124, 1/2

The day dawned with a gloomy haze covering the sky, and remnants of a near-constant, small rain, settled into puddles on street corners, which reflected the green, gold, red, and white lights of the season. A cold wind blew across the Forest, and into Treehome, casting a chill into the air, but doing nothing to hinder the festivities. Some people were still partying, but most of those awake this early morning were either bakers waiting for their bread to rise, or revelers on their way home after a night of parties and fun.

– – – –

The gloom was there, outside his windows as Erick laid in bed. He briefly woke when he thought he heard someone, but that turned out to be nothing but the wind. He closed his eyes, and drifted back to sleep. No need to get up, yet.

– – – –

Erick stood on the porch in the gloomy sunshine, smoking a blunt of blueweed and feeling good, with a warmth spreading through his body, and his belly full of a delicious breakfast.

The sun had risen hours ago, but no one in the suite, besides Jane, had risen until the doorbell rang. Jane had ordered room service, again. A pair of bellhops and their delivered goods almost tried to enter the room when she opened the door, but she stopped them before silver-domed plates and bowls went tumbling. This was how Erick woke to the scents of an already-cooked breakfast. Sweet rolls. Sausages. Syrup and pancakes. Eggs and breakfast tea. Mushrooms and some sort of oatmeal-like soup, both of which weren’t all that bad at all. Erick had never had mushrooms for breakfast, and he had quite liked it.

As he leaned against the balcony, watching the Forest to the north, Erick roughly planned his day. There was much room for adjustment, after the main event was done.

Soon enough, Poi came and said, “Syllea is ready, if you are.”

“Oh? Already?” Erick looked to Teressa, who was cleaning up breakfast, and who had stopped the second Poi mentioned Syllea. Erick asked, “Are you going out today?”

Everyone else within earshot found something else to do.

Teressa waffled for a moment, before saying, “No. Tomorrow, though… I’ll go out there tomorrow.” She glanced toward Kiri and Jane, saying, “We might sign up for a Celebration Hunt tonight.”

Jane whipped around, smiling, “You want to Hunt? Great! Yes! Let’s do that.” Jane instantly locked eyes with Kiri.

“Ehhhh…” Kiri shut the book she was reading, then said, “Well… Yeah. Okay. Let’s do a Hunt.”

“Yay!” Jane said, with enthusiasm.

Erick smirked, then tuned to Poi. “Then I’m ready. Where to?”

“Her house. The backyard.”

– – – –

In the light of day, even as gloomy as it was, Wyrmrest was the most impressive Arbor of Treehome, by far. From high above, he looked like a normal enough tree among a field of grass, with knotty, dense roots that twisted and turned and covered a space twice as much as himself. But if you were anywhere close enough to judge his true size, you would see that those knotty roots were actually normal-sized houses, stacked and nestled among each other in numbers that defied easy counting. You would see the grass that surrounded him was just the normal trees between the Arbor and the rest of Treehome. You would see that his trunk was a few hundred meters wide, which went well with his two kilometer height, to support a canopy that was almost as wide as the tangled houses below.

Erick, with Poi at his side, stepped onto the light a few hundred meters above Syllea’s house. He gazed up, briefly, to see the underside of Wyrmrest; to see the Starfruit glowing among those green leaves like tiny motes of light from afar. Those Starfruit were each the size of a person, but no one could tell that from down on the ground.

Erick turned his attentions back down to the ‘ground’.

Wyrmrest’s primary district was a maze. Bridges connected upper parts together. Stairs ran up and down everywhere. People worked and played and lived inside Wyrmrest himself, and Archmage Syllea was no exception.

… She was a slight exception. Her house was on the top floor of the knots down below, right next to Wyrmrest himself.

Erick saw his target, and stepped down onto a bit of wooden land behind Syllea’s house. The space was an off-kilter, somewhat square dip and rise of wood, of about 20 meters to a side, with three sides belonging to Syllea’s house, each of which had either glass windows or a glass door, and the final side being Wyrmrest’s main trunk. The Arbor of the district named after himself, loomed like a cliff, high above.

Syllea opened the glass door, saying, “Hey, Erick!”

“Hello.” Erick smiled. “Woke up later than usual and had a nice brunch. Thanks for the help in securing that room; it’s been great.”

Syllea stepped outside. “I’m glad you like it.” She got right to it, by saying, “So I was thinking of your dilemma regarding anonymity, Elemental Mercy, and your desire to subdue a target rather than kill them. I have a question though: What sort of people are you considering to use these spells against?”

Bayth stepped out of the house, next, silently holding a pair of chairs. She set them beside the door and sat in one, as she gestured to Poi and the other. Poi nodded, and sat down next to Bayth.

Erick looked around, at the clear air, and the lack of spells in the air, aside from the starfield that was Wyrmrest’s Domain. He asked, “Can we talk openly?”

“Oh yeah.” Syllea waved him off. “Wyrmrest has control over much that happens this close to him. Sound and mana sense only goes as far as he wants it.”

