Chương 24: Final Memories

The new Chief Mage opened the unlabeled memory book and then frowned. Nothing happened. He was still in the same courtyard, sitting on the same cart. Perhaps Chadwick hadn't actually created the correct enchantment to store his memories? It was something he had never done before. Surely it was possible to get it wrong on a very first attempt. He looked up to ask his new assistant to ask if she had switched the books or something, but she was gone.

In fact, there were only a few random students roaming about and none of them were his assistant. Where had she gotten off to? He pushed out his air magic to try and find her and immediately realized something was wrong. His frown turned into a smile when he understood what the problem was.

"Clever trick young Chadwick, but you don't have the memory of how wind behaves quite right. It was the rising air from warm bodies that you missed," he said to the empty air. The students in the courtyard all wafted away in smoke and Chadwick stepped out from behind a wall chuckling and said, "damn, I didn't think of that. Perhaps the fake students were taking it too far?" The Chief Mage looked around and up at the tower, "it's quite good, looks exactly the same to me.

Will we be staying here for the duration of whatever it is you plan to teach me?"

"For a few months in this location at least, Chief Mage. There are some more secrets to the tower that were meant to be passed along to you. Secrets you will need to pass to your successor as soon as you can," answered Chadwick.

"Please, call me John. I suspect from the big blue flash that rolled across the countryside, that you have more than earned that. I will be telling the real you the same thing when I offer him the job of being my successor," said John.

"Ah, I suspect I won't be able to take the job if what you saw is what I think it was. My first idea was likely going to make some sort of visible phenomena across the kingdom. It being the same color as the wraiths even makes sense in this case," said Chadwick a bit sadly.

"Why wouldn't you be able to take the job if that was the curse being solved? Does your first idea mean you can't stay in the kingdom after?" Asked John.

"Something like that. Ask me again after we are done with your training. I have a lot of knowledge that was lost and should be returned to both the tower and to the kingdom as a whole, this is our best chance to pass that on, we should enjoy that instead of worrying about what might have happened to the real me. You can always go check when you are done here, but that is years away," said Chadwick.

"Years?" Was all John responded with.

"Oh yes. I don't just intend to teach you the standard curriculums for every affinity the tower has ever seen, so that new students can get a proper education in their exact magic. I also intend to teach you about the thousands of specialties from master mages who enhanced mundane tasks to make their countries prosper. The secrets of the sewer mages of Kapor. The mysteries of the flesh mages from the great tribes who could regrow limbs.

The nut mage who created an entirely new ecosystem that the central farmlands of Ashland use to survive with almost no water," said Chadwick, arms waving enthusiastically as he explained. John frowned and looked back over the cart, "I have a lot of food, but definitely not that much. You never did tell me just how long you spent in any of those books when you were researching. How do we solve that problem?"

"Ah, that is where your first lesson comes in. I will be showing you the best fishing spots in all of the nearest ten kingdoms, at least those ones that past mages could remember," said Chadwick, pulling the rod out of the cart, "I really hope you like fish, John." John sighed and handed Chadwick the fresh batch of cookies the kitchen had prepared, "I'm about to live on fish for years, and I'm giving away the only cookies in existence. This hardly seems sensible." Chadwick laughed, "don't worry.

The cookies will be waiting for you on the cart in the real world. You may not even want them by then, smoked fish really starts to grow on you after the first year." John groaned but got up to follow Chadwick. Maybe the fish wouldn't be that bad. John glared at the mountain trout on the wooden rack.

"I like what you did with the marginal oak, the smoke from that adds an interesting bite," said Chadwick, casually leaning on a nearby tree.

"Considering this is your memory, every one of these flavors is something you already knew. How could you possibly have learned the exact flavor each of these different fish gives when smoked with a hundred different types of wood? Better question, why would you possibly have wanted to? Fish are awful things," John stated. Chadwick shrugged, "everyone needs a hobby. Clearly you don't appreciate the subtle nuances of smoking fish. Or other ways of preparing fish. You refuse to even try the fermented ones."

John shuddered, "there's a reason people don't eat food that has gone bad. There is no way you can convince me something that smelled that awful was meant to be eaten."

"We went over this, it's a delicacy. Chief Mage Jensen swore it helped him keep the spring in his britches," Chadwick responded with a leer and suggestive waggling of his eyebrows.

"I asked you not to make that face. No matter that you are far older than me, you still look like a child," said John, looking sad for a moment.

"And you promised not to make that face when discussing my age," said Chadwick, "I made my choices. Allow me to live with them."

"I can't argue with that. Perhaps it's time you told me exactly what those choices were? We are close to being done here. What should I expect?" Asked John. Chadwick sighed, "I suppose we should, but you almost certainly won't stop making sad faces at me after I do. That's why I've been avoiding it."

