by Garon Whited
I’m glad I didn’t. I’m not sure a severed hand wouldn’t have wandered off on its own.
After what felt like a few Mondays, it quit changing shape. It was probably about a minute before it settled down into a more normal appearance. A few more seconds of the itching, tingling feeling of my regeneration at work and it assumed a perfectly normal appearance again.
My Ring of Hygiene was missing. Vaporized by the magical surge? Possibly. Probably. I was going to miss that ring. Being clean and human-looking are darn convenient. Well, I could build another one.
For the moment, though, what was I going to do with an already open nexus? Especially one of such power?
I was going to carry on with my plan, obviously. Johann wasn’t going to see this coming. And if he did, he was not going to be pleased with the view.
On the other hand, my existing power-tapping spells weren’t going to be much help, here. I couldn’t simply bust up the containment circles, either. For one thing, I doubted my own containment plans could duplicate the effect. For another, more subtle reason, one does not simply turn loose a thing someone has gone to great efforts to contain.
I examined the circles in greater detail, looking for ways to tap the power of the nexus without turning it into a geyser of power. There seemed to be specific elements to the circle spells for power tapping, but accessing them wasn’t intuitive. I spent most of the night working out power taps.
My watch doesn’t have an alarm, but I do check it every so often. Good thing, too. I had to hustle to get my bucket back.
Tuesday, January 26th
We spent an extra day at the major nexus point. The Captain barely raised an eyebrow when I asked him to keep us there for another day. He simply made it happen, a fact I appreciated. I don’t like making sudden changes in plans, either.
Mary met me when I came aboard—I remembered to put on a human-disguise spell on the way up—and we went through the usual post-dive routine. When I could talk again, I told her all about my find.
“So, this triangular well…”
“Yes.”
“It was the same shape as all the other facets of the room?”
“Yup.”
“And all the others each had a unique symbol?”
“I think so. I didn’t look that closely, but I didn’t notice any duplicates.”
“And the room was an inside-out map of the world?”
“I’m pretty sure.” I shut off the water and toweled off briskly. “Where is this leading?”
“Could each of those facet-things be a marker for another pyramid? On top of a big nexus-thing, like this one?”
“I suppose it could be. If so, I’m sure there’s a family of magi clinging to it like barnacles on a wooden ship. So?”
“Don’t you think such a bunch of magi would have done something about Johann by now? I mean, you said the nexus was open. That means they would have access to all the power they could ask for.”
“Hmm. True. Even if they were trying to avoid notice in the world—easy enough to do with the right spells—the fact Johann is being immensely obvious is something they can’t ignore. At least, I would think they couldn’t ignore it. I mean, they would be able to, I suppose, with that much power, but I don’t know why they would.”
“So why hasn’t anyone done anything? I spoke with the Etiennes and they had words with the Stuarts and the Wilmonts. Nobody wants to challenge Johann because he’s got all the power.”
“I can think of a couple of possibilities, but I can’t prove anything.”
“Come to bed and tell me all about them.”
“If I come to bed, you won’t listen.”
“Spoilsport.”
“I’m not objecting, just stating the facts.”
“All right, come to the sofa and tell me all about them.”
“That might work.” I got into a set of pajamas and a robe. Mary made a rude noise at me from her position on the couch. I joined her and she twined herself about me.
“Okay, talk.”
“Get your fang out of my ear, first.”
“I seem to remember you being more fun before you went off to visit Lissette.”
“I think the key event was being kidnapped by Johann, but I see your point. I hope to be back to my old self after I ruthlessly murder him and laugh while bathing in his blood and other internal fluids.”
“Ewww.”
“You want my what-ifs or not?”
“After that mental image? Yes. Give me something else to picture.”
“Since magi legends maintain Atlantis was a real place, it’s conceivable the Atlanteans built these pyramids as power stations. They tapped the magical pulse of the planet and used it in their techno-magical gadgets. When Atlantis fell, this power network went to pieces. With me so far?”
“Not going anywhere.”
“Good. I’d miss you. So, imagine a number of these power stations going kaboom. Overloads, feedback, whatever can go bad in a system like that does go bad. Pyramids collapse into piles of rubble and eventually turn into haunted hills. Pyramids explode, their craters eventually becoming mysterious lakes. That’s assuming, of course, they built these things on land in the first place; they’d have a lot farther to dig down if they put one in the highlands of Scotland or suchlike.”
“So they might not be on every major nexus?” Mary asked, starting to be more interested in the idea than in nibbling on me.
“Quite possibly. Destroyed or never built, it doesn’t matter. For all I know, the clustering of magi around a few remaining power centers on land might account for the Tinfoil Hat Society’s stories of teachers from Atlantis spreading civilization across the world.”
“Hmm. So, you think this undersea nexus point might be valuable?”
“Immensely so. I plan to tap it and use it. And, later, we have two more on our route. I don’t know if they have pyramids with inside-out maps and labyrinths or not, but I’m kind of excited to find out.”
“Do you think you could be excited about something else for a while?”
“Yes, but I’d like to wait until after sunrise.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not greedy. I can wait.”
