ddwebb
patreon
D - 0 - 8
🕑 Added 2023-12-27 01:51:52 +0000 UTCTzi and Scio both screamed, stumbling backward, and once again she lost Sunbeam; the spell required constant focus to maintain, which was the reason she didn't prefer using it for light.
“Master?” The Grimoire's voice was slightly muffled; Scio had seized and clung to Tzi from behind, pinning it in its pouch with her body. “In case it wasn't apparent at a glance, that was a statue.”
“...oh.” Tzi swallowed heavily. “Right. Of course.”
Once again she had a little difficulty casting Sunbeam, but got it shining again on the second try. This time, at least the monster's appearance wasn't a surprise, though it still wasn't awfully pleasant to look upon. Holding up her wand to illuminate it, Tzi crept on down the hall for a closer look, Scio shuffling along with her skinny arms still around Tzi's waist.
The corridor ended in an open landing area, the walls curving out to the sides from the resulting doorway. A flat wall lay directly ahead of them, and standing upon a stone dais with its back to that was the statue, cast in what looked at a glance like copper.
“What...is it?” Tzi asked, holding up her wand to study the depicted creature.
“It's a Syrr,” Scio said in a tremulous little voice.
“Oh. Is it...life sized? That thing has to be three meters tall!”
“How should I know? I've only ever seen carvings of them. They've all been dead for ages, memories be glad.”
“Obviously, master, we know nothing of the artistic traditions of the Syrr, but on our world at least it is common practice to make statues larger than life.”
“True,” Tzi mused, craning her head back to stare upward at the sculpted creature. “That's a relief. Though I don't know why, if they're all gone...”
Unlike the Mirbals, the Syrr wasn't even humanoid. It had no legs, but a long snakelike trunk culminating in a tail upon whose coils it balanced. No less than six arms extended from its serpentine body, resembling insect limbs in their thinness; its hands were likewise lean, each with an opposable thumb and only two fingers, which were almost as long as its forearm. Instead of a reptilian head to match its body, though, the Syrr's countenance more resembled an insect's dominated by four enormous, faceted eyes above a pinched little mouth. It had no visible nose, but did sport two finned growths from atop its head which looked vaguely like ears. The statue's hands were occupied: it was holding a scroll, a rectangular tablet of some sort, a long rod tipped in a wider piece like the crystal on Tzi's own wand, a dagger, and a multi-pronged whip. Its last hand, the lowermost one on the left, was held out before it, palm up and fingers slightly bent. The gesture looked like it could have been meant as a welcome, or a demand for tribute.
“They're dead,” Scio muttered to herself. “All dead, they aren't here, it's just a rock.”
“It's metal, actually,” Tzi murmured, which reminded her that she had a way to gather more details. Raising her wand, she focused and cast Divination at the statue.
Her Grimoire floated out of its pouch and opened to display a new entry. “This is a statue of Insil De-Ati Ahn Sha, master, a personage of some historical significance to the Syrr. I surmise that they were long dead when this statue was constructed, though unfortunately your Divination is not sophisticated enough to extract more historical data.”
“I'm practicing it, okay?”
“It was not a criticism, master! Statues are statements of what a culture values, not repositories of its history. Extracting such data from one would be very advanced Divination indeed. You may find this more relevant.” It turned a page to another new entry. “The metal of which the statue is formed has two names: the Syrr called it en-cha-tai, while the Traveler word is orichalcum.”
“Hey, I've heard of that!”
“Yes, master, there is an entry on it in the basic textbooks from which you made me, but I don't think it is the same thing. More likely a case of Travelers applying a word they knew to something vaguely similar, as in the cinnamon stick trees. This alloy is a room-temperature superconductor, and harder than any other substance known to me. It is also much heavier than most metals, being extremely dense. Unfortunately you don't know enough about metallurgy for your Divination to have revealed the process by which it is made, nor even its component elements.”
“Well, it's not like I'm gonna be setting up a foundry,” Tzi said. “More importantly, can I Conjure this stuff now?”
“I believe so, master, in very small amounts. Its unusual density and energy-conducting properties might make larger Conjurations difficult; this is clearly a magically-derived material, and enchanted objects cannot be Conjured. This is as close to inherently magical as I think it is possible for a mundane material to be. I don't think this is the proper time or place to experiment, though.”
“I think you're right about that,” she agreed as the Grimoire slid back into its pouch. “Well! Let's leave old Insil to his business and keep on, shall we?” Tzi grinned over her shoulder at Scio. “Rub his tail for luck.”
