Millennial Mage

Tala, Rane, and Terry were standing on the edge of the forest, just processing their advancement along with the realities around their just-finished trip to the Lunar Hunt.

Tala, for her part, was considering a couple of things a bit further out as well. As such, she frowned in realization. “Hey, we should send another message to Master Grediv. He promised to let us know what was required to Reforge once we got to this step.”

Well, he actually promised to tell them anytime they asked, but it had been recommended that they not do so until they were Paragon.

He’d probably not imagined it would be quite this soon.

Rane opened his mouth to respond, but then he paused and cleared his throat. “Aura.”

Tala cursed. She’d gotten distracted, and her willful alteration of her aura had slipped. “Thank you.”

With a miniscule effort of will, she returned her aura to appearing just below Paragon. Lerra had explained that making her aura appear to be something she was familiar with would be easier than mimicking something she hadn’t experienced in a long time, or for long, or at all. The current display of yellowish-green was something her power and authority were used to, and so it came easier, making it better practice for holding the veil long term.

She would actually have had a really difficult time displaying a ‘true green’ of exact Paragon advancement, because her body was already ‘Reforged’ enough that her aura had the smallest hints of blue in it.

She wasn’t sure if that was because of how much ‘MINE’ her body was to her—given how important authority over self was to Reforging—or if it was because she’d been consuming food from her sanctum for years now, and that was yet another way to gain dominion over herself.

She’d dig into it later, but whatever the reason, she’d never had a true-green aura.

Regardless, with her veil back in place, Tala returned to the subject a hand. “So, we get to learn how to Reforge, we just need to ask.”

“I imagine that we’ll most likely learn the concepts behind Reforging as opposed to getting a step-by-step guide.”

She waved that off. “Right, right.”

-There are a few other things we really should deal with. We’ve put them off while in the Lunar Hunt, but they are important to get moving.-

Right. Can you reach out about the training sheath for Flow. We were told this one was good through the low levels of Paragon if we didn’t put too much power into our strikes… She gave a decisive internal nod. We need to ask the most advanced one that can be made, in order to future proof the situation. It hasn’t even been a decade since the last one, and I really do feel like I should be able to work the void into the weapon at a more fundamental level.

-That will undoubtedly be expensive, assuming it’s possible at all… Mistress Ingrit?-

Yeah. Let’s ensure she has all the requisite memories surrounding Flow well ordered. We want the resulting product to be what we need, after all. Also if you can coordinate with her to cash in some of the favors, promises, and other payments we’ve received for our memories from various folks, that would probably be a good use of some of that.

-Agreed. I’ll get that handled… you have no idea who any of those people are, do you?-

And I have no interest in learning.

-Fine… But—-

Terry interrupted both her and Rane’s thoughts with an impatient trill.

Tala jerked slightly as she was pulled from her internal contemplations.

Rane gave a conciliatory smile. “Sorry, Terry. Yeah, we don’t need to be waiting around here. Shall we head straight north, or do you want to angle east from here?” Ȑ

Tala looked around, orienting herself even as Rane seemed to actually look around himself with a critical eye.

“Wait…” He frowned. “This is the northern edge of the forest.”

Tala and Rane moved almost as one, looking straight north.

-Oh… wow… I… We really were focused internally, weren’t we?-

Tala swallowed involuntarily. Yeah.

Ahead of them, across a large stretch of plains, mountains rose in irregular patches, growing ever higher and more numerous the further Tala looked.

On the surface, it looked very similar to the view out of the south of the forest would have been—back near where they’d entered—except the plains were more expansive in this direction, and the mountains farther away, while looking about the same size.

They were much bigger.

But that isn’t what had both Tala and Rane speechless.

Instead, to their magesight, they could see why no one—even in the greatest legends of humanity—went to the far north and returned.

Roiling aura, so pervasive it was visible all these miles away, in various shades of blue and purple—running the gamut from deep, navy blue to ephemeral violet—all mixing and tumbling over each other in ways that Tala couldn’t remember having seen before.

Rane spoke softly, clearly quoting something. “There be the realm of gods and monsters beyond the ken of man. Beware all who would dare the slopes and dells, valleys and forests of the Great White North.”

Tala almost laughed at the odd wording, but… “Seeing that?” She flicked her head toward the distant mountains. “I believe it, yeah.”

“What do you suppose is in there?”

She almost shrugged, but then remembered something. With a flick of her wrist, she pulled out the Paragon level book on various entities. “Let’s see. I thought I saw a reference to… Here it is!” She lifted the book slightly in triumph. “The Far North.”

An instant later, she huffed a laugh.

