4.11 Connections are good, value is better

The biggest pinch of the move is over, so I should be able to keep up with posting from now on again. There's a possibility I miss a post in the first week of June, but I don't think it'll come to that. So, officially, we're back to normal!

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“The duke is going to be there?!” Bernt blurted. “I can’t show up like this, look at me!”

Bernt hastily cast a cleaning cantrip on his robes as he followed Olias down the street. The scuffed bits had smoothed over since he’d “fed” the robe Doreen’s herbs, but he hadn’t had a chance to properly wash them. The spell wouldn’t get the dust out of the fabric, but at least he wouldn’t smell like sweat.

Olias scoffed. “Oh, I promise he’s seen worse. I used to drag Renhild’s half-naked, hungover ass out of the whorehouse every other weekend when we were your age. Besides, he’s a military man. You don’t hold Besermark’s most important border fortress for twenty years by obsessing over which courtier is best-perfumed. Relax!”

Bernt was struck by the absurdity of the moment as he followed the aging Beseri prince through the crowd. Only minutes ago, Bernt had come down this same street feeling defeated after his meeting with Jesra. She’d given him the sense that he had nothing to contribute to the political situation here. And now he was on his way to meet the duke and his court mage. He’d known that Olias was the king’s own brother, but it hadn’t really seemed real until now. He just didn’t act like an important nobleman. He traveled alone without fanfare or guards, addressed everyone as an equal, and spent most of his time talking about wine. At best, one might suspect him of being a wealthy, retired merchant.

Bernt cleared his throat to ask Olias what this meeting was going to be about, exactly, only to find that it was too late – they’d arrived. A gray-bearded guard standing in front of a large, blocky building saluted crisply as Olias swept past him and inside. As Bernt followed, he noted that the walls were heavily enchanted and a thin line of wards had been carved into the stones outside, right up against the building.

At first, he’d expected Olias to take him back to the Mages’ Guild or maybe to the Duke’s residence, but this was neither. The entire place was a maze of spartan stone corridors, brightly lit with expensive enchanted light crystals and bustling with uniformed soldiers in gold and black. Signs guided visitors to various areas, such as an alchemy lab, medical support, logistics, a training facility and a scryer’s office – presumably exclusively for military use.

“What is this place?” Bernt asked, more to make conversation than to confirm what he could see with his own eyes.

“Norhold Central Administrative Command,” Olias said, smiling nostalgically. “They moved in here when the original building in the keep got too small to hold the ever-growing bureaucracy. I used to live here when I was your age. My father thought a few years in the military would teach me discipline and responsibility. It didn’t work, but I made some good friends.”

As they walked, most soldiers ignored them entirely, but a few recognized the prince and stopped to salute him. Nobody spared Bernt a glance, which he supposed was just as well. Olias acted as though nobody else was even there, leading his charge to a nondescript door labeled “Medical Research: Spells, Artificery.”

The room was large, but it was still crowded. Uniformed soldiers filled the space, standing between workbenches, which were covered in tools and mechanical parts. One that Bernt could see had a complicated-looking prosthetic leg on it, as well as a sort half-glove with two mechanical fingers. What drew his attention more, though, was the soldiers themselves. All of their uniforms had colored bands on the left sleeve, marking them as war mages, maybe thirty of them or even more.

“I’ve got him!” Olias shouted over the low murmur of the crowd. “Out of the way!”. The soldiers squeezed back to make a path to the center of the room, where a small area had been kept clear for a chair and a handful of important-looking people. Bernt immediately pegged the bald, white-bearded man in a red coat as the duke. It was clear just from the way he stood there, everyone else subtly angling their bodies toward him, that he was in charge. He eyed Bernt appraisingly with a slight frown as they approached.

Bernt swallowed uncomfortably. Whatever Olias might think, this certainly felt like he was being judged by his appearance.

Another man stood next to the duke, a war mage with pockmarked skin and short gray hair wearing the two braided brown stripes of an archmage embroidered on the sleeves of his uniform – a pure geomancer. If that was Renhild’s court mage, Dalbrand, he was definitely not the head of the Mages’ Guild here. It wasn’t terribly uncommon for war mages to become guild members at some point in their lives, but an active soldier couldn’t be in charge of a local guild – it would be an unacceptable conflict of interest.

