Chương 133: Chapter 154: Presentation

I opened one void-portal, and got myself ready. I was not dressed for a presentation, frankly. I had planned on letting my magic do the heavy lifting today, so I had worn a plainly-cut long-sleeved dress with gloves and boots. A decent work outfit, but rather beige and taupe. I would have to curve or conjure three different fabrics, if I wanted to be presentable for this crowd. And I was cutting it fine with my mana as it is, I don't have many left over for unexpected developments.

So, I need a mana-cheap workaround. Nothing I'm currently attuned to would do the trick. I am currently holding spells to curve and conjure void, to conjure and curve levin energy, to curve stone, channeling steel and owls and peacocks. Yes, peacocks. I knew damn well I was going to have to put on a show today. I'm set to conjure salt, and copper, and a certain kind of wood. As well the thunderbeasts, to create and control them. Dressing myself properly would take a quarter of an hour, or at least three mana.

I need that time, and I need that mana. I conjured the essence of the blackhart. And with its essence I dyed my dress. No matter how plain the cut and simple the fabrics, everything looks impressive when it is blacker than pitch, blacker than space. And as an additional benefit, that complete and unutterable darkness is one of the only things that the light from my void has a hard time penetrating through.

I could hold a gloved hand over my eyes and for once I would only be a little bit sun-blind when I stepped out. Far away, the crowd was gathered around the pavilion and its refreshments, stretching out after a morning spent in their luxury carriages. A good-sized crowd of nobility and authority, all here paying good money for a big show. Pushing the peacock's nature into my mana channels, I stepped into the portal and from there, to the hilltop where the duke and his guests were arrayed.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" I declaimed, throwing my arms wide. My hair was loose and blowing about, I had not spent mana for my usual combs and fixtures.

"My name is Lady Natalie Harigold, ducal princess of Meadowtam, and it is my pleasure to bring you the very finest and fairest of high-impact engineering!" The only thing that really makes a blacker-than-black dress even more impressive is silhouetting against a blazing-white portal, so I left it in place for a few extra seconds.

"Our esteemed host, Quoissi Eyellon, Duke of Hearster and lord of this realm, has brought all of us together to witness the end of an era, the breaking of a wall that has cut Hearstwhile in half for a millennium. Because this is the era of unity, integration, is it not?" I used a gesture to pitch the center of attention over to Quoissi, who I had just spotted. He eagerly picked it up and started a short improvisational speech that built off the buzzwords I had given him.

He had practice at this subject, it was near and dear for him. Briefly: each of the House factions is divided based on what they want for the kingdom. My faction, the Development group, wants to invest resources directly to the citizens and strengthen our middle class and working class. The Dominionist faction wants all possible power and authority and wealth relegated to the central power, the upper nobility and the royal house.

That's Eyellon's faction, that's their politics, so he was absolutely ready to take my rhetoric about unifying us geographically and segue that into a short persuasive speech about consolidation and hegemony of the kingdom. And this gave me a chance to see what I'm working with here. It's as bad as I thought it would be. This hilltop is a fucking who's-who of Hearstcliff. I've got everyone looking over at the Duke, so I can spend some time adjusting and considering.

I'm recognizing a lot of faces here from high-station social events, various earls and counts and close relations of them, as well as some extremely highly-placed officers and appointees. Seneschals, stewards, ministers, directors, judges, and councilors. A lot of power-brokers, a lot of wealthy dilettantes, and a lot of muscle. It seemed like everyone here had their own bodyguard, and almost all of those showed at least a Strength requirement of 20 if I hovered them with my Status reticle.

High-end badasses, and that is proportional to the political power that is on display here. Eyellon was not fucking around with his guest list. Part of me really wanted to try to play it cool. I was in a rather tenuous position right now.

I've got a royal princess missing, I'm the number-one suspect, and honestly the only thing that is keeping me out of prison right this minute is that my risible difficulties with even minor mistruths are well-known and nobody is considering that I might overcome them very suddenly.

I suppose I could take some comfort to know that if there was a break in this case with evidence, it would point towards Nathan actually arranging the assassination- after all, I had been him when I arranged the transfer and set her up to die. But nobody could really get that to stick, there's just no evidence that transferring Skeici Gianwen into that class would kill Lachel Freckentop. It did, and I knew that, but that's not enough of a case for a prosecutor to bother with.

So, I know that I'm safe, but my instinct is still to flinch away and try not to call attention to myself. And so obviously that is why I have to do the obvious. Never show a guilty conscience if you're trying to get away with a murder! And I think that Duke Eyellon's guests probably know that lesson better than most. Most of these folks were people I was not planning on seeing until late summer.

Lady Hanje has that strategy to gather momentum, and that involves me not hitting the high-echelon galas for another several weeks. And here I am in front of them, off-balance, out of my element, hyped up to impossible levels, outnumbered, out of costume, and distracted with the biggest engineering feat of this generation. I am really pissed at Quoissi now. I feel really good about what I'm going to do to him later. Patience. Ah, the duke is wrapping up his speech now.