"Come, I will tend to my bees and flowers. A proper hobby for a proper gentleman, with much nicer scents than nasty fish. You can tell me the full story while I work," said John. Chadwick nodded as they strolled over to the flowers, "you will never convince me that anything smells better than a campfire trout, but a stroll through the flowers is a good idea for a heavy subject." Chadwick continued speaking when they got to the flowers and John set about trimming.

"The answer of what I set out to do revolves around something I've yet to fully explain. So, let me first tell you the full story of magical weight and what happens to mages who get too strong for this world." One Hour Earlier Chadwick observed the enchant running through the large bone. The flying creature it came from was big enough to pick up an entire horse as a snack and its bones were nearly unbreakable. It must have been a fearsome creature, when alive.

The enchant was not only running well, but was barely using up any of the material from the bone. The bone was both suitable for the specific enchantment, and amazingly dense. It had a lot of available juice and could run at the current rate for months. Not that Chadwick had that long. Since there was plenty of room to spare and the enchant could be run faster without any concern for stressing the material — or running out mid flight, Chadwick turned up the flow and gradually sped up his flight.

The countryside started to blur and it was barely a quarter of an hour before he saw the first Siyene fortress. The satisfaction of finally being able to see them up close after so many years researching them was amazing. The memories never fully did them justice. Since the mages that saw them couldn't see quite as well as Chadwick. He just admired them for a moment before spotting a wraith pop into existence in the forest below him. He sighed, no time to waste.

Chadwick shot up into the air until he was high enough to see every fortress — if the haze of the air didn't interfere. Getting a proper aerial view was key to the first theory for how to solve the wraith problem. But his enhanced eyesight obviously wasn't doing the trick. He could see some large swirls of magic, but he really wanted the physical details of the fortress layout. So, Chadwick pulled out a gold coin and started crafting a quick enchant.

The final product used an intent control system to show Chadwick a small map of each thing he tried to view. By just focusing on one hazy fortress at a time, the map filled in. It worked by picking up details of the fortresses in the small gaps of direct sight line that would occur as all the billions of particles floated around in the air. Slowly gathering all the details to create a crisp image. Just floating there in the air, Chadwick studied the map and a grin spread across his face.

The crazy bone witch had been onto something — even if she didn't fully realize it. The fortresses were one big enchantment. Not just individual ones, but one giant enchantment. The pattern was plain when seen from above. The only issue facing Chadwick's mapped enchantment was that nothing was joining the parts. The fortresses themselves were like pieces of a puzzle that were missing some key pieces in between them. He only had corners and a few middle bits right now. Something was missing.

On the basis that those pieces were actually there, but just not visible from the air, Chadwick created an enchantment that could dig. Ten minutes later, Chadwick was floating just over a big hole and was grinning at an enormous chunk of stone that was exposed at the bottom of the hole. It was nice to be right after all those years of research. Chadwick floated for a while and looked over the enchant he had drawn out — something about it didn't fully make sense.

The bits to create the magic weight limitations over his kingdom were easy to find, but there was extra stuff in there. Something to make a connection? Some kind of link to somewhere else? This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. A wraith suddenly burst out of the ground and Chadwick sighed and floated up higher, out of reach of it. The wraiths were starting to arrive more frequently.

Chadwick froze and looked from the wraith to the enchantment in his hand, then back again. He was starting to see the connection.

"Oh, that should have been obvious. The only person that would have understood this enchantment was someone that was on the cusp of being forced out of this world," said Chadwick to himself. He had been getting instinctive bits of knowledge popping into his head ever since he left the tower. The world was literally trying to eject him, and was giving him the knowledge to do so.

It had even aided his understanding of the enchantment he was currently looking at, the one that was made of up giant fortresses lining the border. The only conclusion Chadwick could come to was that the enchantment had been made both as a final spite to his kingdom and as a method for the creator to leave this world behind.

Chadwick started slowly flying towards the central fortress that contained the main link that went outside the world, while trying to come up with an elegant way to not just disable the enchantment, but make use of it. Floating along and looking at his notepad full of scribbles and possible designs. He paused his flight and jotted down an altered version of the original fortress design. He stared at it for a while before sighing and changing his flying path to one of the gaps between some of the smaller fortresses.

He put his digging enchantment to work again to expose the stone channels linking the fortresses together, excavating them up, before making some changes to them, then dumping the dirt back on top with another quick enchantment that just inelegantly shoved the dirt in a direction. A giant scoop that borrowed heavily from his designs of the air wings he had made for the Dean to help carry them. Another ten minutes of zipping around the countryside and making some small, but crucial, adjustments to the channels.