In front of the two of them sat an empty chair and for a crazy instant, Bernt wondered if they expected him to sit down in it. Instead, he bowed formally just as he had when he’d met the count in Halfbridge. It wasn’t court, but he thought it was best to be safe. 

When he straightened, he found himself standing alone – nobody was even looking his way. Olias had just kept walking forward, slapping the Duke’s shoulder energetically as he reached him.

“Ha! See? What did I tell you? I told you I’d know where to find him! You owe me four bottles of your best twenty year old red.”

The duke frowned severely and raised an immaculate white eyebrow. “I believe I agreed to three.”

“No, it’s four now, for doubting me earlier! And besides, I worked up a thirst running all over town like that to fetch the boy. Do I look like an errand boy to you? Four!”

“Hmph. I think you need to get reacquainted with water, old friend.”

“Pfff! Loosen up! This is going to be huge, didn’t you listen to Dalbrand? ‘Revolutionary’ is what he said. It’s worth more than one extra little bottle of the good stuff. This is something to celebrate! You can’t celebrate with water.”

“Maybe,” Duke Renhild said noncommittally and returned his gaze to Bernt, “but there has to be a reason the guild hasn’t rolled the procedure out, yet. Let’s see what we have.” 

Bernt could guess where this was going by now and cleared his throat. “My solution to burnout is effective as it is, ah… your grace,” he said, hesitating a moment before he remembered the proper address for a duke. His voice didn’t come out quite right, with everybody looking at him like this, but he grew more confident as he spoke. This was his area of expertise, after all. “It can’t be applied to everyone and there are some side effects. As far as I know, the guild isn’t offering it out of concern for the future development of the affected mages. It adds an additional layer of complexity when it comes to making sure that everything is compatible afterward. It also requires an investment procedure, so we can only do it with mages who aren’t stalled in their development.”

The duke stared at Bernt blankly for a moment, before turning to look at the archmage next to him, who was smiling widely. 

“Dalbrand?”

Unlike the duke, his court mage looked downright giddy. “It’s exactly what I was saying. They’re stalling for no reason, like always, the damned perfectionists. We don’t need to turn our burnouts into archmages. Even if we could just get them back to half strength, it would change everything!” He turned to Bernt. “I asked to do this meeting here in the medical research room. We can get you anything you might need. I got a copy of the process, but it was a little light on detail, and not exactly official, so I’d very much like to see it done.”

“I…” Bernt hesitated, looking over at Olias. The old man gave him an encouraging nod. But… this was a treatment he’d meant for the guild to sell for him. They hadn’t bought it from him, like they had his banefire spell, so he had the right to do whatever he liked with it. Still, that didn’t mean he wanted to give it away for free. This was his best chance.

“I’d be happy to offer you a demonstration,” he answered, thinking quickly. “And, if you’re satisfied with the result, I’d be happy to discuss performing further procedures. I would be grateful for your support in my ongoing research, and…” he finished a little clumsily, “a few other things.”

Best to keep it vague until he had an idea of what and how much he could ask for.

“We can talk details later,” Dalbrand interjected eagerly, even though Bernt had been addressing the duke. The archmage scanned the crowd, then pointed at a small woman with a red armband in the front row. A fellow pyromancer. “Siina, you’re first. Get over here!”

The soldier was only a few years older than Bernt, and he guessed that had something to do with the choice. Most of the mages here looked to be in at least early middle age. Younger mages had more years of good service left in them, at least in theory. Siina must have strained herself severely and often to burn out at such a young age, like he had during the kobold assault and the Duergar siege that followed. More, if she was already at the point where she couldn’t cast effectively anymore.

Moving a little stiffly from having all the attention suddenly focused on her, she stepped forward and sat down in the chair. That wasn’t necessary, of course, but Bernt supposed they didn’t know that. Bending down, he pulled out a piece of chalk and began drawing runes for a diagnostic circle.

“Do you have a material on hand for your next investiture?”

“No, sir,” she shook her head, looking over at Archmage Dalbrand uncertainly. “I’d need a thunderbird’s pinfeather. I wasn’t approved for it after my accident…”

Someone was sent running to the quartermaster, and Bernt took the opportunity to explain the process to his patient and the larger audience.

“For the most part, we start off just like any regular investment process. You’re going to run the damaged portion of your spirit through the spellform like normal. Then, I’m going to use a unique fire spell to burn and wear down the malformed channel.”

