085, 2/2

Erick walked up to the main counter of the Wayfarer’s Guild, saying, “Hello. I’m looking for Guildmaster Apogee.”

The young incani man on the other side paled a little, as he said, “Master Apogee has retired. His son, Guildmaster Oreellico, is currently upstairs. Would you like to see him, instead?”

“That’s Apogee’s son, right? Fork Oreellico, I assume?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If he is available, then I will see him, instead.”

 

– – – –

 

Erick entered into a very different office than the last time he had been here. Where once were boxes and knickknacks waiting to be put into those boxes, there were now shelves of travel journals and maps and stones of a dozen different varieties. Some of those stones glowed with reds, others with blues. Some were crystals, while others were fossilized seashells.

Fork Oreellico sat behind his desk, with stacks of paper in front of him and a small, glowing globe to the side. Fork was a brownscale dragonkin like his father, but unlike Apogee, he had no horns. He did have small ridges down the sides of his scaled head that were almost horns, but those were rather common among dragonkin. If he had a tail, Erick couldn’t tell. He could barely tell the man’s age. Maybe he was 40? Maybe?

As Erick entered, Oreellico stood from his chair. No tail.

“Hello, Guildmaster Oreellico. Congratulations on your promotion.”

Oreellico smiled, speaking with a deep voice, saying, “Thank you, Archmage Flatt. Apologies if you came here to see my father, but you’ll have to settle for me. Is there something I can help you with? A transportation issue?” He gestured to the chair across his desk, as he sat back down, saying, “Please, sit.”

Erick sat, saying, “I fear I have driven your father off with hints that I wanted to know more of his planar experience, but I suppose I will have to settle for never knowing his story, and that is okay.”

Oreellico looked to want to speak in the middle of Erick’s words, but he just smiled, and nodded.

Erick continued, “So what I’ve actually come here for, is to see if anyone could help me with a Spatial Magic problem.”

“Oh?” Oreellico perked up, then glanced over to Poi, asking, “Please, close the door.”

Poi did so. The noise of the ‘loading docks’ vanished; swallowed by stone and dense, well fitted doors.

Erick said, “I want to try and create a [Teleport Spell] spell, so that I can redirect attacks like the Red Dot away from the city, if such a thing should ever occur again.” He added, “I have completed the ‘Recreate [Blink] Quest’, if that helps, so I know a little bit about what it takes to make a new Spatial spell, but I did that on my own, with some hints from a very, very old book, and the minor insight of another that I had to use an Elemental Body skill. I’d go to the libraries or Oceanside to answer this question of mine, but there is way too much math in all of the modern books I have ever read.”

Oreellico’s eyes gleamed bronze as he said, “I want to help you with this. But. If you do, someday, either far in the future or just around the corner, actually manage to make that [Gate] spell you threatened before, I want to know how you made it, I want your help in making it myself, and I want the chance to properly administrate whatever economic boon comes from recreating a possible [Gate] Network, with percentages and such to be determined later. In the case where I am not able to create the spell myself, I want your help to gain 5 more levels so that I can purchase the Class Ability myself, or complete the Quest for that Ability.” He added, “I do not know what the Quest requires, at this time, but if we work on the problem long enough, I should be able to gain the quest. If we are completely unsuccessful, then there are no requirements for either of us.”

That was a lot, right there. Erick had not expected such a thorough response, or such caveats. Oreellico certainly knew what he wanted, though. Erick wasn’t opposed to any of Oreellico’s plans, but, it would be a good idea to know what he was getting himself into before he began this partnership…

And that’s what it seemed like to him. A ‘partnership’, of some sort, that would likely change a great deal going forward, if everything happened how Erick suddenly wanted it to happen.

Erick said, “I agree, but I need to know some possibly sensitive information, first.”

“Of course.” Oreellico sat back in his chair. “Ask away.”

“What level are you? How hard would it be to gain 5 more?”

“59, and I have been that for 12 years. I have combat skills and defensive skills, but I have tried to kill monsters of a higher level and have only gotten injuries for my time.” Oreellico said, “An escort to any central part of Quintlan would likely gain me the required 5 levels, unless you know of another acceptable way.”

“Have you managed to recreate any of the other Basic Tier Spatial spells?”

“Yes. I have done both [Blink] and [Teleport]. I achieved them through the use of [Air Body], and very little math, though you should know that the math common to Spatial magic is rather necessary to make higher tier spells. [Teleport Object]. [Teleport Other]. I’m sure a [Teleport Spell] magic would be similarly complicated. Or maybe not, if you were to just use a theoretical [Gate] to swallow the target.” He said, “I don’t truly know how that spell works, either, but I have some educated guesses.”

“Educated guesses are fine.”

“I have a question, then, if you’d permit me.”

Erick nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Since you have recreated [Blink], which Elemental Body skill do you have?”