There wasn't quite enough stone from what he had dug up to make his new connections, some quick excavation of nearby hills provided enough to fill in the gaps. Using his magic to break the stone down to a perfect match the existing channels and rejoining them seamlessly. The result looked like the stone had been carved in place. He was confident the Siyene wouldn't notice.

They always made a point of immediately fixing up their forts that got damaged, but Chadwick was pretty sure that was just a red herring and that they had no idea if the enchantment was being damaged. Nothing in the enchantment showed any alert systems or monitoring. The majority of the forts weren't even part of the enchantment. They just sat on top of the buried stone and gave the attacking armies a nice target. Nothing in what he was doing should create an immediately obvious effect.

After the last channel was edited, Chadwick headed towards the central fortress once again. He came into the fortress from very high up, in the hopes that no one would notice him flying closer. As hoped, nobody looked up and he casually landed in the middle of the fortress and just strolled straight into a nearby door. His map of the enchantment proved invaluable as he basically had a map of the fortress in the form of the enchantment lines.

Walls always had to be in certain places, so it wasn't hard to know where the doors would be, right in the few places that allowed gaps. Chadwick had managed to go unnoticed through his entire stroll through the fortress until he came to the door into the central room — where he knew a key part of the enchantment was. The drawing pointed right here, it was the only possible location.

There were two guards on the door and they got halfway through opening their mouths to shout before their faces just seemed to drift away in the breeze. Chadwick hadn't been able to directly disassemble the guardsmen, but a huge bombardment of the smallest portions of the nearby stone walls Chadwick could manage performed a similar function – at least to an outside observer. The entire physical structure of the two guards' heads had been knocked loose by the tiny, fast-moving particles of stone.

Chadwick strolled through the door and into the empty room. He took one look at the runes lining the walls and sighed. He was able to decipher them pretty quickly – having spent a solid number of years studying these exact runes from the memories of Mage Tully – they told him the same story the fortress shape did. The story the enchantments had been hinting at were the same thing being said by the world at large. The world was giving him knowledge and it matched what he already knew.

It made the entire system of structures make way more sense to Chadwick, whoever had built these had been presented with a perfect chance to achieve his goals while also leaving the world behind. He could control the limits of magical weight, in exchange for him leaving the world — it was a balance. An exchange. Chadwick was getting slightly different hints fed directly to him. He assumed the shaman that created this enchantment must have had a different kind of magic. One that required a balance like this.

Now Chadwick was being offered something very similar. He could change this enchantment in such a way that it would solve the entire problem. If he left. His didn't require the same balance or enacting a large-scale change on the world. His magic wanted the opposite. It wanted a tiny change. The basic crux of the problem that the original shaman had was that in order to make an enchantment that had a direct effect on magical weight in the world, he needed something to balance the scale.

Something that was actively making a change to that weight to balance the enchanting. The heaviest weight available would have been the shaman himself. He quite literally used himself to balance the scale. Chadwick grinned a little at himself as he realized that the shaman had effectively catapulted himself out of the world. A magical catapult ejected him. He would have to make sure that tidbit of knowledge made it to the Dean. Chadwick knew what he was going to do.

He had known this was coming from the moment he saw the map of the enchantment from above. Everything else had just been verification and making sure the little hints and intuitions he had been receiving were correct. He just had one last thing to do before he left. Chadwick pulled out a blank memory book he had scooped up without anyone noticing.

It was slightly selfish of him to use such a valuable thing to make another copy of himself that only had barely one hour more knowledge than the one he had left with the new Chief Mage — but he knew what he was about to do for the kingdom and this was the least it owed him. Chadwick performed the same ritual as before and committed his entire knowledge to the book. A few more enchants later and the book was attached to the flying bone that had brought him there.

Once released, the bone went zipping off down the hallway before finding its way into the sky. Chadwick heard a distant shout, someone had been startled by a large flying bone attached to a book. The book would find its way where it needed to go, no matter who got in its way. With everything taken care of, Chadwick put together the most complicated enchantment he had ever made on the biggest of the chunks of gold he had taken from the Chief Mage's store room.

Then, once it was finished, he focused his attention through the enchantment. It was helping him to dive deeper, find the smaller particles that even his eyes couldn't make out. He started with a single spec of gold that made up the enchantment and looked deeper. He caught a glimpse of the tiniest of motions and followed it down.

He hit the point where a visible spec of dust was as big as the planet they stood upon – something he had learned about in great detail from a mage whose magic let him dive deeper into the field of astronomy than anyone before him. The man knew huge amounts about the skies above, Chadwick had only caught tidbits from the man as he wasn't actually there to study the planetary motions. Diving deeper into the center of the particle, now the tiny motions he had seen were small moons, orbiting the central cluster.