“You can't be serious.”
“I wasn't. In fact, probably don't touch anything in here unless we're sure it's safe. My Divination should detect traps and curses but let's not take needless risks.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Scio muttered, shuffling along so close behind Tzi that she kept bumping into her leg.
The hallway split at the statue of Insil De-Ati Ahn Sha like a stream parting around a rock. Seeing no apparent difference in the two corridors which curved to either side, Tzi and Scio went left. And indeed, once past the wall against which the statue stood, the space opened out again into a single chamber, much wider than it was long, both doorways leading to the same room.
This one was more decorative, lined by more statues of Syrr—these in stone, and less detailed than the orichalcum one out front, their depictions clearly more stylized. Ten of them marched along the sides of the long chamber, each ensconced in its own alcove facing the center of the room. All were identical, holding up two torches, with three hands positioned along the long haft of each.
No sooner had Tzi and Scio stepped into the chamber than those twenty torches flared to life, filling the room with a warm orange glow and causing Scio to yell and skitter back around the corner.
Tzi stayed and carefully studied her surroundings. Upon closer inspection, each of the stone Syrr had two stone Mirbals at its feet, kneeling in poses of supplication. Whatever else could be said about the Syrr, they clearly didn't go for subtlety in their symbolism. That aside, this chamber was downright ornate, carved with geometric decorations along its borders. The route ahead consisted of a raised path of tiled stone occupying about a third of the width of the room; to either side the floor was set with murals in abstract patterns of red, blue, and gold, which appeared to be made of fragments of glass and metal. At the opposite end stood a single door, wide and tall enough for the Syrr statue in the antechamber to comfortably pass through. From this distance it was impossible to tell what lay beyond it; the light didn't penetrate far.
Tzi turned to examine the back half of the wall against which stood the statue, finding it mostly unadorned, though there was a single horizontal line of engraved script at about her eye height in a language she did not recognize.
Scio poked her head back around the corner. “Is it safe?”
“I dunno if I'd go that far,” Tzi replied. “There are enchantments active in this room, I can feel it.”
“Well, yeah. The fires came on when we stepped in! I dunno how it is on your world, Tzi, but here, fire doesn't just do that!”
“Not that,” Tzi replied, narrowing her eyes in concentration. “That's a simple proximity trigger for a small, mundane physical reaction. I could probably make an enchantment like that, and I barely know anything about laying permanent enchantments at all. This is... It's significant that I can feel it, Scio, a stable enchantment should be almost inert unless it's actively doing something.”
“Uh oh.” Scio began edging back into the hall. “Can you tell what it's doing?”
“Nothing aggressive, obviously,” Tzi murmured. “This is familiar. Master Knauer taught me something about...what was it...” She closed her eyes, trying to root through her memory. “Grimoire? Anything?”
“I'm afraid I don't know, master. If Knauer taught you something in person that was not part of your textbooks, I regret that it will not be among my pages.”
She tilted her head back, growling softly in frustration. Forcing herself to relax, she let her mind wander for a moment; a wizard's mind was disciplined, and the proper technique for maintaining it could be counter-intuitive at times. When a memory resisted coming, often the solution was to step back and not try to force it. Instead, she resumed examining their surroundings.
The torchlight was actually rather easy on the eyes, especially close by where her wisp still drifted around, adding a silvery cast to the light. Sunbeam had cut off once she wasn't actively maintaining it, of course, but the wisp would endure for up to an hour; simple illusions were among the most stable effects.
“Illusion!”Tzi shouted right as Scio crept up behind her again, making the Mirbal jump. Grinning in triumph, she raised her wand. “I knew this was familiar. Illusions to fool the mundane senses are incredibly easy to create and maintain, but they always give themselves away to a wizard!”
Dispel was one of the most important spells for novice wizards to learn; Master Knauer had drilled it into her before teaching her any other actual magic, just to be certain she would have a basic ability to neutralize her mistakes before they got out of control. Tzi had thought he was being over-dramatic until the first time she set her bed on fire.
As such, the sigil came with a remembered feeling of frustration and the lingering smell of the vanilla crème pastries Knauer was always eating—memories she could have done without. But her psy was in a good state generally and the spell worked. A wave of Tzi's magic surged out from the tip of her wand, washing across the chamber and wiping away the illusion.
She barely had time to notice that most of the floor had vanished when the smell hit her. It was old, and thin, but without the illusion to mask it, the acrid sweetness of decay was unmistakable. Behind her, Scio gagged, rapidly waving a hand in front of her nose.
