by K Alexis
Agra was the first to join her. He arrived panting. "What …" He stopped his sentence mid-thought, seemingly guessing what had happened. He ran his hand through the stubble he called hair. "Well, we kind of expected this. Forty years is a long time for a rare book to be—"
"I know," Mea said. "It's my fault for dreaming."
Steh and Tath showed up at the same time at different doors. Steh walked through the one Agra had already opened. He appeared unfazed, as if this had been his next stop on a sightseeing tour. Tath kicked down the emergency exit, its rusted hinges screeching as they tore off. Her bow was at the ready.
"Where are the fuckers?" she shouted at the assembled trio.
"There aren't any," Agra said, patting Mea on the shoulder. "There's no book. It's gone."
"Well … fuck," Tath said. "I'm not in the mood for raiding graveyards and moving corpses to see if they're clutching onto a Hemi ngèr. I ain't in the mood for shit."
Mea heard Steh cough. He tapped the crystalized corpse closest to him. "Alternatively," he said to her, "you could have tried the goth kids' sanctuary." He placed a dense novel on the ground and stepped back. Its title was Hemi ngèr and the Tales of Her Legendary Squeezebox: The Moderate Monarch. "They were always good at skipping lectures," he finished.
Mea's face twitched, and she dived for it. She clutched The Moderate Monarch as close to her chest as possible. "I'm not giving it to Ristie," she said. "I've searched two years for this one. Please don't make me hand it over."
"Then we shouldn't have broken into her library," Steh said, kneeling down to match her eye level. "It's too late to change the rules now."
Mea flared her nostrils. They could—Steh and her could—change the rules. They had the power to obliterate the world. With her Navigator heritage and Steh's Starfire ability, they were gods among microbes. If they timed their attack perfectly and showed Ristie what Steh could really do, the sorceress might lift the curse and … Mea noticed Tath and felt her resolve weaken. There was a universe of life on one side of her "if" and a constellation of death on the other. If they made a mistake in any way, or Ristie did not agree, then Mea would have lost more than a book.
She buckled under the sheer enormity of the decision, as she always did, and asked, "Did the Grinners leave another one?"
Steh shook his head. "I'm sorry."
"What if I only read half of it?" Mea pleaded.
Steh motioned to Agra. "The sack, please."
Despite the sunlight streaming through the windows, Agra's face appeared to darken as he followed Steh's request. He unslung the knapsack on his shoulder and reached in. His hand moved left and right as if he was trying to find something in a sea of vastness despite the relatively small size of the satchel. His hand tightened and he pulled. Mea could make out a faint blush on his russet cheeks, an indication of the effort he was expending to retrieve the "the sack." After a few grunts, Agra removed what Steh had asked for. It was much larger than Agra's knapsack … and tied quite shut.
"It should have come with a fucking neck," Tath said.
In one brisk movement, Mea loosened the cord around the sack. The rope became green, then red and finally yellow.
The sack curved itself over so it looked like it was standing and began talking through the slit Mea had loosened: "I have a name, a nom de plume, a title—a sobriquet if you must use the archaic terms. Why you three buffoons born from apes must be endlessly reminded of it, I will never know. My denomination is Humphrey Pennypacker. Doctor Pennypacker to you ill-educated fools. I am not an 'it'; I am a 'he.' I am a soul and quite alive, so I would appreciate it if you would respect the rights of all sentient beings. It was not my transgression that brought us together. I am an aider of the mighty. You are a trio of incompetent corpses that are only alive due to luck and the lowest of gambits. I am the victim. I am the injured party upon which riches should be tossed."
"We have the item," Mea said, her voice flat. "Tell your master."
Pennypacker chuckled. His haughty laugh echoed around the forsaken learning center. "She already knows, my child. And she comprehends your miniscule anguish, your soul racked with the pettiest of issues. What she wishes to know, and what you would be wise to advise, is if you have a duplicate amongst you. A secondary copy. A back-up. A hidden gem."