There was some muttering at that. Fire didn’t directly affect the spirit, as a general rule. In fact, nothing could normally influence the spirit unless that spirit’s owner purposely allowed it. Hellfire was an outlier in that regard, but it wasn’t terribly likely that anyone here knew that. Madzhur famously still had zero tolerance for demons and warlocks, and it was unlikely that any of the soldiers here would have need to learn the first thing about demons. Just in case, though, Bernt added, “You’ll need to open yourself to its influence for this to work.”

He didn’t need everybody to know exactly what that spell was based on. 

Siina gulped, but nodded.

“Then, we break the circle, and you cycle mana through like normal,” Bernt went on. “The material will regenerate and reinforce the damaged channel and cause the entire thing to manifest physically.” To illustrate, he pulled back the sleeve on his right arm, displaying the fiery veins that glowed out from under his skin there. “You’ll be able to cast normally, though your spells won’t incorporate the new investiture when you do that. If you want to use it, you’ll need to actively cast through it, like this.”

To illustrate, Bernt cast a torch spell – a liquid white orb of fire above his right hand, carefully pinching off most of the new sorcerous channels in his abdomen as he did so. There hadn’t really been time to experiment with his newest abilities yet, and it would be more than a little distracting if he accidentally manifested another strange, living spell like he had at the confluence in the Phoenix Reaches.

“The spells manifest instantly, and they draw on all your normal investitures. There’s no possibility to modify the spellforms after the fact, so it’s fast, but limited unless your architecture is highly self-compatible.”

Her eyes widened a bit at that, and while she didn’t look any less tense, she offered him a small grin. “That shouldn’t be a problem, I’m a firebrand.”

Bernt returned her smile encouragingly, though he had no idea what a firebrand was. War mage architectures were national secrets, after all, and he wasn’t one.

The runner returned, holding a huge feather gripped tightly in one hand. Wind stirred around it in a lazy circle, slowing down and speeding up every few seconds. He held it out to Bernt, who accepted it with both hands and placed it in the circle where it promptly unraveled into its constituent spellform.

From there, the two of them performed the procedure exactly as he’d described. Siina flinched when he began to run the dull red, hellfire-derived flame along her spirit, but he knew from experience that it didn’t actually hurt, so he didn’t interrupt the process. He was a little nervous about this part, since Pollock had done it for him last time, and he didn’t want to accidentally burn through any portion of her spirit. 

When he broke the circle and the material collapsed onto the wispy thread of what was left of her channels, she struggled to circulate her mana for a moment, but then she managed just as Bernt himself had. The weak thread strengthened into a smooth and unmarred channel that took on a slight bluish tint after a moment.

Then she let the finished investiture fold into herself and jerked violently with a shout, slumping down in her chair as Dalbrand reached forward to catch her with one arm. 

Right – that was what the chair was for. Pollock had probably included the fact that Bernt had lost consciousness for a moment in his report to the other guilds. As he watched, a blueish-white pattern emerged on the left side of Siina’s neck – the area where her damaged channel had previously run. 

She sat up again only a second later, blinking rapidly and looking around as if to get her bearings. Bernt took a step back and gave her an encouraging smile.

“Go ahead, you can try it out. Oh, wait… don’t cast through it yet, though. Not in an enclosed space, until you’re comfortable with it.” He’d been lucky, since he had only one normal investiture, and he’d only cast a torch spell. Her insignia marked her as magister sergeant. Who knew what she would accidentally cast the first time?

Nodding, she stood up and raised a hand to sketch a single rune in the air. She finished the spell off with a sweeping, circular flourish and a thin halo of fire manifested high over her head, spinning rapidly for a few seconds before it dissipated harmlessly.

“YEEEEEE!” she shrieked in excitement, jumping up into the air. She was joined almost immediately by the clamoring roar of voices as the watching mages cheered, shouted questions, and tried to push forward to get a better look at Siina’s new, glowing investiture.

Bernt was jostled around a bit until a hand landed on his shoulder, pulling him back and away. He looked up to find archmage Dalbrand shouting something unintelligible at him with a manic grin on his face. Seconds later, he was standing back out in the hallway.

“Sorry, what did you say?” Bernt asked the archmage, still a little flustered by the sudden commotion.

“I said, ‘It appears that we have some things to discuss’,” he said, ushering him down the hall. “I think we can come to an arrangement.”