It turned out that most of the room was a pit, extending straight from one wall to the other with the statues standing at the edge of a steep drop. There was a path across it—a long, winding path which began in the mural section to her left and meandered back and forth over the chasm, unsupported and charting a course that no one could possibly have discerned accidentally if the illusion were still in place.
She crept up to the edge of the drop and peeked over, already knowing what she would see.
They were standing on an overhanging lip; the wall cut inward beneath them. It was a five-meter fall to a floor covered entirely in jagged, uneven spikes of obsidian, ranging from needle-like spires poking up every square meter or so to a rough carpet of prongs beneath, interspersed with more spikes of every size in between.
Lying among and impaled upon them were the corpses of Mirbals.
Many were skeletal and jumbled together. None looked terribly fresh at a glance; they seemed to mostly be in varying states of mummification. A few still had fur. Tzi didn't linger to take a head count, instead retreating quickly from the edge with a hand pressed over her mouth to suppress a surge of nausea.
Scio skittered back with her, having approached to peek over at the same time.
“Well,” the Claedh girl said in a weak little croak, “now I guess we know why people disappear in here.”
Tzi swallowed heavily. “You wanna stop here?”
“We can't,” Scio protested, scrunching up her face. “You haven't learned any magic! All we've found out so far is the Syrr were evil brutes, and we already knew that. Look, it's obvious what the trap is and thanks to your magic we can get across it, right?”
“That was the first trap,” Tzi pointed out. “I've got a feeling it's going to get worse.”
“Well...it's your adventure, Tzi. I've got your back, whatever you wanna do.”
She started to draw in a deep breath, then immediately thought better of it, grimacing at the smell. “No, you're right. All this was for a reason and I'll never accomplish anything if I turn tail at the first sign of danger. It's a reminder, though. We have to be careful in here.”
“We knew that, too,” Scio replied.
Crossing the bridge was an agonizing process for several reasons. The meandering course of the thing made it take far longer than getting from one side of the room to the other reasonably should, and even Tzi's minimal grasp of engineering told her the structure should not have been able to hold up under its own weight, much less that of people upon it. It did, though, whether due to magic or its own innate composition. Her attempt at Divination only revealed the materials of its surface layer (basalt tiles, a kind of very hard cement made from local volcanic stone, and the murals were colored glass set in actual gold) without touching the thin lip of darker substance underneath, which was apparently bearing all the weight. She was not about to monkey around on the edges trying to Divine it from below.
There was also the obvious danger of the trap, made worse by the untouched remains of the slaughter it had already created. Fortunately most of the fallen Mirbals were clustered right under the forward lip of the pit where they had unknowingly stepped right into oblivion; once Tzi and Scio got a few meters out on the bridge they were no longer creeping along above dead bodies. They did pass directly over one poor explorer impaled through the ribs on a spike who had made it almost halfway before losing their footing.
Surprisingly, there was another pile of bodies at the other end. A much smaller one, and much older; all the remains there had been long since reduced to loose bones. At one point, apparently, Mirbals had been trying to leave this place in haste, rather than get into it.
Tzi had to stop and lean against the wall once they reached the other side, deliberately steadying her breath. Scio spread herself out flat on the floor as if embracing it. Her tail was still puffed up in agitation.
Leaving her alone to gather herself, Tzi peeked into the doorway. It was a large aperture, easily two meters wide and three tall, but surprisingly dark beyond; the unsteady light of torches mostly framed it as a black void. Now, poking her head in far enough that her wisp illuminated the next passage, she discovered that it was in fact a round stairwell; the passage began descending in steps immediately beyond the door frame, bending to the left and passing quickly out of view.
“You okay?” she asked, turning back to Scio, who was just clambering to her feet.
“Yep,” the younger girl said shortly. “Sorry. I can handle caves, and heights, and traps, and danger...that was just my first time seeing a whole lot of dead people. And, y'know, having to handle all that stuff right on top of it. Like, literally, on top...”
“You don't have to explain anything to me,” Tzi assured her. “Believe me, I get it. This next bit looks fairly ordinary; let's get outta here.”
“Yeah,” Scio agreed, joining her and then following down the stairwell, Tzi setting a deliberately sedate pace to avoid either of them having an accident in the relative dimness. “Though now that I think about it, to get back out of this place we're gonna have to go and do the same thing again, aren't we? Only in reverse.”