Mea felt her eyes flash yellow, and a surge of energy from her home universe rushed through her. "This is the only one," she confirmed.
Pennypacker stared at her intently, scrutinizing every twitch and glare she made. "I believe you, fair hybrid of the gods. Ergo, the object of your desire is required."
Mea gripped the book harder, her fingers making indents in its cover. "I will kill her," she said.
"Of course, dear." The sack nodded. "A very reasonable sentiment in these trying times. The book, please."
Mea pushed it down his throat, withdrawing an empty hand.
Pennypacker went silent, his body losing its animation and falling into a heap. Seconds later, he perked up. "Ho, ho, ho," he chuckled. "The wisest of wise, the intelligentsia of intelligentsia, the most humane of all the future-bound magi has granted you a reprieve." Leaning back, he made a hacking sound and then lurched forward. A parchment landed on the ground. "A Lilliputian token of appreciation from her. It is one of Steh's foolhardy dreams."
Tath pulled the ends of the cord tight, draining the color from them. Once again, the sack fell silent. "For fuck's sake," she said, "how many more times do we have to do this? When's Ristie going to get bored of us and move onto hexing some other shit-for-brains adventurers?"
"She never—" Steh started.
"I know," Tath snapped. "We're stuck in her little misery fantasy forever. I know." Tath snatched up the parchment from the ground and stormed out, kicking the door as she left. "I'll eat that shitty bag, cook it and chew it down if I have to. I'll burn it so it's dust and then …" Her voice trailed off as she got farther and farther from them.
Steh reached into his knapsack. "On a brighter note, I'm much better at lying than Mea." He pulled out another copy of The Moderate Monarch and placed it in Mea's hands. "Only one to go now."
8:54pm: Junko [Channel 37A4R]
Navigators aren't space demons. (—_—) The Corsair apocrypha says they save universes by eliminating overly powerful mages and monsters.
Despite slaying me in the sheets, I don't think you're on their list. (^_<)
Thurs, 16 Oct 65 P.C.T., 1:08am: Azra [P. Watcher 18034568X]
Uh huh. You going to send me a copy of the apocrypha so I can check for myself?
Four: The Unknown
THE FOUR ADVENTURERS stood in the middle of a cracked and crumbling highway. Rusted car shells littered the landscape; one was still sitting in a McMichael's drive-thru, the owner a chipped crystal that shone in the noonday sun. On the right were street signs saying "Gordon Road" and "Waikato Expressway."
"Why didn't the Grinners clean up here?" Tath asked as Agra slumped against a car's frame. "It's not the sunburnt-hole Australia is."
Agra scratched his head. "Australia's called 'Wonambi' now."
Tath sat on the bonnet of the car he was resting on. "Southern hemisphere countries are simply a name on a map to me," she said.
"We shouldn't be enabling white supremacist histories," he countered.
Tath snorted dismissively. "It's hard to take anti-racism advice from a man who watches Scarlett Fox movies before bed. Are you studying her 'acting' or how best to lean over when picking up a spanner?"
Mea interrupted the pair: "The clock is farther down."
Tath tapped the bonnet. "How much farther? Miles? Yards? Goddamn inches?"
Mea held the map toward the sky and adjusted its scale by moving two of her fingers in opposite directions across its surface. "It's in Hamilton city," she said. "Two days from here."
Steh pulled out a metal card from his pocket. He tapped it twice and two blue wings sprouted from it. "Go to Hamilton and return," he told it. The machine flew off.
"We’ve got a map," Agra called out. "There's no need to risk a million-credit toy."
"They're a thousand credits," Steh replied. "And they've brought back crucial information. Information that has saved us numerous times."
Agra shrugged and rubbed his hair. "It's not like it makes us go faster. A magic car would be something." He pointed to the rusted shells of vehicles long stripped of their parts. "If we had four wheels, a steering wheel and a little magical push—we’d be right. That's what you should be working on, not Tath's infinity pockets."
