Chương 50: The Shape of Magic

Enzo pushed open the front door of the admin building and stepped inside. The receptionist looked up from her desk.

"Mr. Locke. How can I help you?"

"I'm looking for Val. Is she around?" The woman shook her head.

"The Director is two doors down, on the other side of the Locke residence." She gestured vaguely to the left.

"She asked me to redirect you if you came by." Of course she had.

"Thanks." He turned for the door, then stopped.

"You don't have to call me Mr. Locke, by the way. Enzo is fine." The woman straightened in her chair.

"I appreciate that, but I'd prefer to keep things professional, Mr. Locke."

"Seriously. Just Enzo." She considered him for a moment. Smiled sweetly.

"Would you prefer Master Locke? Or perhaps Magus Locke?" Enzo stared at her. She held the smile. He retreated. Some fights weren't worth winning. The house to the left of his family's home was one of the biggest in the neighborhood. Three stories, redwood siding, a four-car garage that took up most of the ground floor's front. He'd known the family who owned it. The Hartfords. They'd lived there since before he was born, though by the time he and Val were teenagers, only the grandparents remained.

The kids had grown up and moved out, and eventually the grandmother passed, leaving Old Bill rattling around in a house built for eight. The front door was open. Enzo stepped inside. The entryway was wide, hardwood floors, a staircase leading up to the right. Most of the furniture had been cleared out. A few chairs remained against the walls, and a long table had been set up near the base of the stairs with nothing on it yet.

The place smelled like dust and lemon cleaner, which meant someone had scrubbed it down recently. Voices came from the left, joined by quiet laughter. He followed the sound into the living room. Val and Sumi sat together on one of the remaining couches, heads close, sharing something on a piece of paper between them. Sumi's wrapped arm rested in her lap. Whatever they were looking at had them both trying to keep their laughter under control. Enzo cleared his throat. They both startled.

Sumi pulled the paper into her lap. Val turned, and for half a second, her expression was completely unguarded. His sister was blushing.

"Sorry if I'm interrupting," Enzo said.

"Kenzo said I needed to stop by." Val recovered fast. She stood, smoothing her shirt, and the blush was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

"Good. I wanted to show you this place." Enzo nodded.

"We're turning it into a headquarters for the mages. You'll have room for your workshop, research areas, storage spaces for any magic materials and equipment. Somewhere centralized instead of everyone working out of bedrooms and kitchens." She gestured around the room.

"With three floors, plus the cellar and the bungalow out back, there should be plenty of room." Enzo looked around. The living room alone was twice the size of his bedroom workshop. He could see the potential immediately.

"What happened to Bill?"

"I talked to him. His daughter and her husband took the kids hiking the day the rain hit. They never came back." She paused.

"He went looking. Even asked the hunters to keep an eye out. But they've found nothing."

"So you evicted him?" She shook her head.

"I wanted to have the administration building and the mages' guild hall as close to home as possible. When I spoke to him about it, we came to an agreement. In return for letting us use this place, he gets the cabin on the western edge of the territory and permission to keep searching." Enzo frowned.

"Permission?"

"Everyone contributes, Enzo. That's how it works." Val crossed her arms.

"I gave him a spot with the scouts so he can spend his days searching Mount Tam. In return, he maps anything unusual he finds. Trails, landmarks, animal dens, water sources. It helps the hunters." Enzo held her gaze for a moment. It was a fair arrangement. More than fair. Bill got to search for his family and the settlement got intelligence on the mountain. He just didn't love the idea that people needed to ask permission to go look for their own families. But he didn't say that.

He'd dumped the responsibility on her, and her system was working.

"It's a good idea," he said instead.

"I'll need a bigger workshop space, though I'm keeping what I have upstairs too. I like having two places to work." Sumi nodded.

"We should move the safe with our research notes over as well. And the library." She turned to Enzo.

"We should also look into enchanting the building itself." Enzo raised an eyebrow.

"The building?"

"Protections. If this is going to be where the mages work and where we store materials, it should be the most secure building in the settlement." If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. He turned the idea over.

"If we can figure out how to enchant an entire building, we could apply the same approach to the palisade wall." He leaned against the doorframe.

"Fire resistance would be the priority. Then general reinforcement. Maybe something to dampen mana signatures so the building doesn't light up like a beacon to anyone with Mana Sense." Val glanced at Sumi, then back at Enzo.

"Obviously you'd both still keep your rooms at home." She said it quickly.

"This is just for work." Sumi nodded. Enzo's eyes narrowed slightly. He chose not to comment, turning to Sumi instead.

"I know it's only been hours, but how is your new role as Head of Magical Research?" Sumi brightened.

"Great! I spoke briefly with everyone already, and I think if we can solve mana permanence we might be able to solve the food problem. Obviously plants and animals can do it naturally. Eaters, too." She frowned.

"The only issue is we need to figure out how to do it with typed mana instead of ambient, which is obviously the common thread for the others." Enzo nodded.

"I did wonder if physical growth from ambient mana might be a natural consequence of having an additional energy source… but people aren't changing."

"Except Robert," Val said.

"But he did that by cultivating, so it doesn't count." Sumi nodded.

