The Effaced: Epilogue

On the grand airship Malapert, floating over the city, the Parliament Chairman awoke. It was six in the morning, which was when he always woke. A healthy body helped nurture a healthy mind. His mother had always maintained that, and she had lived to be a hundred and six. 

He performed a quick stretching routine, then called out. 

“Egress!” 

The young woman appeared in his bedroom, which slightly unnerved him. He knew she had a familiar boon that allowed her to place a mark on the mental signature of others, then swap with that signature as if it were a familiar. An odd ability, and one that was annoying. Nobody should be able to zip through space as freely as she could. 

“Yes sir?” she asked, her voice chipper. 

“Report,” he said as he began to dress himself for the day. 

“The Arenamaster has still yet to be spotted. Axel Font has yet to stop her, and has yet to kill Abraham. I believe he’s focusing on the Arenamaster first.” 

“How frustrating. If she hides through the next election cycle, then we might have one of the members of the council chosen by someone not aligned with our goals, then we will need to spend months rejecting and going back and forth…” 

He sighed and ran a comb through his hair. 

“Ah, well. If Axel has not managed to make a serious move against her within three months, kill him. Discreetly. Use pennyroyal oil, mixed into mint tea.” 

“Yes sir,” Egress said. Her face betrayed nothing, but the Chairman had two arch-stars. The second was a sensory star for the body, and he registered the slight micro-twitches in her musculature. She didn’t like the order, but that was fine. She didn’t have to like it, she just had to do it. 

He reached out and squeezed her cheek, where he knew a scar lay, beneath the faerie glamour she wore. To someone who didn’t know, it might look like a kindly grandfather, pinching the cheek of a favorite grandfather. 

It sent another tiny spasm of fear through Egress’ muscles, and he kept himself from smiling or displaying even the smallest hint of amusement to her. 

“Very good,” he said. “Have you found the Arenamaster?” 

“No.” 

“Mm. Stop searching. We will allow Axel to play this out. I believe that he was not lying when he said he wishes to capture the Arenamaster’s new indoctrinated children. I have a new task for you.” 

He turned and looked out the window. The Malapert hung high in the sky, at a height which no other airship could reach, and from each of its bedrooms, a person could survey a massive slice of the city. 

“Miss Hadiya Abbas,” he said. “She is obsessed with the idea of bringing magic to the masses. Her tattoos are far too costly, and the rapid spread would destabilize everything. But she is not fundamentally wrong. She simply needs a perspective adjustment. I had hoped Rhys would be capable of this, but it appears I will need to tip my hand a little more. Arrange a meeting with her.” 

“Of course,” Egres said, then vanished. 

Four hours later, the chairman sat in a coffee shop inside of an airship, gently stirring a sugar cube into his coffee with a wooden spoon. There weren’t many pleasure airships, and the ones that did fly over the sky were expensive. This one in particular was his favorite, with a cafe, a wine room, and a small luncheon room.

Hadiya stalked in, looking angry, and practically threw herself into the chair across from him. 

“Are you here to order me around even more?” she demanded, her voice low and angry.

“No,” he said. “I want to offer you a promotion.” 

She blinked, and half her muscles tensed, while the other half relaxed. 

“What?” she asked. 

“The CEO of Elucidate Labs is a member of Nexus,” he said, which caused a few more of her muscles to twitch and tense.

Given how he had already threatened her with termination, she had likely already suspected that, and confirming it with honesty would be the best way to steer her to where he wanted. 

“He is also, unfortunately, a buffoon,” the chairman said. “He inherited much of his wealth, and is little better than an aristocrat. His COO stands to inherit his position within Nexus, but the line of promotion needs to continue.” 

He gave her a charming smile, using a spell he had long ago committed to rote memory to shape it into precisely measured perfection. 

“If the CEO was to resign, and the COO became the new CEO, the Head of Research and Development could be promoted upwards to become the new COO. You could then become the new department head.” 

“Why are you telling me this?” Hadiya asked. “If you wanted to promote me, you could.” 

“I am telling you this because I want you to focus on a new avenue of power. Tell me, have you had a chance to look into the development of aura generators?” 

