everything he’d written down, and to arrive at any conclusions. In any case, a sample size of just Agatha Spree was far too small to start building any hypotheses, let alone solid theories.
Now there was an interesting thought: had Driba, Mortimer, and the other Puppeteer-backed scholars thought exactly the same thing as they’d crafted their atrocities?
“You said that you can manifest this seal,” Agatha said suddenly, jolting Ard out of the depths of those not-very-pleasant comparisons.
“Yes, I can.”
“Show me.”
Ardan met Agatha’s eyes and nodded. Rising, he took up his staff and, stepping out onto the platform floor, retrieved the schematic once more from his grimoire. Ardan could have managed from memory, but the legend Agatha herself had crafted—that the spell was a product of Second Chancery research—seemed more convincing if he consulted the design.
The young man skimmed the schematic and struck the floor with his staff. At once, his head began to hum like he was suffering from a slight illness or a lack of sleep, but Ardan withstood the pressure. Around his feet, a blue seal gleamed, and around his body, large snowflakes began to dance. Shining streams of them whirled in a ring above the tip of his staff until... an otter leaped out from their midst.
Ard had intended to give the spell the form of a fox (), but he hadn’t yet gotten that far. Even so, the result looked far better than what Ardi had managed to create in the Night Folk quarter nearly two months earlier.
And aside from its appearance, the doll was also more capable now than it had been back then.
“Oh, go to hell, Ard!” Agatha cried out in exasperation.
Strangely, a faint, barely-perceptible smile flitted across Ardan’s face in response.