Erick blinked on his mana sense, and sure enough, his sight ended at the walls of this outdoor space. So Erick answered Syllea’s question, “I just want to be generally unidentified around others. But… specifically…” Erick paused. Ah. This was more difficult than he had expected. He tried, “There was this one guy—” His throat closed. Speaking was impossible. He felt both embarrassed and furious at himself for one brief moment, but then he breathed. He looked away. When he turned back, he spoke through the feeling of a stone sitting on his neck, “Specifically, there was this one guy who put [Neck Bombs] into the bodies of children.”

Syllea tensed, but said nothing. Erick practically saw as Syllea reassessed her future questions, but he also saw that she was willing to listen to what Erick said next.

Erick was thankful for that. He continued, “He put bombs in the necks of kids in order to keep his power over the nearby populace. I… I got lucky. I managed something that I don’t want to repeat.” He lost most of the pain in his chest as he realized that Syllea needed to know something. “The guy had a Charisma Stat. When you put two of the New Stats into a person, there’s a reaction. That reaction tore the guy apart. His soul turned broken as it collapsed inward— It didn’t kill him and I’m not sorry I did that to him. He deserved every bit of what he got. But… He could have had triggers on those kids… I got lucky, in that moment those triggers didn’t trigger. But before I did what I did to the man, two of those kids were blown up as a warning to me.”

Syllea seemed to relax, in that way that a person does when the horrible thing they expected to happen, happened.

Erick said, “That’s why I need something to put someone down and keep them down, without killing them. I’m fully convinced that if I just killed the guy, every single one of those kids and many of the people they were near would have died as a direct result of my action.”

“I had heard about you committing some sort of action against a guy… But I had not heard it quite like that.” She stood a bit straighter, stared Erick in his eyes, and said, “What happened was fine.”

Erick almost objected.

Syllea shook her head, and spoke with conviction. “Erick. You and I are the type of people who need to make the hard decisions when it comes to people’s lives. I know you understand this, for you killed that Charisma guy and only had two bits of collateral damage—”

Erick felt his face shift toward disgust.

“—and yes, calling the deaths of two children ‘collateral damage’ is harsh, but life is harsh.” Syllea said, “And that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is shutting someone like that Charisma person down so they can’t trigger whatever spells they might have waiting for a ‘go’ signal. This is best achieved with Mind Magic, but I’m not a Mind Mage, and you don’t want to get burdened by those people, anyway.” She quickly turned to Poi, saying, “No offense.”

Poi just bowed his head, ever so slightly, indicating that no offense was taken.

She turned back to Erick, asking, “Unless you want to go that route? Choosing that path means you aren’t allowed to participate in normal life. You would become a hermit. No one would know who you are after you became a full member of the Mind Mages, because you would remove yourself from their memories. There are archmages that do this, but I only know of them because I’ve been allowed to know that they exist.”

Erick had a lot of thoughts about what Syllea had just divulged. His first one was that he had not expected to hear that from her, but that he really should have; she had been at this archmage-thing for a lot longer than him. His second and third thoughts made him glance toward Poi.

Poi openly lied, making no effort to cover that fact, “Those people don’t exist.”

“Of course they don’t,” Syllea allowed the lie, saying, “I must have been mistaken.”

“That’s not an option for me, anyway,” Erick said.

“Good news, then, because a Mind Mage’s [Sleep] is somewhat duplicated with Elemental Mercy. Or, rather, it’s more like if you compound enough False Damage onto a person they usually go unconscious.” Syllea said, “A Mind Mage’s [Over Mind] is the perfect counter to triggered spells, though. Just so you know, you cannot duplicate that outside of that branch of magic.”

“… [Over Mind]?”

Syllea rambled off, “It’s a spell that wraps the target in a false cocoon of ‘everything is okay’, cutting that target off from all spells they have cast. It doesn’t disrupt more spells or more connections from being formed, but it’s good for an opening spell in order to go for a quick and less painful take-down. If you want the perfect solution to your problem of taking down a person who has planted bombs, [Over Mind] is it, but learning how to do that spell requires you to fully commit to being a Mind Mage. Which you won’t do.” Syllea said, “But now you know what the perfect solution is, which I always try to know before I make my own imperfect solutions.”

“How do you know of that spell?” Erick asked, for he had certainly never heard of much Mind Mage magic beyond the simple ones, like [Sleep] and [Sense Emotion], and the dangerous ones, like [Dominate]. He briefly wondered if Poi had any of those, but he doubted Poi would tell him, which was probably for the best.

Syllea said, “The only reason I can imagine that you don’t know more about various Mind Magics is that you haven’t yet pursued that particular discipline. Either that, or it could be that you’ve only been at this archmage stuff for less than a year. It wasn’t till five years in that I met the Mind Mages.” She shrugged. “And even then, they just told me how to identify and defend against some of the more dangerous mind altering spells. Have they not formally approached you, yet?”

“Have they?” Erick asked Poi.

“Not yet, sir.” Poi added, “You’re too high profile.”

