Chương 112: Chapter 109 – Magic

The common room had ceased to be a room in any meaningful sense of the word. It still possessed walls, and a ceiling that had not yet been convinced to leave, but everything else about it had been overtaken by barrels. They stood where tables had been, where chairs had once been arranged with the vague expectation of conversation. The furniture that remained had been pushed to the edges in a gesture that suggested compromise but in practice looked a lot like retreat.

The rest of the furniture was in Alric's item box. Alric stood near the centre of it, though "centre" was a stretch, holding a sheet of paper in one hand and a piece of charcoal in the other. The paper had been used, erased, folded, and flattened again enough times that it was more crease than flat. The drawing on it had changed with each pass, small corrections accumulating into something that now resembled intention rather than skill. The still sat at the heart of it. Stromni could build it.

That part was no longer in question. The dwarf had already begun hammering plates, shaping copper with the quiet certainty of someone who had long since accepted that metal would do what he told it to if he was persistent enough about beating it. The still would exist. Alric frowned slightly, looking down at the drawing as though it might offer an answer if observed with sufficient intensity. How did we use to join metals together on Earth? Welders? The thought did not arrive with any particular flourish.

It simply… aligned.

"Welding torch," he said out loud. The words hung there, unchallenged. He frowned, the connection settling into place with a quiet, uncomfortable certainty. Didn't the magery say they had a wand that projected fire? He lowered the charcoal slowly, his attention already shifting away from the drawing, not because it was no longer important, but because it had just become… solvable in a way that required verification.

He folded the paper once, carefully enough that the existing creases were respected, then set both it and the charcoal aside on a barrel because no other surfaces existed.

"I'll be back," he said to no one in particular, and left. Alric clearly understood how copper behaves relative to say, steel. Approaching the magery, Alric noted again how much cleaner the noble's side of the city was. Alric slowed slightly as he entered, adjusting without thinking about it. Margaret was working at the magery today, behind the clerk table, her sleeves rolled neatly and her attention focused on a series of scrolls arranged in front of her.

Battery stood off to one side, holding up a scroll of his own, it looked like he was comparing one to another. Margaret looked up as he approached, her gaze settling on him with an annoyance of someone being interrupted.

"You've been busy," she said, not as a question. Alric nodded once.

"We're out of space, good to see you too Margaret." Margaret's lips pressed together briefly, the faintest hint of amusement touching her expression.

"That tends to happen when you continue making things without thinking where they will go."

"I considered it," Alric said.

"The answer was 'somewhere else.'" Battery made a small noise that might have been agreement or might have been the object in their hands objecting. Margaret shook her head slightly, then gestured toward the space in front of him.

"What brings you here?" Alric did not answer immediately. He glanced around the room to the space the wand display stood.

"Last time I was here, there was a wand that makes fire. I came to ask questions, maybe take a look at it." he said. Margaret tilted her head slightly, considering him.

"For what purpose?"

"To make heat," Alric said, with a deadpan expression. Margaret watched him for a moment longer, then nodded once, as if deciding that whatever the specifics were, they would reveal themselves soon enough.

"Come," she said, standing and moving turning toward the display. She moved with the quiet efficiency Alric had come to expect, selecting the wand from among several that appeared identical until one looked closely enough to notice the slight variations in grip and balance. She turned it once in her hand, then offered it to him.

"This is the one," she said.

"It draws on a drake stone." Alric took it, feeling the weight of it settle into his hand. It was lighter than expected, but balanced in a way that suggested it had been made to be used.

"Drake?" he repeated as a question.

"A lesser species of dragon," Margaret said.

"Still dangerous, but less so than their larger kin. The stone is how drakes breath fire, for dragons it's different and their stones are bigger, this one is from a red drake." Alric turned the wand slightly, examining it.

"How much mana can it handle?" Margaret scoffed faintly.

"It will be fine." He glanced at her waiting an answer.

"You surely don't think you match a lessor dragon for mana?" she replied. Alric considered that, unsure of what the correct answer was, just shrugged.

"How does it work?"

"Push mana into it," Margaret said.

"It then spits fire. Takes a lot of mana."

"That's it?"

"That is it." He stepped slightly to the side, giving himself space, he lifted the wand and studied the crystal or magic stone in it.

"You really think you can fire it?" Margaret asked with a raised brow"Uh.. I think so." After the debacle with the well, he'd been told he had a lot of mana.

"Fine, follow me then." She said turning and moving deeper into the building. Alric followed. Margaret opened a door, which lead to a longer room with a turned piece of metal at the end.

"Aim it at the target, and push mana into it." Margaret said gesturing to the metal. Alric had learned, slowly and with some frustration, that jumping directly to the end of a process tended to produce results that were difficult to repeat. He held the wand out in front of him and sent a small amount of mana into the wand. He felt a resistance before a narrow flame extended from the tip, steady and clean, its shape holding without flicker. He watched it. It did not waver or surge.