“[Lightwalk]. I made it through my [Familiar], as well. There was no actual risk involved. I just need to know how to work the spell, and with the trick of it all figured out, I brute-forced the solution.” Erick patted Ophiel on his shoulder, saying, “He exploded a few times, but he got better.”

Oreellico’s calm, yet interested face, broke into a huge smile. He laughed, saying, “This is good! I wondered how you managed to not kill yourself. A brute-force solution! Amazing. I have to say, Archmage Flatt, I am very glad you walked through my door today.”

Erick smiled. “I see that I should have come here, sooner.”

“Are we agreed then, with regard to the exchange of services? A mutual exchange of knowledge and technique in exchange for the Wayfarer’s Guild gaining financial control of this theoretical [Gate] spell?”

Erick reworded what Oreellico said, a little, saying, “Provided we can come to an amicable arrangement regarding the division of revenue, I could easily see myself being comfortable working to achieve [Gate] with you and the Wayfarer’s Guild, especially if you and your guild are instrumental in helping me acquire the spells I wish to acquire. I won’t allow financial control over the spell itself, especially with regard to myself using it, but any theoretical [Gate] network would be under your control.”

“Sorry, I misspoke. You are correct. Control over the network, not over your person.”

“Agreed.”

“Excellent. Then we are agreed.” Oreellico chuckled, then smiled, and said in a deep tone, “If you had tried to come to my father with this desire, he would have denied you, for he hates being reminded of his homeland in all ways. His loss is my gain.” He added, “I can draw up the preliminary paperwork by tomorrow, but would you like to get started now? As a show of good faith, I will give to you my understanding of [Teleport], with no need for any recompense until we can finalize the paperwork.”

Erick felt a spark of happy joy. He did not expect this series of events, at all. He said, “I accept. Thank you.”

“I can only give you my own understanding of the spell through my use of [Air Body], mind you.”

“Perfectly fine.”

Oreellico nodded. “The ‘secret’ to [Teleport] is easy enough to explain in minutes, but the execution kills most people, so usually we tell prospective wayfarers to never attempt such a thing, and to keep this secret to themselves. The Script makes magic safe, but this is an attempt to recreate the spells that form the Basic Tier of the Script. This magic is certainly not safe, at all. But, if you can brute-force [Teleport], I have high hopes for our partnership. As a warning: I lost an arm making [Teleport]. It was still considered a rousing success.”

Erick nodded.

Oreellico continued, “By being a breeze through the use of [Air Body], and letting yourself go, you will experience a diffusion of the senses that will enable you to be in many places at once. The secret of [Blink] is shutting off all your senses and feeling your way through that heightened positioning, and then to consciously select the one that you wish to occupy, that was not your original location.” He asked, “Does that sound familiar?”

“Almost exactly what I did, but with a bit different understanding from my own.”

Oreellico nodded, saying, “That is normal. Everyone speaks of the experience slightly differently, but all have a few things in common. The plurality of location. The shutting of senses. The opening of the eyes in a new location, away from the original self.

“[Teleport] is the exact same thing, but spread across hundreds of kilometers.

“But [Air Body] does not allow the user to be in more locations than your own general locality.

“So, we have a conundrum. This is solved by extrapolating the plurality of your location to other theoretical versions of yourself that might have existed, if you had taken a slightly different journey. If you would have gone left down the road, instead of right.

“Now that you are down the right hand road, you just become the breeze that would have been on the left hand road.”

Erick sat there, thinking. Oreellico’s words sounded very, very familiar.

Oreellico said, “It is a very difficult concept for some people to think upon, let alone experience, and that says nothing of the difficulty of actually producing [Teleport]. Achieving [Teleport] is half-trick, half-delusion, since you both are, and are not casting magic at the secondary location.

“This spell recreation is easier for some wayfarers than others, since the idea of wanting to take all roads and see all paths is a natural thought. For others, the way to recreating [Teleport] is through their desire to move forward, to see where the wind takes them, while simultaneously knowing that where they end up, is nowhere near where they would have been if not for any of a hundred different small, daily obstacles, like rocks on the path, shifting their destinations this way or that.

“Succinctly put: [Teleport] is expanding your Elemental Body to where it would have been, if you had been somewhere else.”

Erick smiled, a little.

Oreellico continued, “I achieved this Recreation Quest when I had an epiphany regarding where I wanted to have lunch. At the time, there were two restaurants that I thoroughly enjoyed, but I had trouble deciding which to eat at. I had already been working on this quest for a while, so what I did, was go to a random spot of the Crystal Forest, and flip a coin. I let the coin land on the sand, without looking at whether it was ‘crown’ or ‘rad’. After a nice lunch in Portal, I [Scry]d the coin. It had landed ‘crown’. I should have gone to Outpost.