He dove down into the central cluster to see what they were made of. He could sense a wealth of potential energy within them. Something that hinted at a raging inferno barely restrained by the weight of the world pressing down. Deeper again and Chadwick saw what he had come for. What he had only been hoping existed. What the world had been guiding him towards. A particle that was magic itself. Chadwick dove his perceptions into the particle and then guided it from within.

Launching it towards the receptacle on his enchantment. His new enchantment that was tied into the larger one of the Siyene forts. A small enchant that would control the large one. The single particle of magic struck its target. The tiniest of levers switched by a single particle of the smallest size. The particle completed its job and then vanished with a tiny pop that could not be heard by anyone else. Chadwick vanished with the particle. The tiniest of changes now successfully made.

Two Weeks Later The Chief Mage floated gracefully down into the rustic town square. Several children squealed and ran off. A rather portly fellow poked his head out of a large building and looked John up and down, "ah, you must be the mage Alver was expecting. Right this way, sir Mage." John raised an eyebrow, but followed the man to a small wooden workshop off the village square.

"Alver. The Mage is here," said the portly man, before nodding at John and going back the way he had come. Alver stepped out of the workshop, "are you Chief Mage John?" John nodded a bit sadly. He was fully expecting the man to scream and abuse him for failing his son. For allowing a child to save the world, at his own expense. Therefore, he was shocked when Alver stepped up and hugged him.

"Chadwick told me you remember every single name. While I'm sad his name now needs to be remembered. He also said that it is often easier to give up your life to save others, than to be the one who survived. The job of remembering those who are gone is harder. Especially when done with the dedication you give it," said Alver quietly, stepping back and releasing John. John began to tear up, "your son is, as always, wise beyond his years."

Alver smiled a bit sadly, "little brat he was like that even before the magical books. My wife is still mad about the time he learned how stinkweed was used. I really should have read those margins more carefully…" The two men laughed together for a little while, swapping stories of Chadwick. Before Alver perked up "oh, I was meant to give you two books as soon as you got here." He ducked inside and came back with two books.

One looked like a fairly standard book from the library, albeit quite large, the other was a very unusual looking book. Instead of leather, the cover was made of fish skin. Alver handed over the standard looking one first, it was labeled 'The Enchanter'.

"Scribing was never really his purpose in life, I'm glad to see he found one. He asked that any students who could demonstrate completion of every item in this book be allowed to access his memory book," said Alver.

"He wishes to teach students enchanting in his memory book?" asked John. Alver nodded and indicated the book, "any student who could manage the contents of that monstrous tome would not be able to find a teacher anywhere else. I should know, I had to scribe the entire thing from memory. I know the contents down to the word and every single line in every diagram. Comparing this to some of the other enchanting books I have scribed for the tower over the years, I can tell you those students are in for a challenge."

"A worthy use of his memories, I was worried we would never see another particle mage that would step into his book," said John. Alver grabbed the second book and said, "He insisted this would mean something to you. I had a hell of a time finding a fish skin that would work for this." He handed it over. John glared at the book suspiciously before opening it.

He read a few pages, before snapping it shut and holding the book away at arms length, "I hope you know someone who loves smoking fish, because if I can't find someone in the next five minutes that will cherish this book. I'm throwing it in the river." The memory of Chadwick sighed at the man in his 40's who was complaining loudly at him.

"I don't know whose joke this was, but I am the youngest in the world to complete the tome of The Enchanter! I am only one of only 10 in the world and I will not put up with this treatment!" The man insisted. It had been several years since the 9th mage to complete his enchanting tome had come into Chadwick's memory book for training and, not counting the first to complete it — who got a full debriefing from Chief Mage John's successor — every single one of them were surprised to meet Chadwick.

They knew very little of his story, very specifically not his physical age. Somehow it had become a running gag amongst the small club of those who completed The Enchanter to not warn the next person finishing it. They all came in here expecting a wizened old genius of enchanting who had revolutionized the field, broken the Siyene curse and disappeared. Leaving behind a legacy of the toughest enchanting tome in history.

He could tell from the obnoxious man's ranting that this was one who would take a long time to be convinced. He would need to thoroughly humble the man before he could truly get around to teaching him anything. The guy hadn't even brought any fresh cookies in with him, so Chadwick was not going to give him an easy time of it once they actually got around to the teaching part. Maybe after a few years he would ease up on the man. He was mentally adding a year for each minute that this man complained.

It was not looking great for the man in front of him, he seemed to be a natural complainer. The memory of Chadwick really hoped the real version of him was having a better time, wherever he ended up.