“The first line is: ‘Don’t.’ It doesn’t have anything else, just ‘Nôv(el)B\\jnn

“Appropriate, given what we’re seeing.”

“Indeed. But after that, he goes on. If we have to go that direction, we should be aware of the dangers involved. As Paragons we might be able to slip through the constant struggle simply because we are too insignificant to be worth a diversion. Veils are key, it says, and we should be… oh, oh! This is a spawning ground for syphons? So, don’t trust the appearance of anything. It is a place where Magical Creatures don’t have an outlet for their Reality enforced rage, given gated-humanity’s distance. So, instead, they fight each other, trying to claim more land, expanding their authority, from which to draw their power. Most die often—coming back more experienced for the next clash—and therefore, their rate of return—whether resurrection or some other form or return, I don’t know—has become incredibly high. If we do manage to kill something, expect it to be back with better knowledge of your capabilities in less than an hour, and that’s essentially the average.”

Rane shook his head. “So, it’s not just the type and power of the monsters, it’s that it’d be an unending slog through creatures that were learning how to fight you. They could lose thousands of times. They only have to win once against us mere humans.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Indeed, and they’ve been honed by likely literally millions of fights to the death.” She shook her head as she turned her focus back to the book. She could just pull up the memory—Alat had imbibed the book already and had the memory ready to hand—but Tala liked the actuality of reading directly from the book. “Some stand-out creatures that have been observed include various elementals, wielding rock, tree, air, or water as their physical form. The worst of those are the darkness elementals, unless you have light-based magics—not just magic that gives off light, that’s emphasized here. Apparently, they are theorized to be creatures of the Doman-Imithe that Reality dragged through in some sort of reactionary attempt at balance. They don’t claim territory, except the night itself… and seemingly the darkness of caverns within the various mountains? This is a bit unclear.”

Rane grunted. “So, they sweep through and reset the battlefield after sunset, something like that?”

Tala pointed at him. “Exactly, yeah. Most creatures don’t come back at night, because the darkness elementals just kill them too quickly, and there is no gain for them.”

“So, the North would actually be pretty safe at night, so long as you had light magic?”

She shook her head, tapping the page. “Light magic will hurt—and even kill—these elementals, but it also draws in the others. Their kind hates the light, and unless you can fill the entire region with light—even underground—you won’t put any of them down for good. All that we’d accomplish is making them angry, and more bent on hunting us down.” She huffed. “Not that we have light magics.”

“Yeah. Nor do we have any reason to go there.”

“Right.” She looked up toward the mountains. “I say we don’t go there.”

“Agreed.” Rane glanced toward their companion, who hadn’t been adding to the conversation.

Terry trilled in boredom.

Tala gave him a skeptical glance. “Really? You’re unimpressed?”

He squawked then let out a sound that was almost like a howl.

“Well, sure, Anatalis and Vidarra are probably more powerful than any aura we’re seeing individually, but look at that.” Tala gestured unnecessarily. “There are uncountable, individual auras in there, all multiple stages more advanced than we are. Aren’t you even a little impressed?”

He shrugged and chirped.

Rane huffed a laugh. “It won’t be long before that’s nothing more than a fertile hunting ground for him.”

Terry regarded Rane for a long moment before bobbing his head decisively and chirping once more.

Tala sighed, shaking her head. “You two…”

Rane arched an eyebrow. “Oh? Like you’re so different?”

She shook her head again. “Not at all, but ‘you two’ sounds a lot better than ‘us three.’”

They shared a chuckle, then lowered their regard from the distant mountains and onto the vast, rolling plains. “So, how do we find these hidden, moving settlements of yours?”

“That… is an excellent question.” But after a moment’s thought, she broke out in a grin, turning to face Rane.

His face already sported a smile that showed he’d thought of the same solution that she had.

As one, they said it, “Fliers.”

Less than ten minutes later, they were in their favorite dell within the sanctum, eyes closed and flying devices out in Zeme proper.

They began flying low and fast, each taking a slightly different arc toward the east. There had been no objections as none of them wanted to go north, and given the fact that Howlton had been to the south, they planned to round the encircling forest to the east regardless.

Enar took the path nearest the trees, sweeping back and forth with roughly a half-mile spacing between his own passes. He might miss a town with a smaller disguising field than Howlton, but if so it would be a near thing.

-I still like ‘cloaking field’ better. It just makes sense. They are cloaking themselves from outside observation.-

Fine…

Anywhere with a smaller cloaking field than Howlton would either be smaller, itself—thus likely not a good point of contact given their current strength—or it was something that was trying even harder to hide, in which case they would likely be less open to visitors.

It could also be moving in just the right way to be missed, but if that happened, it happened. They weren’t aiming to find every moving town, just one.

