Chapter 233 - A Sexy Statue

Sebastien

Month 9, Day 5, Sunday 10:00 a.m.

Sebastien wasted no time sitting down to review the modifications Liza had made to the sleep-proxy spell. She closed her eyes and ran through the whole solo casting process in her head to make sure she had a firm grasp on it. Visualization wasn’t as useful as actual practice, but it was a good secondary method when one needed to minimize the chances of screwing up.

Then, she heaved a deep sigh, let out a few childish whimpers of unwillingness, and went through the whole rigamarole to return to her other form with the lowest possible chance of being caught or tracked. Again. By the time she finished, she’d resorted to playing with her shadow under the cover over her clothes just to stave off the frustration at all the wasted time and effort. ‘If there is any actual magic that could allow me to shape-shift or otherwise avoid the Red Guard’s attention, I need to find it, because this is getting older than Myrddin.’

Liza’s lion door-knocker was very suspicious and angry looking, but after she gave the password, it begrudgingly let her in.

Liza’s plants were already watered and her animals fed, so Siobhan went down to the warded cells that used to be an apartment below. Much of the sleep-proxy spell was already set up, but there were several adjustments to the spell arrays that she made per Liza’s instructions.

When she had checked thrice to ensure an absence of silly mistakes, Siobhan cast her dreamless sleep spell on a cot in one of the other cells at the maximum power she could bring to bear. Then, she set an alarm spell on her pocket watch that should wake her in four hours, hopefully before the dreamless sleep magic ran empty.

The last few times she had slept, it had been Liza who cast the spell for her in between refreshing the sleep-proxy spell. The older woman had never commented on the need, but the strength of her Will had reassured Siobhan. No dreams had wormed their way past its protection.

Now she was apprehensive. She hauled the cot close to the sleeping raven before releasing it from the binding magic, just in case. It was unlikely, but she didn’t want to leave any chance that she might collapse on the floor, completely unprotected.

The raven didn’t wake up right away, and would probably need some time to recover from the stress on both its mind and body.

Siobhan laid down immediately, closing her eyes as the world seemed to roll around her with sudden, dizzying fatigue. She had worried that her anxiety might keep her from sleeping, but needn’t have worried. 

Some time later, Siobhan realized she was dreaming. Her heart jumped and adrenaline ran through her body strong enough that she almost woke herself, sensations from the real world poking through. But, as she realized her dream wasn’t frightening and held no hint of the thing sealed in her mind, her fatigue managed to pull her back under the surface.

She was flying over Gilbratha, exulting in the air, the sun, and most of all, the freedom. The joyful emotion came from somewhere in the back of her mind, feeling more like memories of emotion than what she actually felt.

Siobhan instinctively realized that she was a passenger in this experience, lacking the ability to control this body, but also lacking the desire to do so.

The bird—because this body was a bird—flew lower. Down below, it swooped down in a daring, skilled maneuver to snatch a cookie out of a young girl’s hand.

The child screamed and began to cry, and the bird gave a raucous, cawing laugh as it flapped away, gaining height again.

It landed on a rooftop to eat the cookie, delighting in the taste. If it were a human, it would have been making lewd sounds as its eyes rolled back in its head with pleasure. It was sad when the cookie was gone, even though the treat had stuffed its belly. The bird watched the passersby down below from the roof, taking particular note of any that wore black feathers. They, Siobhan knew somehow, would be more likely to feed it or trade their shiny trinkets in exchange for a song.

Siobhan woke to her pocket watch’s alarm, but was slow leaving behind her drowsiness. She put her feet on the cool floor and stared down at her toes, worrying about the dream. Nothing should have slipped past her dreamless sleep spell. But this felt more like an actual, real dream—the kind other people talked about—than anything she could remember experiencing.

She looked to the sleeper raven, which had begun to stir and was experimentally stretching its wings and hopping about the healing enclosure. ‘Did I just experience the raven’s dream?’ she wondered. ‘Was that some kind of magical backlash stemming from the inherent inequality in the binding magic between us?’