It simply pushed out, larger than a candle flame. It was controlled output that responded to the input without hesitation but not nearly hot enough. He increased the flow slightly. The flame lengthened, the core sharpening, the colour shifting as the heat intensified. The air around it began to distort, enough to indicate the change. He adjusted his mana flow again. Margaret moved closer, not to interfere, but to observe.

"Careful," she said, though her tone suggested curiosity rather than concern. Alric did not respond. He tilted the wand slightly, watching the flame follow without lag.

"I'm going to push harder, I want to see how it does." He said watching the flame, in the corner of his vision he saw Margaret nod. Alric pushed mana into it aggressively the flame broadened, it roared, pushing out with a force that carried heat with it in a controlled wave. It was not chaotic exactly, but it was unpredictable. He would have described it as akin to a flame thrower but with, wider bits somewhere in the middle. He reduced the flow slightly, then increased it again, testing the responsiveness.

Every adjustment was immediate. Every change in input produced a change in output without delay or resistance. Alric exhaled slowly through his nose. Stolen story; please report.

"This is cool," he said. In the back of his mind he wondered if it was too aggressive for a welding torch. Margaret blinked.

"I didn't think you'd be able to fire it so hard." He increased the flow again, pushing it further than he had before. The flame surged, extending outward with a presence that demanded attention. The heat intensified, enough now that it pressed against his skin even at a distance. Margaret took another step forward, her earlier calm giving way to something more focused.

"How much mana are you using?" she asked. Alric paused, considering the question, then reduced the output again.

"Not much."

"That is not…" Margaret stopped, recalibrating but not finishing her sentence. Alric glanced at her.

"It's not too bad." He let the flame die, the wand cooling in his hand as the heat dissipated. He brought it closer to study it again. Margaret watched him for a moment, then asked, carefully, "Are you an archmage?" Alric shook his head.

"Nothing like that."

"You are drawing on a drake stone at a level that would exhaust most practitioners in moments."

"I can use mana," Alric said.

"And I have an item box." Margaret stared at him.

"That is still a mage," she said, after a moment. Alric shrugged. Margaret exhaled slowly, then straightened.

"Well…" she said.

"Do you want to buy it?"

"Well that depends on the price?" Alric asked admiring the wand again.

"It's seven large silver." She looked at Alric sceptically. He nodded.

"Then I'll take it but I want to look at the others." Margaret nodded before leading him back to the display. Alric tested a few wands after that, one that he saw as particularly useful could move air around. He took both before him and Margaret headed to the counter.

"Your token?" She asked. Alric frowned slightly "Token?" She turned back to him.

"Your magery token?"

"I don't have one." Margaret went very still. For a moment, nothing happened. Margaret tilted her head to the side to regard Alric.

"You have been using magical items," she said, "without being registered?" Alric considered that, then nodded.

"Yes, but the heating stones are even used by soup sellers, you can't tell me they are registered as mages?" Margaret considered this and let out a deep breath.

"That is true, but you can't buy a wand without being registered."

"What does it cost to register?" Alric asked. Margaret blinked.

"Nothing."

"Is this going to take a month?" Alric asked trying to find the catch somewhere. Margaret closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again.

"No, it takes less than a bell, come," she said again, more firmly this time, leading him toward the back room. The back room felt less like a place where magic was practiced and more like a place where magic was accounted for, which in Alric's experience tended to be where the real trouble started.

Shelves ran from floor to ceiling, not neatly or particularly well organised at a glance, but with the kind of internal logic that suggested everything here could be found quickly by the person who had put it there and not by anyone else. Papers sat in stacks that leaned just far enough to threaten collapse. Ledgers lay open where they had been last used, ink dried in lines that had clearly been interrupted and resumed without ceremony. At the centre of it all sat an old man.

He was hunched over a book large enough to require its own table, one hand moving steadily across the page as he wrote, the other resting beside a small pile of loose sheets that had been pushed there with the vague intention of being dealt with later. His beard had long since passed the point of being a feature and had instead become a presence, spreading across his chest and down toward the table in a way that suggested it had grown there out of stubbornness rather than necessity.

Stromni would have been impressed with it. Margaret did not interrupt him immediately. She stepped into the room, waited just long enough to be noticed without being disruptive, and then said, "Master Hollen." The pen stopped, mid-stroke, as though whatever thought had been flowing through it had been forcibly redirected elsewhere.

"What is the name?" the old man asked, without looking up.

"Alric." There was a moment. A very small one, the kind that might have been missed if one had not been looking for it, where the room seemed to reconsider itself. Then the pen lifted. Slowly, deliberately, the old man raised his head.

"Alric?" he asked. Alric, who had dealt with priests, guild officials, and more than one person who believed themselves important enough to warrant a particular tone, found himself answering before he had fully considered whether he should.