“Try not to think about that,” Tzi advised. “Think about this instead: we're in a staircase.”
“Yep, I noticed,” Scio grunted, hopping down the steps one at a time. “Thanks for not hurrying, by the way, this is a pain. It was always my least favorite part of using Gates, the steps that lead up to 'em.”
“So, these stairs are normal, for Syrr ruins?”
“I dunno if 'normal' and 'Syrr ruins' are concepts that go together. And no, those are short stairs, five or six big awkward steps at most, usually. They don't spin around and around like this.” They had already descended so far in the endlessly spiraling stairwell that it was impossible to judge how deep they had gone; one stretch looked exactly like the next.
“Well, that's what I mean,” Tzi replied. “Because these are a pretty comfortable stepping height for me.”
“Must be nice being a Traveler,” Scio muttered.
“Which is what I'm wondering. If those statues depicted Syrr, they don't even have feet; ramps would work for them better than stairs. And if they used Mirbals as servants and wanted them to be able to get around in their buildings, it would make more sense for the steps to be sized for Mirbals. So why did they build staircases on a Traveler scale?”
“Huh,” Scio mused, slowing for a moment before hurrying to catch up again. “You know, I'd never made that connection. The steps by the Gates were just uncomfortably big. But they were about like this and if these work for you, maybe they were designed for Travelers.”
“We have been told that Travelers have been coming here to study magic for a long time, master,” her Grimoire observed. “They may have been doing so since before the Syrr's disappearance.”
“And doesn't that raise a whole bunch of ominous questions,” Tzi said grimly. “Regardless, we'd better put that aside. Looks like we're here.”
“Oh, good,” Scio groaned, descending the last few steps to stop alongside her in the doorway. “Because I couldn't take much more of that hopping and I wasn't looking forward to trying to rest on those steps. So, uh, where are we?”
They emerged onto a narrow ledge overlooking a large, square room with a high vaulted ceiling. The entire thing was laid out in a grid of cells, or cubicles, five by five, each chamber about three meters square and twice that in height. They weren't very restrictive, at least; from this angle it looked like every wall separating the cells was more door than wall, leaving the cells open and interconnected. The walls across the front row were solid except for the one in the middle, providing a single point of entry. This room, also, had the benefit of firelight; torches were positioned high up in the cells, near the tops, in every corner. It made for a profusion of light sources that was downright bright compared to the staircase, or even the pit chamber above.
“What's the point of that?” Scio asked after they had stared at this display for a while.
Tzi shook her head. “I don't know. Look, there's another door on the other side of the room, just like this one.” It was also several meters off the ground, reached by narrow stairs leading to a ledge identical to the one on which they stood. “And I don't see any other doors, so...that's where we're supposed to go, obviously.”
“Right. Which means we've gotta pass through the little rooms down there.”
“They look pretty...harmless. Apparently you just walk through.”
“And that is what worries me,” Scio said, taking her hand. “Because there is noway it's that easy.”
“Right,” Tzi replied, slowly breathing in and out once to center herself. “Well, standing here isn't getting us anywhere. Let's check it out.”
Scio grumbled at having to descent more stairs, but seconds later they were on the floor, standing in front of the first opening. Tzi cast Divination at the wall, aiming for the border of the doorway.
“Stone, master,” her Grimoire reported. “Granite blocks and mortar. There are powerful enchantments present, but unfortunately your Divination is not sophisticated enough to reveal them in detail.”
Tzi sighed. “Okay. Let's go ahead and try what worked before.”
Casting Dispel was a bust, though. Her first two attempts fizzled outright, though her psy felt stable enough that it should have succeeded. On the third try, concentrating as fiercely as she could manage, Tzi was able to actually verify that her wand projected the spell at the wall, which was where it disintegrated.
“So...what're you up to, then?” Scio inquired, watching this (and Tzi's increasing frustration) with her ears twitching.
“Trying to Dispel the enchantment,” Tzi grunted, finally lowering her wand. “Like I did with the illusory floor up top. It's not working.”
“The Syrr were clearly wizards vastly beyond your level, master,” her Grimoire said helpfully. “That is, after all, why we are here. Testing your Dispel against an enchantment they intended to be permanent in a contest of brute force is likely futile.”
“So...we have to just go in there, then,” Scio said fatalistically.
Tzi frowned in thought. “Yes...but...I think it'll be okay, Scio.”
“How do you think it'll be okay?”