He has a good sense of timing, he brought it in right about the seven minute mark, maximum impact without running long and boring people. I can see him marking my position, he's preparing the handoff. I definitely need to get involved before we get to "without further ado".

"And thank you for that kind introduction," I said over everyone's head, pulling their eyes from him to me. He wasn't quite ready, and he frowned slightly.

"Now, we've got a very exciting program lined up for you all, entertainers, refreshments, and a great big finish! I've got a hundred preparations to make, rending the very face of the landscape asunder is not done lightly! I believe a luncheon is to be provided shortly, and when you all see me next, I'm going to bring a show of unparalleled power and impact!" The crowd was murmuring excitedly, the Eyellon majordomo rolled his eyes, unimpressed.

Honestly, this was probably a good move on my part, probably for all of us. You gotta have some build-up to the event right? What kind of show would that be? Drive out to the middle of nowhere, watch a big explosion, and then turn around and drive back? Bad event planning. You need drama, tension, and an appetizer course. Maybe Quoissi did not plan on having to entertain his own guests for a few hours while I handle my setup. But fuck 'im. He's earned fuck-all from me.

If I had come back and seen his porters striking the tents to move them back a half-mile, I'd be a lot more charitable right now. Instead, I'm very content to hang him up for a while, leave him twisting and making excuses and arranging an entertainment schedule on short notice. Hey, if we're playing a game of "commit someone else to performing for others with no warning and make them pretend like this was the plan all along", I'm allowed to play to win.

I flitted over to the majordomo, who was looking at me with the most deeply-etched sneer I've ever seen.

"Unprecedented power and impact?" he repeated with a dripping skepticism.

"You're a sorceress." Let me take a moment to describe the tone of that voice. Imagine you're talking to a particularly snooty and elitist oil painter who specializes in recreating the works of the Old Masters. And you tell him you're going to revolutionize the entire art world forever with your fascinating innovations in decoupage that you started last week. And he says the words "Revolutionize the arts? You're a scrapbooker." That tone that you're imagining? That's what he just hit me with.

I very nearly struck him. Hard.

"Shut up," I snapped.

"Did you fucking tell him?"

"I passed on your concerns, but His Grace did not amend his instructions." Honestly, right now, I'm tempted to give them exactly what he asked for. Fuck 'em. Let's see this entire conclave of wealthy parasites all disintegrated and then buried in stone because Duke Quoissi Eyellon would not fucking listen to me.

Problem is that if I did that, when I get back to Hearstcliff I will be put on trial for murdering a duke and a lot of other powerful but not quite as-powerful people, and I will have no evidence at all that this all happened because of his negligence, not mine. Also, the porters and chefs and drivers and footmen are all mostly innocent victims. And if the High Court of the Council starts letting people get away with murdering dukes, then who knows where it would end?!!??

No, they'd sentence me to death by torture for sure. You just do not let dukes die of their own stupidity on your watch. I looked at the wizard in butler's clothes.

"All right. If he's gotta do things his way, I gotta change my plans to compensate. I'll be back shortly." And then I fucking left. Portal, column of unearthly light, and I'm gone. To be clear: this is an excuse. I'm pissed at this guy for setting me up like this. Honestly, after our first meeting, I thought he and I had a connection, an understanding. He had some dangerous edges, but he was charming and kind of folksy about it. Very down-to-earth and I felt like he and I hit it off.

And then this crap, and the surprise clauses to rob me of my fee. So yeah, I'm being petty and spiteful and I'm gonna leave him stewing for a few hours while I take care of shit. When I thought that he was going to show up to watch me work, I imagined him just spot-checking my results and riding away, or maybe asking me to throw around some extra lightning and colored streamers while I was working. Now that I know he's sold tickets to this shit, I gotta make gods-damned-sure that I can fucking deliver.

And that means that our initial plan, of me showing off my first efforts? That's gone baby. I am not showing off my first-draft efforts for a crowd like this, not for these stakes. So, I head myself off to the west, approximately two hundred miles. It's a good spot for a practice run, first efforts. Nobody around for a dozen miles. An empty chunk of prairies halfway between one trading post to the north and one trading post to the south that currently have no way to reach each other.

A road here would be busy as hell, full of merchants and caravans and supplies and soldiers and commuters and ordinary traffic. The only reason this area is completely isolated is because there's no road. I aim to fix that. So, no witnesses. No pressure. And that means no reason not to try to exactly simulate what I want to happen at Quoissi's demonstration. I can do this.

I'll just practice on the other demo sites until I'm positive that I can do this exactly correct, and then I'll make my big entrance, talk myself up, and blow them all away with my magnificence. But first, practice. This is a site that I've taken the time to really prepare. There's not just the well-measured and well-tested borehole at the bottom near the ground, there's also the wide V of guide-bores that I've prepared, converging on an X of the actual blast site.