“The hell you’re not greedy.”
Today was a good day. I had a wonderful morning, enjoyed four octagonal meals, was soundly beaten at chess by the Captain—anybody who tells me “Mate in six,” is someone I don’t need to play chess with—and did some deep-sea fishing with Mary. In between all this, I spent a good deal of time in my headspace fiddling with the designs of power tap spells.
Yes, I enjoyed the more mundane things, but when it comes to science and magic, I’m a huge nerd.
To be honest, I really don’t understand the appeal of fishing. It seems kind of like gambling, another activity I simply don’t understand. You throw out a hook with bait and hope something big enough to be worthwhile decides to eat it. I’m sure a fishing enthusiast can scream at me for hours about my attitude, but I can’t help it. I simply don’t understand the appeal.
I said as much to Mary.
“Don’t you worry about it, dear,” she reassured me. “There are a lot of things your brain isn’t wired to understand.”
I’m still not sure what she meant by that.
After a quiet afternoon snuggling and watching movies, I dressed for my subaquean venture, waited out the sunset, poured a bucket full of vampire, and sank like a rock.
I did ask Mary if she would like to come with me to see the pyramid. She declined, citing a complete lack of interest.
“My thrill-seeking involves doing dangerous things I can get myself out of,” she stated. “Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel is not on the list. Neither is pretending to be giant shark bait. Besides, I’m not sure I’m as crush-proof as the Ancient Evil from the Dawn of Time.”
“I’m not an Ancient Evil from the Dawn of Time.”
“True, but you are supernaturally dense in
many ways. I’ll pass, thank you. Besides, someone has to stay up here and keep the humans in line.”
The pyramid was right where I left it, which was reassuring. Of course, I landed somewhere completely different from my previous trip. The Princess was keeping station using GPS accurate to within a meter or less, but tides, wind, weather, currents, and all that other oceangoing stuff means there’s considerable Tennessee windage along a couple of miles of cable.
Fortunately, the labyrinth of the pyramid didn’t rearrange itself between trips. At least, it didn’t move since I left it. I negotiated the maze again, descended to the nexus, and started work.
Attaching a power tap to the nexus wasn’t too hard once I worked out the process. The whole setup seemed built specifically for that, with allowances for safety—the equivalent of circuit breakers, surge protection, and so on. It was more complicated than simply plugging into it, of course, but it was the difference between plugging a lamp into an outlet and getting out the screwdriver to actually wire an outlet.
Of course, I didn’t have a simple way to turn off power to the outlet in question, so hooking it up was an exercise in caution. I wonder how the Atlanteans managed.
Once I had the basic power tap spells installed, I drew power from the nexus, fed it back into the spells to reinforce them, and repeated the process eight times—once for each containment circle. When I finished, I had a direct power link to the nexus itself and more power than I knew what to do with.
Suddenly, I knew why all this seemed familiar. Not because I’ve eaten magi or visited Atlantis, but because I’d seen a setup a lot like this before.
The heart of the mountain. In the center is a phenomenal source of power. Surrounding it are layers upon layers of energy-transforming spells, essentially containing the unimaginable fury of the matter-conversion furnace.
The realization was not what I needed. I’m scared of that thing. Now I’m scared of this thing. Wonderful. The undead monstrosity playing with planet-wrecking forces a couple of miles down in the icy waters of the ocean floor is meddling with ancient magical technology he doesn’t understand. Whee. The things I do to kill godlike wizards.
I worked with the forces involved in a secondhand fashion. Instead of directly manipulating the energies and risking being turned into a rapidly-expanding cloud of undead purée, I used spells to manipulate spells. It was awkward, rather reminiscent of using waldoes rather than hands, but it was considerably safer. It did make it easier to build my Johann-attacking spells from the overwhelming energies available. Rather than sucking up power myself, my waldo spells connected the power tap spells into the matrix of the new spells, feeding them power to build them up until they could handle the load of the nexus’ output.
When I finished, I realized I was hungry. I’d been working hard and a large portion of my personal energies were required to start the process of my spells here. I double-checked everything to make sure the nexus wasn’t leaking any tell-tale signs—anything someone might take note of. It would be bad if anyone realized it was being tapped. But it all seemed good. Then it was a look over the spells themselves for proper structure and solidity. I can take pride in the fact I do good work, at least.
It was time to find a seafood dinner, if possible, and get back to the boat.
There’s not a lot of seafood at that depth. At least, not for me. Most of the things I found on the ocean floor were on the small side. I absorbed their energies and snatched what I could on the way back up. Draining the vitality out of fish is adequate, I suppose, but I wasn’t looking forward to another spellcasting session like this. I really needed something more substantial than a few herring and the odd tuna. Is it legal to hunt whales again? Or are they still protected? How about sharks? Nobody cries for sharks.
Once back aboard the Princess and suitably un-seawatered, I gave the Captain the go-ahead. We set out for our next stop. While I wanted to dive into the water and find something to bite, I resisted the impulse—I sink. Instead, I visited Bronze in the cargo hold and lay down there. With a web of tendrils extending down and out through the hull of the ship, everything that swam anywhere near us gave up at least some of its vital force to restore my strength.