“If I was able to Dispel the illusion in the first chamber, it's obviously because I was meant to. If you just want to keep somebody out, you do it with walls and barriers, not elaborate setups like...whatever this is. I think this is a test.”
“Hey,” Scio said, her ears suddenly standing straight up. “Yeah, like we were just saying—the stairs are designed for Travelers. Travelers can do magic, but Mirbals can't. What if all this is just to make sure that only wizards can get in here?”
“It's a solid hypothesis,” the Grimoire said, “but based on very incomplete data. I caution you both not to rush to conclusions.”
“Good advice,” Tzi agreed. “Either way, we're just wasting time standing here. Stay behind me, Scio.”
“As always,” the Mirbal agreed, stepping up and taking a grip on Tzi's belt as they finally entered the first cell.
The nature of the trap immediately became clear.
Within the cells, the view of the adjacent chambers marched away into the distance in four directions, including the way they had just come, which should have led right back out of the complex. The door path opposite the entrance was only five chambers deep; those to either side should have reached the wall after two. But along every path lay a progress of identical doorways and chambers that vanished into infinity, like a perspective point exercise for novice artists.
Scio emitted a high-pitched whine.
Tzi stepped experimentally back through the door by which they had just entered, this time paying close attention and noting that there was indeed a tingle of magic pressing upon her senses as they passed through it, the Mirbal still clinging to her. There was not, as she had half-expected, anything barring their passage, but instead of being outside the complex again they were right back in another identical cell with an endless progression of matching cells extending in four directions.
“Well, now what?” Scio demanded. “We're trapped! We'll be wandering in this forever until we starve...”
“Easy,” Tzi soothed. “It's a test, remember? Some kind of puzzle. There is a solution, we just have to figure it out; it'll just take wits and patience. Enchantments like this would take a huge amount of effort to set up, the Syrr wouldn't have done it just to be sadistic.”
“I keep forgetting you haven't grown up with stories about the Syrr,” Scio grumbled. “They would absolutely have done that.”
“Well, I still think it's a little early to sit down and wait for death. Come on.”
Tzi started with the obvious measures, backtracking to the entry cell and, keeping careful count, exploring two chambers to the left, then back and the same to the right. Then, again returning to their point of entry, went forward four more cells to where the exit should have been. Her progress was a bit slow, as Scio kept a grip on her belt the whole time, but Tzi didn't begrudge her that much comfort; in truth, the Mirbal's company was benefiting her own psy.
Nothing came of that, though. Every point she went to, and all the chambers in between, appeared identical: the center of an eternal march of matching cells spreading out in all visible directions. For good measure, Tzi progressed back to the sides and, still counting carefully, tracked her way for five chambers before turning left, and then the same again four times, circumnavigating what should have been the outer border of the whole complex. The doors leading off from what should have been the walls were not illusory; she could step right through them into the chambers beyond. Finally she led her companion to the center square and began a much more careful examination of its walls, doorways, and attached torches (these were placed symmetrically in all four corners of every chamber near the top, making them useless as landmarks).
“So,” Scio said, turning to watch Tzi Divine every single stone around one of the doors, “it looks like it doesn't make any difference where each room should be, right?”
“I guess,” Tzi muttered, trying to master her growing frustration as her Divinations revealed nothing but granite bearing some inscrutable enchantment. She turned to try again with the torch sconce on the left; maybe there was some subtle variation in them that could be used to navigate?
“Well, how about we try to get lost, then?”
Tzi stopped, lowered her wand, and turned to blink at Scio. “How could we get more lost than we already are?”
“That's exactly what I mean. We don't know where we are, and I've got a feeling it's not where we should be no matter how carefully you counted rooms. So we have nothing to lose by aimless wandering. If there's some secret to solving the maze hidden in one of the rooms, it makes sense they wouldn't have put it right where a basically methodical person would've immediately found it, right?”
“Maybe,” Tzi said, turning back to the torch. “Let me finish trying this, first...”
“Hey, you go right ahead. We've got nothing but time.”
A wizard was rational, purposeful, controlled. Wandering at random was practically antithetical to everything Tzi had been taught. She found herself muttering the recitation as she meticulously Divined each torch in turn.
“Magic demands focus. Magic demands concentration. Magic demands calm.”
“Does magic demand talking to yourself like a crazy person?” Scio inquired.
“Don't say crazy,” Tzi replied automatically, lowering her wand and glaring up at the fourth sconce, which had betrayed her by revealing no difference from the other three.
“Oh. Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude.”