She didn’t know enough to be sure, but reassured herself with the knowledge that none of Liza’s much-enhanced ravens could have escaped, and no matter how disturbing the unexpected experience had been, Siobhan was not harmed by it.

Siobhan chugged some water, jumped around and stretched until she was entirely awake, and then spent the next eleven hours casting with minimal breaks between steps.

It was an entirely different level of effort than keeping her shadow-familiar going all day, but she thought the practice with that might have helped, along with the hundreds of hours of light-refinement that might have incrementally strengthened her Will.

When the final step was completed and the fresh raven bound to her, Siobhan collapsed to her knees. She took half an hour to simply rest, letting her mind and body relax as the magic rejuvenated her in an entirely different way.

She would have tried for some light-refinement, but the sun had already long set. She was to meet with Thaddeus and Kiernan again that night, but not for a couple of hours yet.

In the meantime, she had an easy ritual to do to expand the utility of her guiding light symbol. It was a moonless night, which was perfect for the additional ritual that would allow her to receive a “ping” from someone on the other end of a symbol. It was honestly extremely easy, only needed to be completed once, and just used an alternate version of the standard chant’s final verse. She did so on one of Liza’s tiny balconies, then rushed off toward the University, making sure to leave her student token as well as the emergency artifact Thaddeus had given her behind.

The men again met her at the base of the white cliffs, and they walked in relative silence. Kiernan was antsy, often rubbing at his short white beard and sighing. When they neared the level of the hidden journal room, he abruptly asked her, “How likely do you think it is that we’ll find an answer to the celerium problem within these three books?”

“I truly do not know,” Siobhan said. If she had to guess, it was probably the fourth journal that was closest chronologically to the one Oliver had stolen, and the most likely to hold the answers the Architects of Khronos and the Thirteen Crowns both so desperately wanted.

Kiernan turned to Thaddeus. “And how likely do you think it is that the Crowns’ expedition actually turns up a fresh deposit?”

“It does not seem too implausible, though I would need to know more about their exploration plan to make an educated guess. I would be more concerned about their ability to maintain a hold on any new deposits they find, so far from our base of power.”

Siobhan raised her eyebrows. “An expedition to find celerium?”

“I am surprised you did not already know of it,” Thaddeus said.

“They are sending one to the north, through Ironpine Forest and maybe even beyond, and one to try to explore the ocean,” Kiernan said. “I’m not sure how feasible the latter really is, because their surveying spells will need to reach vast distances through water, and even if they do find something, how are they going to set up the infrastructure to mine it past all the magical beasts?”

Siobhan hesitated to reveal her ignorance, but her curiosity won out. “Surveying spells? I find myself ignorant of the methods your people use to search for celerium.”

Thaddeus’s voice took on a tone that reminded her of the classroom. “I assume you are hinting at the fact that celerium can only be used to scry for other celerium mined from the same deposit?”

Siobhan nodded as if she had, in fact, known that. This was probably another bit of “common knowledge” that she had somehow never picked up during her rather non-standard education.

“The surveying spells look for telltale hints at the presence of celerium and search for more natural signs of its presence, rather than scrying for celerium directly. History has shown there to be about a one in three chance to find a second or even third source of celerium nearby the initial deposit. If we were to find celerium in the ocean, I imagine we would quickly look to deepen our relationship with the Plane of Water and call on its denizens for aid.”

Kiernan was squinting at her. “Do you know another way to search for celerium?”

“No. I have never had the need to do so.”

Kiernan snorted uncharitably and muttered something unintelligible under his breath.

Siobhan ignored him. “I imagine your new spell to make planar exploration and communication so much easier would become quite valuable then, Thaddeus.”

“Oh, you know, just doing my part,” he said as he opened the door to the small warded room. He didn’t even smirk, which Siobhan thought must have taken exceptional self control.

She managed to get into the third journal—the second of the three the University held—on the first try tonight, and as before, they eagerly read Myrddin’s words.