“And that’s all it took.

“In that moment, I realized I was not where I could have been. It may seem simple in the telling, but for me, it was a timeless moment. Trying to describe that moment is like trying to describe love, or to paint a sunset; millions have tried, but there is always more to say, more to experience. So I will go with the simple version: It was then, that the briefest application of [Air Body] brought me all the way to Outpost, and staring at the ‘Quest Complete!’ notification. I had traveled over 3500 kilometers in a single [Teleport].” Oreellico paused, then said, “After that moment, I was truly a Wayfarer, though I had already possessed the Class for five years.”

Erick smiled, thinking. He said, “Thank you for sharing that with me.” And he meant it. Oreellico’s words sounded deeply personal, but also full of hope.

“Ah!” Oreellico smiled, saying, “But this is transaction, yes? I have seen the good you have done, but this time, the entire Wayfarer Guild, every single branch across all of Glaquin, will come together and make this work. If you can truly recreate [Gate] outside of an impossible Ability Quest, we will change the world.” He spoke with hope in his voice, “We will recreate the backbone of what this world was meant to have, and no one will take that from us.”

Erick felt a happy sort of sadness, at those words.

Oreellico sat back in his chair, and waited.

Erick asked, “I have a tangential question for you: How is it that Spatial Magic involves so much math, but you explaining it like that sounds so much better?”

Orellico laughed. “I worked for years on the maths side of that quest. Forces, distance, the curve of the world and the speed of rotation. The prevailing winds and the threads of intent already saturating the manasphere; all of it plays a heavy role in proper Spatial Magic. I did not attend arcanaeum, but our guild has many tutors. For me, the math was part of how I was able to be in two places at once, but that is hard to explain without the math.” He said, “Now I have a question for you: How did your [Blink] recreation go?”

“For my first attempts I tried using wardlight illusions to copy Ophiel, before placing him upstream in the flow of mana.” Erick said, “That ended in quite a few explosions.”

Oreellico paled for a moment, then laughed in nervousness, and said, “I would imagine so!”

Erick continued, “It wasn’t till I got [Lightwalk] and I used [Hunter’s Instincts] that I realized that everything about the experience of being an ethereal being was subjective. Recreating [Blink] past that was rather easy. I just had to realize what I was doing.”

Orellico nodded, solemnly. He glanced to Ophiel, on Erick’s shoulder, and said, “It is good you have this method. I have heard young Wayfarers speak almost as you have, without regard for the maths of the Spatial Mage. If they come to their senses and learn the maths, I usually hear that they are doing well. If they are foolhardy and brash, I usually never hear from them again, for they have invariably gone on to join Everlin Etherspray in the Ocean.” He said, “I am sure I don’t have to speak of this to you, archmage, and it would be insulting for me to do so, but untrained Spatial Magic is rather deadly. I told you I lost an arm completing the Quest for [Teleport], yes? I lost that arm because when my body resolved back to flesh, the location where my arm would have been was occupied by a wall, so my arm never resolved.

“The [Teleport] in the Script has many safeguards to prevent such an event. But trying to recreate [Teleport] has no such safeguards.”

Erick smiled softly. He said, “I am aware of the danger of making new magic. Thank you for your concern.” He stood from his chair, saying, “But I am sure you are busy, and I must get back to work, as well. Thank you for your time.”

Orellico stood from his chair, saying, “Anytime, Archmage Flatt.”

Erick said, “We’re going to be working a lot together. Call me ‘Erick’, please.”

“Then I would be honored if you would call me ‘Fork’, Erick,” said Fork.

“Fork, then. See you later.”

 

– – – –

 

“He knew about Everlin Etherspray, too!” Erick said, as he diced vegetables on the kitchen counter.

Kiri sat at the kitchen table, drinking a beer, beside a covered ceramic bowl. The dough she had made still needed twenty more minutes to relax, before she could start turning it into pasta noodles. Sunny, her vibrant green couatl-ish [Familiar], lounged around her shoulders.

Kiri said, “That’s not surprising. If anyone has access to whatever legacy Everlin Etherspray left behind, it’s the Wayfarer’s Guild.”

Erick smiled wide. “Yup.” He cut onions, and said, “It’s just so amazing, though. Looking back on it, maybe there was magic back on Earth, and I just never saw it as such. Almost everything he said triggered a memory of something I’d heard of before, though in a very different way than how he spoke.”

“I’m actually more surprised that [Air Body] didn’t create some sort of higher tier magic.” Kiri held out her beer, saying, “You see? That’s what is most concerning for me. Why is [Teleport] still a Basic Spell, since is is clearly derived from another spell.”

“Maybe the Elemental Body skills are representations of natural magic that belonged to the Old Cosmology?” Erick said, “That was the distinct impression I got when reading about Everlin and the elementassi.”