Regardless, Enar was doing roughly five mile long passes, with Alat controlling the next searching zone out from the forest, doing a similar search patterns.

Then, came Tala’s flier with Rane working the most distant arc. They were only sweeping the nearest twenty miles to the forest, but if the towns were as numerous as Tala hoped…

Whether they were numerous or not, the four didn’t find any within a reasonable distance to the east, so they recalled two of the fliers, and exited the sanctum.

They’d only checked a swath of about fifty miles of the plains, but that was a hundred and one passes, and it had taken them a bit more than five hours, moving in the mid range of what they could make their fliers do—they hadn’t wanted to blow past a town too quickly to notice after all.

Terry was asleep in the sunlight of the sanctum, and Tala and Rane were ready to move their legs.

Alat and Enar continued their sweeps while Tala and Rane stretched a bit, preparing to take off in an entirely different way.

The couple were rather excited, all things considered. They were Paragons now, and they hadn’t been able to really cut loose and travel as fast as they could as Paragons.

Well, it wouldn’t actually be faster. They knew that they would actually have to be going slower given their higher density, but it should be easier and more…—

Tala’s eyes widened. “Rane?”

He looked her way. “Yeah?”

“Do you think… could we use veiling to travel faster without creating a resonance?”

He frowned, obviously considering. “Truthfully? I think the answer is yes, but.”

She gave a little smile at that. “Oh? What’s the but?” But even as she asked, it clicked together in her mind. “Oh… yeah. So, we’d remove the magical resonance, but not the damage to Reality. Moving faster would cause more damage. So, as long as we don’t mind causing more harm, we can likely move more quickly.”

“So, if we’re going to a gathering of those who are going to fix Reality?”

She gave him an odd look. “I suppose? But that seems like a weird thing—making the problem worse when going to find a way to fix it…”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“So, we can move as fast as we want in an emergency?”

“With practice, probably.”

“Just at a cost.”

“Precisely.”

Tala sighed. “Ahh, well. No breaking the sound barrier for us, then.”

“Not for the moment, no.” He grinned. “There is also that I know that Master Xeel moves faster than magical resonance should allow. So it’s possible that there’s a trick to it that we can learn now, or as part of Reforging.” He shrugged. “But shall we?”

Before she answered, he had already lifted off the ground, floating with kinetic manipulation, sculpting his motion to be as he desired. “Show off.”

But she was grinning up at her husband.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

With a burst of power, he took off, moving just faster than a runner’s pace, shaping his aura incredibly precisely to allow him to move even that fast, safely.

Tala ran forward, pushing off the air by dint of her surface-area expansion scripts, her massively powerful body hurtling her through the sky at a pace easily matching Rane’s, her own aura taking on the odd shape that Master Grediv had taught them so long ago, matching that of her husband.

This is quite like that time, isn’t it. The Paragon had taught her as they traveled. She’d just returned from the arcane lands, and Master Grediv had been taking her and Rane to Bandfast on his sapphire disk.

They’d been flying through the sky, on the way to reuniting her with friends. So much has changed since then.

-And yet, you are still you.-

Yes, we are.

There was the minor difference that, now, she was effectively leaping through—and off of—the air rather than relying on someone else’s device for transport.

She grinned at that, remembering the flying construct that their unit had worked together to create. They’re going to be so surprised when we come back as Paragons.

-Surprised? No, I think they all saw you as transitory, even if our level of transitory was more than half a decade. They’re all terminally Refined, most likely. They don’t really have the spark to go further. They are content with their station and role in aiding humanity.-

Yeah.

While her speed fluctuated somewhat as she sprang from foot to foot through the air, Rane’s pace was far more consistent, causing her to oscillate somewhat between being just ahead and just behind him.

Thus, she had the briefest fraction of a second more warning than he did as they breached a cloaking field and several seemingly city-level-defensive magics swatted them from the sky.

Even as Tala careened toward the ground, her aura and magics sparked against an authority as ancient—even if not as powerful—as Anatalis’, and her armor wrapped around her. She knew that she’d easily survive impact with the ground, and it would be a more advantageous position from which to face this threat—whatever it was—and so her focus was almost entirely on what they’d stumbled upon, on what had attacked them.

Her gaze fell on the small—one room—house tottering along on chicken legs through a valley below them. It was bathed and saturated in a swirling, non-determinable aura.

From within the oddly dilapidated structure, a voice cackled forth, full of venom, rage, and certainty, “You’ll never take me alive!”

Her threefold sight was just able to see the grizzled old woman, hunched just inside the window, glaring their way, her eyes glowing with malice and power.

Well, rust.