Mary came in to check on me, saw I was concentrating, and figured out for herself what I was up to. She quietly left the hold and made sure I was undisturbed. She knows having a hungry vampire on board can be a very bad thing, bordering closely on the catastrophic. I’d prefer it never come to that.
Saturday, January 30th
We stopped for a smaller nexus on the way to the next major one. It went so well, it was almost routine. On the other hand, I keep spending my nights in the hold, sucking up life from anything near the ship as we travel. I’m pretty sure I tagged a whale, but I let go of it before I killed it. It took a surprisingly long time to drain vitality out of it. There was a lot of vitality to be had. Is size a factor? Plankton, jellyfish, schools of minnows—all the small stuff I can drain faster than a photoflash, and the physical remains are eaten by the rest of the ocean pretty quickly.
I let go of it without harming it for another reason, too. The moment I touched the whale, I recognized it as intelligent. Not the same as a human, but not a dumb animal, either. It made me wonder about some sorts of animals and whether or not they have what I loosely refer to as a soul. If we had passed closer, I would have checked. We haven’t encountered any dolphins or porpoises, but the next highly-intelligent “animal” I find, I want to take a closer look.
Going down to the second major nexus was the same as always. I didn’t find a pyramid, though. This one was right on top of the mid-Atlantic range, barely ten thousand feet below the surface. It was a bit awkward, climbing around on an underwater mountainside and trying to keep my face out of the stirred-up mud. When I found the nexus point, it was simply another rocky piece of terrain.
Which posed me a question. If I drilled down to it, how would I use it? I can’t build a containment spell strong enough to hold the surge when it opens. Oh, I could put an Ascension Sphere around it, sure, but if I do that, it’ll be permanent—nothing I know of will ever be able to knock it down. Not helpful when my objective is to get power out of a nexus for use in far-distant lands. I suppose we can go back to the pyramid so I can build the appropriate spells, but it’ll be several days before I can get back here and set it up.
Then again, this is a major nexus point. The magical environment here is stronger than anywhere else on the planet, barring an open nexus. I can cast most spells without too much trouble.
Since the laws of thermodynamics seem to be invalid where magic is concerned, can I create a self-propagating spell that builds itself? Or a spell to build another version of itself, and then those two build a more powerful version, then all three work together to build an even more powerful version? Can I set such a process in motion so it eventually creates a containment spell so powerful it won’t rupture when I crack open the nexus?
Worth a shot, anyway. I sat down on a handy rock and drew magical lines around the nexus to draw in the power and start shaping it. I was also careful to include the new power tap connections and an off switch in the design. I didn’t want to find my containment circles were accidentally acting like Ascension Spheres—too powerful to take down—and impossible to get power out of.
I sat and watched the first generation containment spell double itself. It seemed to go well, but the two of them failed to produce a third. After some troubleshooting, I found the glitch; they were both trying to do the same thing, but they weren’t coordinating. I fixed it and set them in motion again and found another glitch. They didn’t build a more powerful version of themselves. They simply produced two more copies rather than focusing their power together in making a stronger spell.
I grumbled and took the three apart, reconfigured the whole thing, and tried again. This was a tricky bit of magical programming and I kept hitting glitches of various sorts. I won in the end, mainly because I’m stubborn,
clever, and… okay, mainly because I’m stubborn.
Once I had the process going, I watched it run for half a dozen iterations. It seemed to be working smoothly after my lengthy debugging session. As long as nobody touched it, it should continue indefinitely. I decided to let it run the rest of the night and all of tomorrow. If it worked continuously until then, I might risk tapping the nexus. If it fouled up, we’d have to go back to the pyramid. Which would mean we would have to refuel somewhere before we could finish our trip…
I sat in my bucket and sighed. I can do that underwater.
Sunday, January 31st
Mary and I spend our days as a fairly mundane, if quirky, couple aboard her yacht. She’s the owner of record. I’m just the boyfriend. I’ve learned to play shuffleboard, but I can’t say I’m terribly good at it or terribly interested.
There is one thing I’ve learned, and I’m more than a little miffed about it.
We finished pumping seawater out of me and I went through the rinse cycle. All the usual stuff. We sat out the sunrise and did the whole cleanup for the morning thing. I noticed my horrible transformation stench didn’t seem too bad—undersea exploration seemed to agree with me.
During the rinse-shave-manicure portion of the morning, Mary retracted her fingertalons. On Mary, the claws merely look as though she has a dangerous manicurist. On me, my fingernails look exactly like what they are: dangerous, flesh-ripping finger-knives. I usually grind them down with power tools of one sort or another. But she flexed her fingers and they slurped backward about half an inch, moving from finger talons to slightly longish nails.
My language was printable only in the technical sense.
“How come you get to retract your claws?” I complained.
“First of all, I’m not the same species, precisely,” she pointed out. “Second, have you ever tried?”
“Say what?”
“Have you ever tried?”
I examined my fingers. My uncut fingernails didn’t look as though they would retract. They looked lethal.