“Oh. Well.” Kiri said, “That makes a lot of sense. I guess I never thought of them that way— But that still doesn’t make sense! [Teleport] should be a tier 2 spell.”

“Eh. I’d imagine that the Elemental Body skills are the secret to many different basic magics.” Erick said, “And that’s another thing I don’t hear about! How do you make a [Force Bolt]? I bet a good, actual archmage, could spend all their points on Stats, and remake everything else from scratch.”

Kiri tilted her head back into a full-throated laugh, her eyes glowing green as she said, “My gods! Maybe! Ha!” She said, “Not many people had those skills back at the Tower, but at Oceanside, almost everyone had one. Air was the most popular, by far, but [Water Body] was a close second, but no one talked of remaking any Basic Tier magic. Maybe this is one of those deeper secrets.” She decided, emphatically, “It has to be!” She asked, “But how to prove this theory? That book where I read about Replication Quests said almost nothing except for the fact that the Quest existed.”

“I still have all those bargains of trade I have yet to collect on. Other archmages would likely know.” As Erick stirred the onions into a large pan full of sizzling ground beef, he said, “Opal offered to teach me [Ward Destruction], anyway.” He asked, “Have you seen Poi? He would know how to contact Opal. Or… Silverite would know. … Or practically anyone in charge, I guess.” He added, “But that’s for another day. There’s too much to do, right now. OH! And I learned what it takes to get Particle Mage.”

Kiri’s eyes became pale green orbs of light, as she focused on Erick with a laser intensity. She played it calm, though, simply saying, “Oooh?”

“Yeah. I’m not going to repeat those requirements out loud, ever, but you should qualify, and if not, then we can work on that.”

Like some great weight released from all of the world, Kiri smiled, her eyes going soft, back to their normal dark green. She chugged her beer in one waterfall moment, then set down the mug and ripped the cloth off of her resting dough, saying, “Let’s make some pasta!”

Erick smiled, asking, “So have you been down to the war room area, lately?”

Kiri tossed flour onto the kitchen table, and slapped the dough down, as she said, “Nope! But let’s go after dinner.” She paused. “Or are you going to try and make [Teleport]?”

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“I’m already doing that, right now.”

 

– – – –

 

Magic was truly a miracle of multiplicity.

Ophiel rode sulfurous skies over mountains made of fire and ash, twisting and rising and falling on plumes of heat, while he also rode ocean waves far down south, where mimics ate kelp on sandy beaches and monsters of the depths tried to snatch at his [Stoneshape]d surfboard.

Elsewhere, Ophiel watched over a market of people buying fresh produce, while simultaneously spraying spells at mimics all the way over in the Wasteland, just so he could be doing something productive with his use of mana.

Another Ophiel taught a different Ophiel about subjects both of them already knew; this was an orcol, this was a wyrm, this was a Shade, and that dark splotch watching from that shadow to the right was either Melemizargo, or someone who was about to have a very bad day for deigning to interrupt Melemizargo’s spying.

Another Ophiel was looking over plans for an artillery spell. He didn’t fully understand what he was looking at, but that was okay. Life was about learning, and failing, and then getting up and trying again. And since Ophiel was more than able to survive almost any possible failure, save for the failures of Erick, Ophiel was happy to try and learn whatever he could, just so that he could save the indispensable from dying his only death.

Bipeds watched as Ophiel’s gentle touch changed the land from black sand to black clay, and deepened the dirt into a depression, fit for the beginnings of a lake. Maybe.

Another Ophiel, flying high over unimportant and unnoticed land to the west, cried tears of [Call Lightning] for those he would never see again. He cried for Valok, and for Krakina, and even for Apogough. He let loose with song and rain that thrummed the sky and cracked the twilight air with bright white lightning. He cried for all the horrible things that had happened to everyone he had ever seen working on the Farms. He remembered singing for them while they were working hard, and now he sang for their souls, praying that they were at peace, wherever they were.

The desert eagerly drank his tears; the land here could only ever thirst for more. Mimics reached up to the rain while agave vibrated in time to the lightning crashing overhead.

Another Ophiel watched from Erick’s shoulder, as dinner was made and served, and the sun dipped down outside.

Another Ophiel watched Spur from above Erick’s Tower, inside the Restful air of the house, bloomed out to his full height and stature, with a hundred eyes that pointed in every direction. He would watch and protect, as he had always done.

And somewhere along the way, each of them began to gently glow, like a perfectly crafted lightward.

And somewhere along the way, and only lasting a brief moment, there had been more than 10 Ophiel; the maximum allowed by the spell.

 

– – – –

 

A blue box interrupted dinner.

 

 

With his fork stuck in twirling pasta with a cheesy sauce, Erick said, “[Teleport] has been remade.”

Teressa laughed. Poi smiled.