“Ehh...” Tzi heaved a sigh and ran her free hand through her hair, lowering her wand to her side and turning back to Scio. “Never mind, I guess it doesn't matter. I wasn't offended, it's just a wizard thing. We never, ever call someone crazy.”
Scio tilted her head, one ear twitching in what Tzi had come to recognize as her pose of curiosity. “How come?”
“Here, hold my hand. I officially don't have a better idea, so I guess we'll try wandering for a while.”
“Worth a shot!” Scio said with a bright smile, placing her slim hand in Tzi's. “We used to do that, before the Khetri came to Xyzz and things got so tight. Just...wander around, go where we hadn't been before. It's risky, but it's also a way to discover new things. You never know what could be important! Mother got a lot more cautious later...”
“Works for me,” Tzi agreed, leading her through a door to the left. Now that they were trying it, she found that moving in actual random patterns was a counter-intuitive process for her. After two rooms, she decided that idle chat was as good a distraction as any. “Anyway... The thing about the word 'crazy' is it's dismissive. Minds don't just break, they...adapt in unhelpful ways, and usually in one of several specific and well-documented ones.”
“I guess it is kind of a cruel thing to say,” Scio murmured. “I haven't met many crazy people. Mother kept us away from anybody who got too weird. You never know when they're dangerous.”
“But you can know, is the thing. It's something wizards in particular have to keep track of. A lot of mental illnesses are congenital, but some can develop later in life. Some are brought on by trauma or other experiences. All of them dramatically affect the way you use magic—or whether you can at all. A wizard must understand psychology and be prepared.”
“Huh. So, crazy people can't do magic?”
“It's more that...” Tzi shook her head, mulling over phrasing while taking two right turns. So far, nothing new had revealed itself in their wandering, but she had already lost all track of their position. Which might have been to the good; she suspected her mental map was rendered inaccurate by the maze, and therefore a hindrance. “Magic demands focus, concentration, and calm.”
“Yeah, you were mumbling about that.”
“To do magic, you have to cultivate a mental state of...all that, basically. It requires meditative practice to improve mental discipline, but also caring for your emotional well-being. Emotions have to be kept in balance; sometimes powerful emotions can really boost magical ability, but over the long term being emotionally unstable makes it very hard to focus enough to cast spells.”
“And being crazy affects that!”
Tzi nodded. “More importantly, the specific type of mental illness affects it, and in very different ways. Like, for example... Depression makes it basically impossible to do magic at all. Mania boosts its power significantly, but not predictably. So, bipolar people go from being amazingly powerful to completely incapacitated; they don't make good wizards. Some conditions on the autism spectrum are great for magic, others the opposite. That’s a whole range of related syndromes rather than a single consistent one. Psychopaths can barely use magic even a little—which is pretty fortunate. They just don't have enough emotional depth to sustain a proper psy.”
“A proper what?”
“Oh...psy is how we call the general state of mental energy necessary to do magic.”
“Ahhh...so...you burn your, uh, psy to cast spells? Like we burn food to do everything else?”
“Not exactly.” Tzi was beginning to have fun with this; she'd been accustomed to the idea that it would be a great many years before she would be teaching anyone else about magic. “Psy isn't inherently diminished by doing magic, at least not directly. It's a measure of your overall mental and emotional state, so of course it gradually diminishes when you do anything tiring, and magic is tiring. Doing a lot of magic will wear down your psy until you have to rest and rejuvenate it, but then, so will doing a lot of anything.”
“Huh,” Scio marveled. “I never would have guessed magic was powered by happiness.”
“No, no, happiness is an emotion. Feelings come, they go; they definitely affect your psy, but a wizard's whole goal is to have a properly disciplined mind that's less susceptible to emotional changes.”
“It sometimes amazes me how much you don't know,” Scio said, sounding oddly wistful. “Happiness is a state of being, Tzi. A way of moving through life that determines how your emotions react to whatever you encounter. You're right, feelings just come and do what they do...but an awful lot of what you feel is a choice. Everybody gets angry or sad or happy at times, but we decide whether we're going to be angry or sad or happy people.”
“Hm,” Tzi grunted, mulling that. It wasn't at all the way Knauer and her textbooks had directed her understanding of psychology, and it might not be wise to absorb too much of the outlook of pre-agricultural primitives on this alien moon. At the same time, what the Mirbal said made some sense to her.
They progressed through three more chambers in silence. Left, straight, right. There was no visible change in their surroundings.
“So,” Scio asked suddenly, “what's blood magic?”