"Which proves it can be done. That Magus notification you told us about said that magic isn't natural to sapients—""Mana use," Enzo corrected.

"I know it's pedantic, but for all we know they had… magic technology before they could wield mana themselves."

"Which is another thing we need to research," Sumi said.

"Mana is interfering with some things, but physics didn't stop working. I can't see any reason combustion engines couldn't work if we fixed the fuel problem." Val crossed her arms.

"Just suck the mana out." They both turned to her.

"What?" She glanced between them.

"I know mana gets into everything, but you already made rocks that can absorb it. Use those. Or make rocks that do the opposite and stop the mana from getting into things." Sumi looked at him. Enzo nodded.

"It might work, but we'd also need to figure out how to shield materials…" He trailed off. There'd been a section in one of the entries about cultivators creating mana-transfer differentials in materials. The others waited for him.

"Infusion. The Guide was talking about mana storage, but it sounded like cultivators could bond mana to materials in ways that affected how mana flowed through them. That might work." Sumi's eyes widened.

"Then we'd only need to figure out how to…" The corner of her mouth twitched upward.

"Suck the mana out, and maybe we could get cars working again."

"That would change everything," Val said, looking excited. Enzo shook his head and held up a hand.

"Let's slow down. Assuming both of those things even work, I wouldn't even know where to start to get a car running." Sumi deflated a little.

"He's right. We'd probably have to enchant and infuse every part of an engine. And cars need batteries to start, right? Electricity isn't working either."

"It might be easier to just figure out magic combustion," Enzo said. Val laughed.

"Of course you'd try to kick off the magical revolution by bringing back the steam engine." Enzo raised an eyebrow.

"It's either that or we return to the horse-drawn carriage, starring cultivators as the horses." Sumi snorted. Then she blushed and covered her mouth.

"I can see it now." Val snickered, sparing a glance for Sumi.

"Kenzo pulling the carriage while you smack his bald head to go faster." Enzo shook his head.

"Kenzo rides shotgun. You'd be pulling the carriage." Val blinked innocently at Enzo.

"You wouldn't subject your cute, innocent sister to such a life of hardship, would you?"

"Cute sister? Where?" Enzo looked around.

"I didn't realize mom and dad had popped out another sibling, but they must have because there's no way we're talking about you." Sumi coughed into her hand and turned away. Val grinned, then put her arm around Sumi's shoulders and walked away.

"We're leaving to investigate the rest of our future guild hall. You are dismissed, blind brother."

"I'm your only brother."

"Yeah, but I think of Kenzo as the dumb brother." Enzo watched them disappear further into the house, then took another look around the room. A moment later, he nodded. The mages having a guild hall was a pretty good idea. They couldn't keep using the kitchen at home, and even if the administrative building had space, mages would probably need to start thinking about keeping some of their knowledge and craft a secret.

Enzo closed the door to his bedroom workshop and let out a breath. He rubbed at the corners of his eyes, then pinched the bridge of his nose. Outside, the sun had finally dipped below the tree line. When he'd started the morning squeezing blood from a cut in his hand, before carefully disinfecting and slapping a bandage on it, there had been no indication of just where the day was going to end up. Eaters in shipping containers. Two mages recruited. New mana types. Becoming a dictator. Setting a war in motion.

And still there was so much to be done. In fact, his workload had increased somehow, though hopefully Sumi would solve that problem once she taught the basics of enchanting to Signe and Mary. Enzo dropped into his chair. Signe. He'd been trying to avoid it, but knowing she'd be heading out to meet with potentially hostile strangers tomorrow worried him. It needed to be done, but he was glad Pops had offered to go with her. His old man wasn't someone he'd bet against. Ever.

Still, he needed to speak with Signe before the night was over. Enzo glanced at the barrier ring he'd prepared for her yesterday. He hadn't expected her to need it in a hurry, but so far sharing spells between them had mostly failed. Signe's strange approach to spell forms defied what he and Sumi understood about magic. She couldn't even copy the Shield spell. The basic circular thread did nothing for her on its own, though she'd adapted the concepts from Sumi's Heal spell into a spell of her own design.

The spells were barely alike. Both affected the body's natural processes by delivering body and life mana, but where Sumi's was highly targeted using arcane mana, Signe's sent a brief wave of calming music using sound mana. The Guide had named it Soothe. Probably because it also subtly decreased the heart rate. He'd read Sumi's notes on the entire process, but it still made little sense to him. The difference had to lie with the core type of mana being used though, because he and Sumi relied heavily on arcane.

And geometry just felt right to them both, even if their designs were drifting further and further apart as Sumi experimented with more mana types. Mary's weaving added further complication. Then there was Kenzo and Val's blending of types. Everything he'd thought made sense about magic and mana was already falling apart. What seemed simple and straightforward was changing shape day by day. Enzo sighed. Magic was awesome. Besides, investigating those issues was Sumi's problem now.

It was time to learn Infusion and Empowerment. Then he'd find Signe and give her the ring while hoping she didn't give him that look in return, along with the relentless teasing he knew would follow. He reached for the kitchen knife, still dirty with his blood though it had long since dried.