Chương 253: Chapter 275:

Some days not even explosions can fix a sour mood.

"Rough day?" Kimothy asked, offering a sympathetic smile. Some people need to know what's wrong before they can empathize, Kimothy is the other kind, that knows that if you can see discomfort, you offer comfort.

"More or less," I said.

"I'm starting to let my problems pile up again, and that's bad. I like it when I can winnow it all down to just a few approachable problems. Some personal. Some of it's family. Some of it's hard to explain. But then, some of it's easy." I leaned against the wall of the shooting range, watching Kimothy take his targets apart one after another. If you leave them alone for a minute, they re-form themselves. I once asked why we don't have self-healing spells added to, well, absolutely everything.

But apparently with sigilry, the intention behind definition matters. You can only use self-repair spells on things that are meant to be destroyed. The shooting range is weirdly quiet. Every time I walk up to the firing lanes with the staggered targets and reinforced walls, I feel like I should put on hearing protection. After years of this it still seems like a place for guns and noise and gunpowder. But most attack spells are weirdly quiet.

Throwing guided steel blades at wooden dummies just sounds like an unmotivated lumberjack is slacking off twenty feet away. Fire spells make more noise than most, it sounds like a very aggressive fireplace. The next lane over, the girl is using earth essence to take out the targets by shooting tiny bullets of packed dirt that penetrate the wooden dummy and then expand quickly, rupturing it. It would be very lethal to a human, but the most noise it makes is just the sound of wood creaking and sometimes falling over.

I don't need to curve air to shut out those sounds, I do it just for privacy.

"So, Kimothy, how is your progress with combining scrivening and sorcery?"

"Well, I believe I'm now the world expert in that practice," he said. He grinned hugely as he aimed a hand at the targets downrange. He started firing off obsidian needles, little flechettes that launched with machine-gun speeds and struck the target, lodging but not penetrating. They were pocking it up with divots, but wooden dummies don't respond like ballistic gel so his attack looked rather ineffectual.

"I've started making a wish-list of temples to visit, if I get more ink ingredients I will open up exponentially more sigils. Anyway, I've got a good list of them that I can cast out now, and empower with mana, and I've been practicing. Some interesting effects, not a lot of variety. Most of the sigils I have access to are structural, helping other sigils to interact and connect to each other. But, there's so much potential..."

"Go on." I like hearing about potential. Kimothy created one last obsidian flechette, and with a bit of theatrical ceremony, he snapped it in half. The divot-pocked dummy at the other end of the lane exploded with a boom that released a shock-wave. I pushed back against it from instinct, but he was already using his fog to dampen the back-blast. He may be a showoff, but he's safety-conscious. The dummy at the end was beyond gone.

Not splinters, not sawdust, it was destroyed more thoroughly than I've ever seen destroyed by anything but the void itself. The back end of the lane was devastated, the reinforced ward-guarded walls were buckled outward, the ceiling sagged. They were going to mend themselves, but it was a hell of a demonstration. I found myself half-crouched, my hands over my head. I lowered my hands and straightened my stance, slowly. I stared in naked disbelief at the cataclysm downrange.

"Tell me what just happened here," I said, carefully. The other sorcerers on the firing line started emerging from cover. They looked first nervous, then curious, then impressed. The man designated as [The Sorcerer] smiled broadly. For the first time, I don't begrudge him that title. He can use the definite article, he can be The, if he can do shit like that.

"Short version: I can conjure obsidian and ink at the same time, creating spell-bearing weapons at high speed."

"Thank you for the short version. Please expand on that?" He had all of my attention, I was treating this like the unique learning opportunity it was. He managed not to be pedantic about it.

"So, I can snap my mana into inks in the moment of conjuration, empowering them with that brief instant that the mana is stationary. But unlike a regular scrivener, I don't need a quill. I don't have to do my setting by hand. I can, for instance, print working sigils on a hundred slivers of obsidian per minute. And print them smaller than a human hand ever could. So, I took a rune that lets me join identical objects at a metaphysical level. And another sigil to add force to a target after the fact.

And-""How many sigils?"

"Eight in total, one of the only really useful strings I've got. But, it's really something, isn't it?" I stared at the end of the lane, where the walls were slowly crawling back into their proper shape. A beige haze in the air was slowly consolidating into sawdust hanging on an absent breeze. He had destructive power on par with my own. And his charges up much faster. I had thought that explosions could not make me feel better. Turns out I just wasn't using enough.

Kimothy shoved his hands into his pockets, looking entirely satisfied with himself.

"If I had affinity for iron or oak, I could use gall dyes, and I could add fire to the explosion," he said.

"Or attract metal filings, or have it play a song." He paused, considering what that sounded like.

"Sigils have their own internal logic, sometimes. You get some strange interactions. But if I had squid affinity, or perhaps henna-" The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. I watched as sawdust began piling on the ground and condensing into splinters. This is going to work. This is going to be a game changer.

"Kimothy," I said, "get me that list, and we can find the temple locations together. When we have an itinerary, we're going to take another day trip." He pumped his fist and cheered.

"Hell yeah!" he gushed. He was beaming so brightly, his eyes glittering as he looked at me.