“Not much,” Hadiya admitted. “They weren’t my department.” 

“That is the project I want you to pursue. Right now, there are several new varieties being developed, each of which has major hurdles. You will focus on four new designs. First.. Are you familiar with aura trees?

“I think Paerús has three of them,” Hadiya said. “And I believe they are native to Vyrma? Trees that naturally produce aura. Aspected, like a mage’s aura, not clean like ambient aura.”

“Correct. We have begun a new design, based off of the interior structure of aura tree seeds. Nine have been produced so far, but they are running into problems. In particular, they burn out after only five months, and they permanently consume a portion of a mage’s aura to begin working, yet it can’t accept just anyone as the kickstarter. I want you to work on fixing those problems.” 

Hadiya took a moment to consider it, then slowly nodded her agreement. 

“I can accept that. It’s good for the city, both poor and rich.” 

“Second, you shall have work done on the compression project. As things stand, the city is in a slow but steady auric deficit, and the size of generators is partly to blame. Creating smaller generators will allow for better items, better powering of homes, street lamps, and more.” 

“Done,” she said. “I was already thinking about it some. The trouble is that the crystalline lattices are too–” 

He held up a hand and smiled, this one a more kindly smile than his earlier political one. 

“My dear, when it comes to magical technology, you are far and away my superior in knowledge. I am investing in you to get this work done. The third thing we wish for you to work on is the supplemented generators. These utilize a spell we stole from the grand spell of Ulacto, with one of Paerús’ growth spells, to create a continually refined aura generator. One that can improve over time. It currently has several problems, including the fact it needs to create a pseudo-boonto a mage to begin working, shrinking their aura only to improve their regeneration, and that it needs. It’s also quite picky. Those must be fixed.”

“I can work with that,” she agreed. “The final one?” 

“The final you will focus on is a new type of generator that produces a perfectly clear ambient aura.” 

Hadiya sucked in a gasp. 

“How is that even possible? It…” 

Creating a way to produce ambient aura was impossible, as far as she knew. She’d studied the astral, soul, life, planar, and other magic of the aura more than almost anyone else – it had been critical for the development of the tattoos. 

But she had never even come close to producing actual ambient aura. 

If there was a way to produce ambient aura, the entire city could be saved in countless ways. The thickness of ambient aura was one of the major components of determining if a person awakened an aura of their own. It was used for powering witchcraft, for use in wards and magical devices that recharged over time, for countless arch-stars… It was the fuel that drove the world, so to speak. 

It was also why Elderglass was slowly, oh so slowly, falling apart. 

The ambient aura in Elderglass was entirely too thin, drained by a thousand ways. Like the chairman had said, the city was in a deficit, and while generators had helped, they couldn’t perfectly account for everything. 

But if a generator could produce ambient aura… 

The chairman smiled, clearly having expected this question and came prepared. He snapped, and a young woman appeared next to him. She waved her hand and a rippling in the air warped open to reveal a portal to the Wandering Path. The girl walked in, then emerged with a massive lead box nearly the size of her entire torso, supported on a force disc spell. She unlocked it, wards flashing, then removed another box the size of her head, wooden, and covered in wards. Hadiya’s hair stood on end. There was a complex and subtle shifting of a half dozen patterns on the front, which the girl worked through, until it finally slid open as well.

Inside the wooden box was a tiny vial, with a single drop of… something. The something was made of gold, and it glowed so brightly that it hurt to look at. The air seemed to warp and shimmer around the vial, then Hadiya abruptly realized that no, it wasn’t the air that was shimmering.

It was ambient aura. 

Unless you had mage sight, ambient aura was invisible. There were some tiny shifts that could be noticed around incredibly potent sources, like ley lines: a prickling in the neck, a feeling of something else, feeling like you were being watched. 

But she could physically see the ambient aura rushing off of this droplet of golden liquid. 

“It’s like a ley line in a bottle,” she whispered, her tone almost reverent.

The girl put it back in the box, sealing it, and then put the wooden box back inside the lead box, then began moving it back into the vault in the Wandering Path. 