“Ah.” Syllea said, “That makes sense. I might be an accredited archmage, but only a few people ever achieve the level of notoriety you’ve achieved. Which brings us back to the current problem. I’m probably a bit more knowledgeable about your spells than most, but every single new mage out there knows about [Call Lightning], Ophiel, and [Withering]. So you need a new way to fight, to be more low-profile.”

Erick nodded. “That’s the long and the short of it.”

Syllea asked, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re all about large spells and vast effects. Do you have any short range spells at all?”

“I do, but I barely use them. Being in melee is… I’m not good at that.”

“That’s fine. I’m rather poor at melee, too.” Syllea said, “But I can fake it well enough with a few buff spells. Do you want to do the melee-thing?”

“… No.”

“Mid-range mage, then.” Syllea said, “Much easier to acclimate to. Much easier to fit in with all the other mages the world over.” Syllea paused. She asked, “Did you ever do the normal ‘adventurer mage’ thing? From what I heard, you just stayed in Spur, mostly. Except when you came out to Oceanside that one time.”

“That is correct. Oh— I did go on a wyrm hunt once. That was… That was dangerous and I was not truly prepared for that, but it worked out well enough.”

Syllea nodded, then said, “Okay. So you’re… pretty new to the kind of fighting that most people will do in their lifetimes.”

“I have taken remedial adventuring courses at a Guildhouse, as well as done the equivalent of three months of sparring every single day… But I haven’t done that in a while. And it wasn’t continuous sparring… or very good sparring.”

Syllea’s face seemed to light up. “That’s all good! That makes me a lot more confident in helping you.”

“I can do the mid-range mage-thing, even though I don’t have much experience with it.” Erick said, “I really am just looking for spells to appear to be like another person when I’m in a low-recognition environment.”

“I can skip almost everything I was going to say and go right to the magic, then.” Syllea said, “I’m going to ask a few questions. Tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.”

“Okay.” Erick wondered where she was going with this, but it seemed fun. “Sure.”

“Fire.”

Erick recoiled. “Too much lingering pain.”

Syllea tilted her head. “Lightning.”

“I can do that already.”

“Stone.”

“You can hit someone with stone and not kill them?”

Syllea smiled. “Holy.”

“Too angelic.”

“Ice.”

“… Uncomfortable?”

Syllea nodded. “Chaos.”

“Uh. What does that mean, though?”

“Order.”

“The idea is interesting, but what does that mean?”

“Blood.”

“Illegal, but useful.”

“Ooze.”

“Dangerous, but useful.” Erick considered his [Harmonic Blood Ooze] spell. “Very useful.”

“Decay.”

“Lingering pain. Do not like.”

With a slight joy in her eyes, Syllea said, “Wind.”

“I like flying.”

Syllea paused, a smirk on her face. After a moment of thinking, she asked, “What if I told you that you can make painless Decay magic?”

“… I am intrigued. But it’s too slow, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Decay is slow. But a well made Merciful Decay would be a ‘container’ spell; something you cast on someone in order to keep them down.” Syllea said, “Most mid-range mages have a handful of spells that they use all the time; somewhere between four to ten. Not counting all the utility spells, of course. We can make three spells today, or maybe just get started on them. First, you need to be able to use Mercy… Which is a problem for some, but likely not for you. Now…” Slightly intrigued, but withholding judgment, Syllea held out a hand, palm up, and said, “I’ve heard that you can hear the mana?”

A prominence of thick air, like a mirage, bent the light around Syllea’s hand as the sound of reaching out and touching the world combined with some other, subdued sound. Erick readily identified [Force Bolt]. The second part must have been Mana Altering for Mercy. It was kinda hard to understand, but it was definitely the sound of something held back.

Erick said, “I hear [Force Bolt] and Mercy, I’m guessing. Never played around with Mercy before. I have read about it in that book you told me to get. Esoteric Elements. That’s a good book, by the way. Really helped me along in more than a few ways.” While he spoke, he had the Ophiel on his shoulder listen, tease out the [Force Bolt] from Syllea’s mana, and focus on the other sound present.

Stolen story; please report.

Soon, Ophiel sang a song of restraint; muted, and yet full, like background noise turned into a flat surface. Like the stripping of defenses, and a laying low of the opposition. A knife that would never fall all the way. Erick had not heard the full sound of Mercy at first, but he did once Ophiel had sussed it out from the whole.

Erick continued, “And Ophiel helps me with the more difficult sounds.”

Ophiel stopped singing Mercy, and instead trilled in violins.

Syllea smiled. She lifted her left hand toward the center of the open space. A burst of mana conjured a block of crystal from the ground that quickly grew to the size of an orcol. She said, “There’s a target.”

Erick combined Ophiel’s song with his own power, and cast.

A bolt of gold-flecked white slammed into the crystal. A blue box appeared.

Erick frowned a little.

Syllea said, “That one looked good. What were the numbers?”

Erick showed her the box, saying, “Mercy element. Inexorable. 15 plus Willpower.”