He started up where he had left off in the previous journal, with space-magic theory. Except now, he was considering trying to punch a hole through folded space to travel instantly. As they jumped forward a few pages, Myrddin worked on creating a small space almost entirely separated from the rest of reality, warded to the gills against both mundane and super-esoteric threats.

Thaddeus seemed very impressed, reading over things several times and muttering to himself.

Siobhan, by contrast, found it slightly boring. Sure, it was insight into incredible magic as well as the mind of the world’s greatest thaumaturge. But she couldn’t understand a smidge of the actual theory, and only knew generally what was going on due to a few pictures and pieces of the notes where Myrddin talked to himself in plain-speak, such as one particular note:

I can test it with a pebble. Inside the separated space, even if things go wrong, the failure shouldn’t cause catastrophic spillover damage.

“He should use a grape instead of a pebble,” Siobhan muttered. “Grapes are much more similar to the human body. And I hope he has a plan to completely excise that pocket space from the rest of reality in case things go wrong.”

Thaddeus looked at her, then back to the page. “Do you understand this?”

Siobhan would have liked to brag, but she feared that one of them might ask her to explain things if she lied. “Only a little.” She paused, then added, “Not very much,” just to make doubly sure that they didn’t misunderstand.

But when they turned to the next section and found that Myrddin had decided to stop with the attempt to develop true teleportation magic entirely, fearing that he might “destroy the world,” Thaddeus gauged her reaction carefully. “What do you think about that?”

“Myrddin was not a complete idiot,” she said, nodding appreciatively. “He seems like the kind of person who actually tried to learn from his mistakes. I admire that. It is harder than it seems.” She knew from experience how easy it was to fall back into the same bad patterns. She pointed to a spot further down the page, where Myrddin had said:

I cannot truly be sure of the outcome or the viability of my void bubble in controlling any backlash. Instant travel is not important enough to risk the lives of everyone in existence, as well as any hope for their future. Also, I live here, and I like my planet un-crumbled.

“I also like my planet un-crumbled,” she joked. Neither Thaddeus nor Kiernan seemed to find it amusing.

Then, Myrddin developed a soft cookie recipe with some kind of chewy, melty candy mixed in. Only after having satisfied this sudden and inexplicably intense craving after spending six weeks traveling to find the perfect ingredients and going through twenty-three batches of test cookies did Myrddin return to his more magical experiments.

He was back to Carnagore again. This time, he was starting to put together all the research and theory from before and creating the horse’s body. Every single piece was some kind of super, magically conductive material, often created by Myrddin’s own hand via alchemy or other rituals.

Over the next few dozen pages, the work continued. Several times, Myrddin made mistakes or had insights that required him to redo things or adjust his plans. When he finally completed the body, even more dozens of pages were spent on cascading spell arrays—which would be made out of celerium. These would control Carnagore’s movements and add a few magical effects, like a propulsion spell on the hooves, a few moments of lightness and gravity-like force propulsion to allow Carnagore to do a single huge leap or pour on extreme speed if required.

He created the spell arrays separately, on a kind of three-dimensional invisible wire-frame. Finally, he meshed the spell arrays and the body together and added a beast core to the power center.

Siobhan was becoming quite excited. ‘Am I going to get to ride my very own Carnagore some day?’ Sure, even with the instructions, actually creating the artifact would be a huge feat of thaumaturgy that could probably qualify someone for Grandmaster, and that wasn’t even considering the cost. It still sounded strangely appealing, in the way something like riding a dragon never had. A dragon could betray you, or die, or just be generally a jerk. Carnagore was an artifact.

‘I will name mine something different, though. Something less edgy.’

The next set of pages was filled with Myrddin’s disappointment, and Siobhan’s in turn. The Carnagore prototype was nothing like the stories, and obviously nothing like Myrddin’s vision. It jerked when it moved, looked somehow strange and uncanny when it walked, was too stupid to path-correct and avoid damaging its surroundings, and a dozen other failures that Myrddin noted along with anecdotes of its embarrassing mishaps.