"As I keep reminding you," Steh responded, "magic vehicles are exceedingly rare outside of Corsair communes. I could make you a sail car, but last time we tried that, someone fell out."
"It was a bad design," Mea said, her gaze focused on the map. She continued zooming in and out of their location.
"Well, you invent things," Agra rebutted. "Magic cars are an invention. There's got to be a solution."
"Perhaps," Steh said. "But let's go through why we cannot have nice things. Again. Fossil fuels are banned, and the Grinners will kill you for using them. Sails are unpredictable and for nimble drivers, which some of us are not. Solar power, the best option out of the renewables, is not reliable enough for a group of rogues unsure where they are heading next.
"These restrictions bring us to magical power. Casting magic is tiring and takes a lot of practice. Unfamiliar spells and pre-set enchantments usually require a verbal stimulus. Spells that magicians are well-versed in can be linked to their own personal set of gestures. However, if the caster is skilled with—and intimately connected to—their tide of power, they can use magic through thought alone. A situation that means they tire less quickly, but they do tire. As I am neither competent nor in love with my celestial tide, I could flail my hands around for ten minutes to power a car, but how far would that get us?"
"Corsairs …" Agra persisted.
Steh hung his head. "Give me strength, powers of the cosmos." He continued with his lecture: "Corsairs have created magical amplifiers, which no other faction has been able to invent and perhaps never will. Amplifiers they keep strictly within their communes. And, yes, before you ask, it's quite possible I could invent something similar if we had one of their amplifiers or car engines. However, unless you have been gifted such a device by the Corsair Assembly for your 'noble' deeds, then we are all out of luck because we are not stealing it. We won't even think about stealing it because Corsairs do not, as Tath likes to say, 'fuck around.'"
Agra threw a knife into a patch of grass. "That's a roundabout way to say you're a mediocre mage. Could you try to be less mediocre for one trip? Be excellent, even?"
Steh took his glasses off and began to polish them. "We're not talking about a Ristie-level mage, Agra. You'd need someone with … infinite power, someone akin to a biblical god or a deity from a twenty-first-century religious text. They might exist, but they wouldn't join our group. We're gnats to their plasma-eyed cyclops."
"So, I win the bet?" Agra asked Tath, getting excited. "Elia's a god? Or, at the absolute least, a Turiean. That must be why she can run the zeppelin."
Tath's jaw jutted out. She smacked Agra on the head. "I told you not to bring this shit up. Elia stole some prototype tech. That's it."
"Is it?" Agra persisted. "That still doesn't explain where she gets the energy—"
"THERE ARE NO FUCKING GODS!" Tath hopped off the car. "And there is definitely no fucking race of universe-protecting 'chosen ones' called 'Turieans.' None. They don't exist, or they don't give a shit about us and our little problems. Nor do they give a creationistic fuck if we get poked and swirled in the ass by a magic wand. If there was a god, any type, they would've stopped Sacramento. They wouldn't have sat back and let a million people be burnt to a crisp by a suicidal Starfire. No-one is coming to save us. No flashy ride of orange glow is going to take us to tinsel town."
"We know," Mea whispered. "We're not the ones who prayed every night after Lara died."
Tath clenched her fists and banged the car. Her eyes shifted from their usual tawny to mahogany. Her knuckles went a butterscotch color.
She yanked an arrow out of her quiver and snapped it over her leg. "That’s it. I'm officially over goddamn Neo-Neo-fuck-a-sheep-land or whatever else they've renamed it. I'm sick of being bullied." She pointed at Agra. "I'm sick of this fuckwit holding onto his dick like it's a ceremonial artifact. I'm sick of walking and screaming and not doing anything. Fuck!"
"I’m not a sex toy," Agra replied.
"What’s the goddamn point in being sexy if you’re not having sex? It’s like a perfect chair nobody sits on. Why make it a chair? Why not make it a picture so people can wank off to it? Steh, I swear to all the gods who don't exist, you better make me a life-size replica of Agra with a working dick soon."