"Thank you. I know you've got your reasons. I know this is part of a plan of yours. And I don't care. Do you know what it is to lose a childhood dream, and then get it back tenfold? This feels amazing!" This is us. Some of my love interests offer me opportunities or assistance or comfort. But Kimothy and I would be the true power couple. This is our understanding: we make each other stronger. Not in nebulous ways or figurative. But sheer power. There's a lot of things that he and I will never really talk about.

There's not really that bridge of emotion between us. He understands that power is safety. Power is success. Power is control. And he offers more of that than anyone else does. This isn't the first time that Tiviti and I have just straight-up ditched class. It's not something I do often, but today seems like a good day for it. I needed to get out of that cave. We're sitting on the roof of a church in Cliffside Hearstcliff, though I could easily have picked one a thousand miles away.

I have my eyes shut and my face pointed to the sun, taking in that weak watery winter-light. Soon the weather will be ready for proper basking, but right now I'll settle for some conjured warmth and as much sunlight as the sky is willing to give. I've got my head pillowed on Tiviti's lap and she's playing with my hair. Ten minutes ago there had been some pretext of her showing me a different way to braid hair, but we had both dropped that excuse a while ago.

"Oh yeah that reminds me," I said muzzily.

"Another expedition to the caves, to kill the Blind. Big one, we're going to push in very deep. Mostly an infiltration mission so that I can return there whenever I need to, but it's going to be the kind of infiltration that kills a lot of monsters."

"You say the sweetest things," she chuckled, fingers combing through my hair.

"Higher level of opposition. Wizards and shamans, leaders and commanders. Larger, stronger, tougher. Not like the fodder scouts and subsistence scavengers we've seen so far." Her fingers tickled against my temples. They were callused and strong, but eerily narrow. With my eyes closed so I could only feel the fingertips without context, the rough skin and small size made it feel like she was a baby lumberjack. I giggled to myself.

"So," she said, "why is it that telling me about your brother's new haberdashery reminded you of a quest to slay vicious monsters?"

"Gods, Tiviti, you really can set up a straight-line," I said.

"First of all, he's not opening a store. He's started a design company and that's different, especially at the level of seasonal haute couture. He-" Her fingers rested on my forehead.

"I must interrupt. What were those words just now?"

"High-end luxury clothing, especially of a short-lived trend, almost always bespoke to the client. Very prestigious among the aristocracy. It's basically required wearing for anyone that is going to get involved in any degree of political maneuvering or influence-mongering."

"Which you have told me you do."

"Which I've told you I'm amazing at," I corrected.

"And I know, I know that the whole concept seems so frivolous and stupid. I know that at the end of the day it really is just a bunch of people with too much money arguing too much about whose clothes are nicer for totally made-up reasons. And yet-""And yet." I gusted out a sigh, and my hands weaved my thoughts as I spoke.

"And yet, when you understand what is going on there? It's a different scene altogether. Moves and countermoves. Deft skill and brute strength. Defensive postures, reckless charges, traps, surprise ambushes, rallying retreats and courageous last stands." My hands dropped to the cold shingles again.

"I know it sound hyperbolic. Melodramatic, maybe. But, consider that these events were originally conceived as an alternative to fighting real wars. Bring people together to talk through problems. Build networks of alliances to deter aggression. This whole concept of 'high society' was grown out of parlay councils and cease-fire negotiations. And it lives there still. As long as everyone agrees to these rules and maneuvers, this whole collective contrivance, we keep our disputes and resolutions there.

Because if it breaks down, swords are forged, villagers are emptied of their able-bodied, harvests are trampled. And for nothing, just because of a disagreement. So instead of all that, long ago the nobles decided to do all the fighting under chandeliers, to make gossip and intrigue the weapons. Because even the nastiest, most well-crafted words can't cut off a limb. Because there is no amount of sneering that will ever cause gangrene."

"You seem quite moved by this."

"Among my many hobbies and pursuits, I've also studied a lot of the kingdom's history. The pattern is apparent. Every few generations things boil over and there's another war within the kingdom. And each time, with troops taken from the borders, there's more monster incursions, more famines, gaps in the weather control... Wars kill many times more people than just those who fight in them. And... we're just about due for another one." Her hands froze.

"Really?"

"Every few generations, diplomacy fails and we are all reminded why we needed it so badly. But my point, which I have drifted off of, is that because the alternative is the kind of war where people die needlessly, the maneuvers and attacks in the society scene are made with deadly earnest. They put as much energy and planning into these petty wars of words, because it's worth it to avoid a real war."

I drifted upwards, and curled into a sitting position, hovering so that my shoulder was even with hers, my head close to her own. I lined up alongside her, staring out across the city. A city I've seen burned dozens of times, and hopefully soon I'll it for the last time. I glided closer until my shoulder bumped against hers. She folded her limbs cross-legged, and draped her hands over her knees. We sat silently for a bit. Then she said, "You do so much."

"I suppose so."

"You really are quite a catch," she said. Normally when someone says that, it's vague or hypothetical, at a certain remove. Oh, you'll find someone soon, you're quite a catch! or something like it. But Tiviti said it with a very different context and tone. I felt rather like a trout in a net right in that moment. One she was proud to have in her net.