After that, Myrddin created a monitoring spell that would help him come up with better math for how quadrupeds actually moved. He just needed to place down the monitoring artifacts and leave them for a few months.

The next section was filled with several notes from Myrddin, as his thoughts seemed to keep interrupting whatever else he tried to work on.

I do not understand why people insist on blaming me for their cattle acting strangely. When I went to get milk this morning, the farmer of course did not dare say anything to my face, but I cast a spell and overheard him and his neighbors gossiping about how I insisted on casting “strange magic” on their cattle. I swear, one of them even insinuated that I had a “perverse interest” in their goats!

My interest in their goats is solely based on the way that cute, small one named Caramel dances along the top of the fence like some kind of cat! It is impressively nimble, and I believe any normal, totally non-depraved person would think so.

He had drawn a picture of an adolescent goat hopping along a stick-woven fence. This was followed not long after by another note.

I had nothing to do with the cattle supposedly acting strangely. If you find your cow watching you through your bedroom window at night, perhaps the dumb thing was attracted by your snoring, Bernard! It certainly isn’t “scheming against you,” and if it is, I didn’t have anything to do with it! If I wanted to harm you, I would simply vaporize your body and make everyone forget you ever existed.

And finally:

The Widow Gray asked me to make her cow produce mead instead of milk today, and no matter how I tried to explain that such a thing would require much more complex work than a simple chant and wave of my hand—and that the cow most likely would not survive the extensive physical changes—she was unconvinced. Ever since I did that water-into-wine trick down at the tavern a few years ago, people have been strangely fixated on this idea. She believed I simply was not properly incentivized to do the work for her, so she took out her wooden teeth and offered me—

He had crossed the rest of that paragraph out.

Well, in any case, I made her an artifact that will speed up the fermentation process of whatever source beverage she puts into the jar. I have a suspicion she will add milk. If she comes to me complaining that it is creating yogurt and not mead, I think I will scream.

And then, he got back to Carnagore’s movement spell arrays, even adding a control array to let him give simple directions with his voice as well as the standard methods that most horses were trained by. His reaction was less than enthused.

The metal beast looks natural, but not quite graceful. There is more to be done. Still, it is a beautiful, enormous metal horse that can jump over a house (must add better cushioning spells on the back) and I look quite dashing riding it about.

I should know by now that the common man will be impressed with any old thing, but that birdbrain Tarquin said that my creation was impractical, stomps around like a hippopotamus, and is obviously some kind of compensatory measure for the “size of my wand.” As if the metal beast were no better than some blasting trinket!

There was more, but again, it was angrily crossed out.

“He had not yet named it Carnagore,” Siobhan noted. Thaddeus grunted his agreement.

Myrddin’s next project was to transmute a body of flesh from scratch—apparently something he had learned how to do years ago, and which he was refreshing himself on and checking to see if he had made any improvements. Unfortunately, he didn’t get into the details of how he achieved it.

A good refresher, but it is not going to work for my purposes. So many things are missing. Also, I realize now my lack of foresight. What am I going to do with this body? I cannot simply dump it, lest someone find it and inevitably accuse me of murder or dark rituals to some eldritch entity. Vaporizing it seems such a waste, after all that work, and it feels quite strange to bury it, as if it were once human.

I suppose I shall just transmute it into dirt.

Or maybe…a sexy marble statue?

This was followed by a sketch of an alluringly posed naked man that looked…suspiciously like Sebastien, except with black hair.

Siobhan’s heart jumped, and she forcibly caught her breath in her throat. She stared at the likeness, her mind completely blank of any way to explain it or play it off.

She felt Thaddeus shift beside her and slowly turned her head to meet his gaze.

“Does that look like Sebastien to you?” he asked.

Author Note:

Latest chapter discussion thread on Azalea's Arcane Alcove (once we get into non-Patreon chapters and thus a wider audience, you'll see these discussion threads really gain traffic, I think):

https://alcove.azaleaellis.com/t/chapter-233-discussion-thread/514