The purpose of those guide-bores is to give pressure an easy path to travel that will shape the impact waves moving through stone, shape the way that the stone breaks, and guide the final result into the correct shape. But for purposes of showmanship, they can serve another purpose. I swept up and across and down the V I had prepared, the boreholes to guide the detonation. Into each one, a conjured wooden rod, very insulative, with a copper knob on the end. Then back to the X, the bottom-center.

I sighted down the larger borehole, and cast a singularity into that space. The tame black hole began swallowing air, gravel, dust, and whatever its gravity well could reach. I curved stone with one hand conjured copper filings with the other. The sparkling dust flew from my hands along the rising wind, streaming like pixie-dust in the slanting morning sun.

Essence of peacock assured me that the hypothetical audience, even if they were far off, would see a dramatic display of glittering cloudy magic flowing into the rock wall. The peacock knows what people can see. Meanwhile I was breaking down the stone around into gravel for the singularity to eat up, breaking that matter down into its neutron-star heart. The impossible pressures and density ripped apart matter and molecules, compressing everything down to the same density.

A mental count to tell me when I had given it enough time. I leaped to the air and flew up and away, taking a safe distance, high near the top of the cliff, over a mile away. One hand to either side, I conjured and curved the lightning energy. Electricity flowed out and arced across, reaching the copper ferrules that marked each of the boreholes. The V-shaped notch was highlighted in levin's glow, wavering and snapping.

Lightning jumped from pole to pole, forming a triangle that culminated right at the X of the epicenter. I had a sigil-script from Gala Kralcit, and it was strobing with light in increments of one second, so I could precisely measure the timing of my blasts. And it told me exactly when to release the singularity. I hit my count, and started channeling steel. Otherwise, I was way too close for safety. I grinned wildly, just to myself, as I released the void.

All that supercompressed matter slammed back at once, because the distances of atoms are some of the most powerful limits in the universe. The wave of pressure in the air beat at me like a hammer despite my steel-reinforced constitution. I felt myself pushed backwards in the air, and I released the lightning arcs, staring as the whole cliff face rippled. Cracks ran through, strata shifted.

The noise of it all was titanic, and the epicenter exploded out in a geyser-gout of pulverized stone and atomized copper, winds whipping all around. A gale-force gust rushed out across the plains, bending grasses in a wave. I shook off the impact, and flew back down, back to the work site. The hole at the bottom was massive now, six feet across, and glowing inside with the heat left over from the detonation. The walls were reticulated and ridged, but straight and level enough for my work.

I struck a pose, and settled to the ground. My boots crackled on glass, the ground was flash-fused from the blast. The wall was seething-hot, and steam emerged from the ground, pockets of moisture and dew were vaporized and leaking out through cracks in the glassed ground. The heat left an updraft that lifted my hair, but I ignored the disarray. I had a lot of damage to do here. Curving stone to start building the cracks, and give the pressure somewhere to go. And then: void. And void again.

And a third time- a third singularity appeared alongside the first two, and they ripped at reality, too close together. A hurricane hit me, all the air was funneling past me into the molten mouth of this cave. And I started conjuring. No copper this time: I was producing as much water as I could, and as much salt. Both of them flooded out from me, my hands out and pouring out magic that turned to matter. I felt the strain on my mana, the pressure against my own essence.

I was doing too much, holding too many spells at once. I shut away the conjury, and flew upwards once more. I wobbled, lightheaded. I had done my math, this was possible. I just needed to push through. C'mon girl, get it together. Don't forget anything. I channeled steel for resilience. I was far too close to this impact. I was directly over it, and the intention was to channel the detonation upwards through the cliff. My math said this was possible and safe. I would have to trust the math.

But I absolutely felt like I was pushing too close to the limits. Like I would grow roots from my feet, or abrade my skin away with water. I was shaky, I was straining, but I would make it. Hands to the sides, and lightning streamed again, leaping from point to point and channeling down from me to the raging black-hole tornado at the base of the cliff. The lightning served no purpose to the demolition, I just thought it looked rad as fuck.

If you're going to unleash armageddon weapons, there should be arcing electricity somewhere. And they had never seen tamed lightning before, so they wouldn't even really know. Seventy-five seconds. I counted them off. I encased my head in steel earmuffs, and then dropped the lightning just as I jetted upwards, hard and fast. I released my grip of the void. Flying straight up was to get me a little extra distance, and so my speed would buffer against the pressure wave coming up from below, lower the relative impact.

Rolling with the punch at maximum velocity. I careened skywards but I could not resist looking down. The cliff belched a fireball that curled into a mushroom cloud, billowing with a searing-white heat. Salt and water dumped into the singularities were broken into hydrogen, sodium, chlorine and oxygen, all just individual atoms. Those four elements are famous for how much they hate being individual atoms, especially around each other, and how much energy they give off when they recombine.

The raging inferno swelled like a bubble, hateful reddish-orange that was stretched over a white-hot interior. I had an instant to watch the entire cliff face fracture like a broken mirror, and then the shockwave caught up to me.