Tzi sighed heavily.
“I'm just trying to understand you,” Scio said, a little defensively. “I can tell just from the name it's bad news, but it's not like I'm gonna run off and start doing it. Mirbals can't even do magic, remember?”
“I'm still not sure how much I believe that,” Tzi muttered. “Anyone sapient should be able to... Well. Blood magic is...cheating.”
Scio's ears twitched. “Oh. So Mirbals actually could...?”
“Not likely, you'd need to know how to do magic the proper way, first. Okay, magic is powered by psy, right? A wizard becomes more powerful through self-mastery, by being a serene and focused person and insulating themselves against emotional turmoil. Except you need to have a fully functioning suite of emotions for it to work, and a properly agile mind, so repressing feelings and over-regimenting your thoughts don't work and can even stop you from using it at all. That's the normal way. Blood magic is a way of powering spells not with the mind, but with life.”
“Well, that doesn't sound so bad. I like life!”
Tzi glanced down at her. “By ending life, Scio. To cast blood magic, you have to kill something. Hence the name.”
“...oh.”
“And aside from the inherent awfulness of that, it's horribly inefficient. Mental magic, proper magic, is fully self-contained. When you perform a ritual sacrifice you only get the tiniest amount of the released life force as power. It's like trying to catch smoke in a net. Um...” She frowned at the girl again. “Do Claedh use nets?”
“No, we mostly hunt with spears and arrows. Sometimes rope or pit traps.”
“Ah. Well, a net is a woven—”
“I know what a net is,” Scio said in exasperation. “We trade for fish with the Raihan.”
“Right. Sorry. Anyway, there's a lot of energy in a living thing—a lot. But the little smidgeon of it you can harvest with blood sacrifice won't power very many spells, and this is what makes blood magic even worse than it obviously is to begin with. You always, always have to be killing more and more things. There's a lot more power in sapient beings—people. And most of all in magic users. So as a blood mage needs more and more power, they inevitably end up murdering a bunch of people and then other wizards. And the worst thing is, the only reason for someone to turn to blood magic is they don't have the mental stability to do magic the right way anymore. Which means they're not only killing people to get their power, what they do with that power is bound to be something dangerously irrational. It's a vicious cycle of evil and destruction.”
“Got it,” Scio said solemnly. “Blood magic is very bad. And, uh...that's what the guy you were learning from was doing?”
Tzi came to a stop, staring down an endless row of doorway and seeing nothing. “I guess I didn't know him as well as I thought. I'm really worried about the other apprentices. Wesker and Rhynnian are both farther along than me...but they're not a match for Master Knauer. And they don't even know he's turned to...” She trailed off, grimacing against the bitter reality she could do nothing to change, from here on the other side of the universe.
“Well, don't dwell on that, it can't be doing your psy any good,” Scio advised. “More immediately! I have no idea where we are, but I'm pretty sure this isn't getting us anywhere. How about you?”
“Yeah, I don't know how long we should aimlessly wander before deciding whether it's working,” Tzi agreed, turning in a slow circle to look at all the sameness around her. “Aimless anything is outside my training... Grimoire, what do you think?”
“Have you tried inspecting the enchantments upon the doorways, master?”
“No good, my Divination spell isn't strong enough to scan them, remember?”
“Yes, master, we lack the means to identify the specific enchantments. However, your own senses are sufficient to discern their presence, and possibly their relative degree of power. If you can discern that some doors have stronger enchantments, it may provide a starting place from which to work out the pattern.”
“Hey, that is an idea,” said Tzi, stepping back to the door through which they had entered this particular cell.
“Maybe, going forward, we ask the Grimoire in the first place?” Scio suggested.
“That is part of its job,” Tzi agreed. She stepped over to the next door in a clockwise rotation, and then to the rest in turn, pausing right before them and concentrating on the tingly sensation of magic at work. At the last, she frowned, then continued to the right to study the first door again, then stepped back. “This one. This one's different.”
“Different how?” Scio asked.
“The enchantment on it is less powerful,” Tzi replied, stepping back and frowning as she carefully studied the door frame. “I should've been paying attention to this from the beginning... It doesn't exactly jump out at me, but it's not hard to tell the difference once I focus on it.”
“Okay.” Scio seated herself cross-legged in the middle of the cell, curling her tail around herself. “That one door has a less powerful enchantment. What do you think makes the difference?”