“That is how,” the chairman said. “So far, nobody has managed to actually come up with a way to amplify the effect. The basic and obvious solutions have failed.” 

He leaned forward, looking her in the eye. 

“This is why I have called you here. You are incredibly intelligent. I want you to find a way to amplify that effect, without it becoming unsafe. This will be your new personal project.” 

“What… What is that?” 

“An import from Ulacto. A dangerous and rare substance, which there is a very limited supply of. Nexus is making preparations to produce more of it, but our ability to do so is limited as well.” 

Hadiya’s brain was whirling, trying to figure out ways to produce it without such a rare component, and the chairman traced the rim of his coffee cup with one finger, watching her. 

“This is why we need you to stop working on tattoos. Those exacerbate the problem. If everyone is a witch, then our desperately thin ambient aura will only worsen. But if we can create ambient aura, we can increase the number of mages in the city. Improve life for the small and large alike.”

That was missing a lot of details. It might help the poor some, but much like current generation technology, it would go to the rich first and foremost. It would further their grip over the city, and the help it gave to the poor would be incidental at best. It was just keeping the system in place. 

But it also was more than just a patch in the hull. If she could find a way to mass produce ambient aura, the lives of everyone could improve. She just needed to be careful about how she framed it. 

“I think you may be coming around to our way of thinking, hm?” the chairman said. 

“Maybe,” she admitted. “I don’t agree with everything, but… Maybe.” 

He removed a contract from his briefcase and pushed it across the table to her, one for her new position as Head of Research and Development. 

Haidya read it over carefully, then signed.

xxx

On a mountain top outside of Elderglass, a peak so high up above the clouds that even the Malapert couldn’t reach it, an old woman puffed on a pipe, sitting on the skull of a dragon. The dragon had been killed here long ago, and its body still burned with fire. 

She sat and watched the fate of civilizations. She was content – things had been improving, overall. There were an uncountable number of trillions of possible futures in every second, but she could get a general shape for what was likely and unlikely, and after the upset some years ago in the north, she’d seen a general upward swing in the fate of the continent. The Singer had joined their little circle, making four Immortals to watch over the Mortal Cousins from elsewhere. 

Then a single box opened in Elderglass, and she bolted to her feet, her old bones creaking. 

Where in the Starless Night and Eternal Peace like had they found that? She’d been sure every trace had been destroyed. 

She was suddenly very glad that the current Walker had killed the previous incompetent. She let out a puff of smoke and began to compose a spell. 

xxx

In a small hotel room, one that was fairly cheap for a visiting foreign ambassador, a blonde haired, muddy-brown eyed man in his late thirties, though he looked younger, felt a boon shift. The Silver Queen – no, she was an Autumn Queen now, he kept forgetting – was sending him a message from the wandering path. 

He picked up the letter that fell through. It was from Hadiya, one of the Ligature members in the city, detailing how she was going to get information from Bloody Eyes and they could try and go through with the tattoo plan. 

The man scratched his chin and spoke aloud. His proficiency with the language of Elderglass was rudimentary, and he couldn’t hide the thick northern accent in his words. But that was why he practiced. 

“Crazy. But she is guts. I respect it.”

He ran a hand through his hair. 

“Husband won’t be happy I get sucked up in another government conspiracy. Ah, well. Maybe I will be lucky, and they handle own business. Knowing my luck? Will be fighting… Gah. What is called?” 

He switched back to his native tongue and laughed, walking over to the wardrobe. He pulled on a black coat, embossed with hundreds of tiny runes, which each connected to pocketed away stores of more runes, woven into a tapestry of one hundred and forty four spells with magic from four different realms, including one he shouldn’t have had access to. He pulled on his gloves, each of which was made of seven spells, and then prepared to step outside, when one of his divination spells flashed. 

Something that shouldn’t be in the city was here. Something that reminded him of something that he’d hoped to forget, yet… not. It was fundamentally opposed to the power he’d woven into a cloak, then into this coat. 

Ivar Tailor let out a tired sigh, and when he spoke to himself, it was in his native tongue. 

“It seems like I might just be fighting monsters after all.”