Agra stood up and put a hand on Tath's head. "I love you," he said. "I do. Perhaps I love you more than anyone, but I’m not your sex toy." He paused; a smile appeared on the corner of his lips. "Maybe if you tried your tickling technique on a sheep, you’d even enjoy it."
"You fucker." Tath dived for him.
The metal card from earlier flew through the gap between the arguing couple and glided into Steh’s open palm. Everyone stopped and waited until he could extract the information; Tath's arm stayed frozen in mid-air.
"Fourteen-and-a-bit miles," Steh said. "There are also a number of hills, but no bandits I can see."
"Goddamn Aotearoa and its fucking hills," Tath added, punching Agra on his shoulder. She did it gently. "When I get to fuck you, Ag, I'm going to make your brain explode. It's going to be the best night of your whole existence, I swear."
Magic and its Properties
(A short summary for non-users)
By Stehlan Ehrans
SECTION I: Types of Magic
As of writing, there are four main types of magic. I have listed them in order of commonality below:
Nature:
Nature magic grants a caster (witch, magician, warlock, sorceress …) the ability to modify or summon living and inanimate objects in our universe1.
Elemental:
Elemental magic enables a caster to use elemental forces such as wind, fire or water. Although the difference between nature and elemental magic might seem inconsequential, it significantly changes the spells a caster may use. For example, while a nature mage might be able to create fire by summoning a combustible tree type and igniting it with an external spark, an intermediate elemental mage can conjure fire from their fingertips.
Celestial:
Celestial magic allows a caster to command the underlying structure of the universe. They can bend physical laws we might consider immutable—such as gravity, light and time—to their will.
Void2:
Void magic provides a caster with the ability to create and utilize anti-matter. Currently, little is known about this type of energy.
Tides of Power:
For historical reasons, early post-Cataclysm researchers refer to a magic type as a "tide of power." This is partly because earlier generations were reluctant to admit that what they had read about in novels had become tangible, but also possibly due to magic's inherent structure. Still today, casters often write about how they "feel" more powerful at different times of the year.
The persistence of the "magic acts like a wave" narrative means that it should not be easily dismissed. However, I have seen little evidence to support this theory in my research. It is more likely this explanation is a convenient way of describing the chaotic and unpredictable nature of magic to a layperson. And, also, it serves as a perfect excuse for why a caster might have lost a battle or erred during a spell.
Specialties
Finally, as the saying goes, "Not all casters are born equal." Each mage is born with a natural affinity for a particular "tide of power" that can be further specialized in if they so desire. For example, a reasonably competent mage can become quite adept at healing living organisms or manipulating inan
imate objects, but not both. And while it is true (bar void magic) all casters can utilize every "tide of power," their spells' effectiveness rapidly diminishes the further they stray from their natural connection3.
SECTION II: Levels of Magic
Despite what some streamers claim, using magic is extremely difficult and can be fatal to inexperienced casters. Rather than the popular refrain that mages create magic, it is more accurate to say they channel it to do their will. Returning to the "tide of power" analogy, casters appear to draw their ability from a vast "ocean" of magic. If they allow too much of this "ocean" through, they will die much like if they wade too deep into a physical one. However, unlike how a person can drown in a traditional ocean, a caster's demise can take many other forms such as being eaten inside out, exploding, vanishing into thin air or losing a vital limb. My research suggests these events occur because humanity's physiological structure is not inherently compatible with the magical forces we are attempting to control.
The good news is that a human can build up their resistance to, and control of, magic with practice.
Spells
Beginning (or low-level) casters often start by using key phrases that trigger their magical abilities. They traditionally commence their studies with spells that require a minimal amount of supernatural power—such as moving a pencil or igniting a flame—and then progress to more powerful incantations. Historical records indicate even these simple spells can require a significant amount of effort and focus, and they often leave beginner mages exhausted after a few short hours of practice.