Tzi rubbed her chin, pondering. For a few minutes there was silence in the chamber. Scio betrayed no impatience beyond the rhythmic bouncing of the tip of her tail, simply letting Tzi think.
“I have a hypothesis,” Tzi said at last. “Illusions are stable, low-power enchantments, we saw that in the pit room up there. And we know the Syrr could make permanent teleportation apertures; that's what those Gates have to be. That would use a lot more power.”
“You think some of these doors are...little Gates? I dunno. You haven't seen a Gate yourself, they don't look anything like this. For one thing, you can't see what's on the other side by looking at them.”
“That would be really easy to cover up with an illusion. Suppose this is the maze, Scio! It's still a five-by-five grid, but in each chamber, one door leads to the chamber next to it, while all the others teleport you to some place completely different in the maze.”
Scio straightened up, her ears perking upright. “So...if you can sense which doors are Gates and which are just illusions, all we have to do is go through enough of the illusion doors to get a sense of where we are physically in the maze...”
“And then we can find our way to the exit!”
The Mirbal bounded to her feet. “Yes! I have no idea if this will work but I am all for not sitting in here and waiting to starve!”
Naturally, it was easier said than done, but the method proved viable. They proceeded more quietly, Tzi now concentrating on keeping a mental image of the rooms through which they had passed; one chamber at a time, her inner map grew. When she had charted six rooms, not quite positioned to reveal the full shape of the grid, Scio introduced another complication.
“So, um, I notice you've been going through the first door in every chamber that's only an illusion. The last two, it was the second one you, y'know, scanned. What if there's more than one in each? Cos if it's just the one then we're basically following a single path but if we have to figure out the actual maze...”
Tzi hesitated, frowning, then shook her head. “It shouldn't matter. It's five cells by five; there's a stark limit to how complicated this can possibly be. There just isn't room for a really complex layout in here. C'mon, we have to be getting closer.”
“I'll be glad to get outta this hole,” Scio agreed in a mumble, edging closer to Tzi's legs.
In fact, it wasn't hard at all once she caught on to the door trick. The very next illusory door they passed through spat them back out of the grid, leaving the two blinking in surprise in the wide area below the ledge reached by stairs to either side. Behind them ran the long wall dividing the room, with a doorway in its center leading back into the maze.
Tzi grinned. “Whew! I—”
“Don't forget the layout!” Scio interrupted. “Not yet, anyway, we might have to go back through. I remember both ends of this room looked pretty much identical and I'm not sure we're not right back where we started.”
“Oh.” Tzi's smile melted into a scowl. “Right, good thinking. Only one way to know for sure. Well, at least this is a reassuring piece of information about this whole...whatever this place is,” she continued, leading the way up one of the staircases to the ledge and door above. “These obstacles are only a problem if you don't know magic. It seems the Syrr were just trying to limit access to this place to wizards. As long as we take our time and think carefully, hopefully we'll get through whatever's left without much problem.”
Further discussion was cut off because they had arrived at the top of the steps, before the door into the next chamber. The good news was that it was, indeed, the next one, and not the way they had come in; they would not have to backtrack through the maze again. Potentially less good was that they were no longer alone.
The room past the doorway was a long gallery, a single path leading to a broad dais beyond, flanked by a row of columns atop which stood more orichalcum statues of Syrr. A dim blue light, reminiscent of the glow of Dysland itself, illuminated the space, seemingly coming from crystals set into the columns, and in artful patterns along the walls and ceiling.
The room was practically full of Mirbals.
Too many to count at a glance, though there had to be dozens of them at least. They stood stiffly in orderly ranks lining the path, among the pillars, every one of them staring at Tzi and Scio. Unlike the mottled and varying coloration of the Claedh she had met, every one of these had fur of pure unbroken white. Their clothing, too, was of more advanced make than anything the Claedh had. In fact, they were clearly in uniform, consisting of robes and tunics of sleek blue fabric embroidered with subtle geometric designs.
Opposite the door, atop the dais, stood a single Mirbal alone, staring down the path at them. Following a short, stunned pause in which the new arrivals gaped at this scene, he raised both his arms.
“At last,” said the Mirbal in charge. “At long last, the time has come.”
Comments
Aaradur
With teleportation gates, it could be that these mirbals could be the khetri coming from another facility
Too Much Sanity May Be Madness
Uh oh. It looks like Tzi, by virtue of being the only one curious/magical/adventurous enough to make it this far, possibly since the Syrr went away, has found herself as The Prophesied One. I wonder if these Mirbals even know that the Syrr are gone for good.