"That's me, I'm also called the brewer." Alric said with confidence and one of his better smiles. The old man inhaled. It was not a large breath, it definitely added to the dramatic effect.

"I'VE BEEN LOOKING THROUGH EVERY DAMN REGISTER FOR YOU FOR MONTHS!" he roared, the sound filling the room and then deciding it would like to remain there for a while.

"HOW ARE YOU NOT REGISTERED?" Alric recoiled. There were a number of possible responses available to him, most of them involving explanation, justification, or some form of polite deflection. None of them seemed immediately appropriate.

"I didn't know I needed to be," he said. The old man stared at him. It was not a kind stare. It was not even particularly angry, not in the way the shouting had suggested. It was… exhausted, in a way that implied this was not the first time something like this had happened, but it was certainly the most inconvenient version of it.

"Of course you didn't," he muttered, reaching beneath the table. He produced a metal slab with crystal sphere on the centre of it, setting it down in front of him with the sort of care that suggested it was both valuable and prone to proving points that people did not enjoy. It was mounted on a small frame, beneath which sat a flat panel inset with a series of narrow bars, each marked with increments that meant nothing to Alric at a glance but suggested measurement with intent.

"Hand," the old man said, pointing at the sphere. Alric stepped forward and placed his hand on it. Nothing happened. The old man's expression darkened.

"Are you mocking me?" he asked, his voice dropping into something quieter and significantly less forgiving.

"No? I just don't know what…" Alric said.

"Then put your back into it! Push mana into it!" Out of irritation Alric slammed his mana into the sphere more aggressively than he'd done with the wand. Every bar beneath the sphere shot upwards at once, slamming into their upper limits with a sharp, metallic crack. The panel beneath them held for a fraction of a second, just long enough to suggest it might survive the experience. Then it released a small, almost polite puff of smoke. Alric watched it as all the measuring bars turned dim.

He had seen such smoke before. In a very different context, computers specifically, it was called the magic smoke there too. Something had been pushed beyond what it could reasonably accommodate, and it had responded by quietly ceasing to cooperate. For a long moment, the older mage simply stared at the panel, then at the sphere, then slowly, very slowly, at Alric. The room settled into silence. It was not the comfortable kind. It was the sort that followed a statement no one had been prepared to hear.

"What school?" the old man asked slowly. His voice had changed. The volume was gone, replaced by something more controlled, more careful, as though he had just realised that the situation required a different approach and was now attempting to find it.

"I'm not part of a school," Alric said. Hollen's eye twitched.

"Margaret." She stepped forward immediately.

"What school?" he asked again, without looking away from Alric.

"He says none," she replied. The old man closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again.

"What do you cast?" he asked.

"Item box." Another pause.

"Of course you do," the old man said, though it was not entirely clear what that was supposed to mean. He leaned back slightly in his chair, one hand coming up to rub at his forehead as though attempting to smooth out a problem that had become inconveniently three-dimensional.

"Spatial," he said, more to the room than to anyone in it.

"Fine. Spatial magic." Margaret had already moved to one of the ledgers, opening it to a fresh page and beginning to write with the speed of someone who had long since learned that hesitation only created more work later.

"How large is your item box?" the old man asked. Alric considered the question. There were, he realised, several ways he could answer it. He could attempt to describe it in terms that would likely align with whatever system they used here, though he did not know what that system was and had no particular interest in discovering it through trial and error. Or he could answer it in a way that made sense to him.

"A bit over twelve wagonloads of grain," he said. There was a pause. A longer one this time.

"WHY ARE YOU MEASURING IT IN GRAIN?" the old man demanded.

"WHY ARE YOU MEASURING IT IN WAGONLOADS?" Margaret added, almost immediately. Alric looked between them. For a moment, he considered explaining. Then he decided against it.

"IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE ANSWER," he said, his voice rising just enough to meet theirs, "DON'T ASK." The silence that followed was different. The old man exhaled slowly, then lowered himself back into his chair as though the act required more effort than it had previously.

"Fine," he muttered.

"Fine." He rubbed his forehead again, more deliberately this time.

"Just… finish the blasted process. I'm sending a letter to his majesty, by the sage, an elder mage been running around the city without registration." Hollen said making a dismissive gesture. Margaret nodded once, writing something else into the ledger before closing it and moving to a small drawer set into the wall. She opened it, paused briefly as she selected something from within, and then returned to Alric, holding a pin between her fingers. It was more ornate than hers.

Excessively so, but it suggested rank, the metal worked into a pattern that caught the light in a way that implied someone had taken the time to ensure it would.

"Your rank is determined by mana capacity," she said, her tone returning to something closer to normal as she handed it to him.

"Given… that…" She hesitated, just briefly.

"You would be considered elder." Alric took the pin, turning it once between his fingers. It looked like a flame that also had wings.

"Whatever, I can buy the wands now, right?" he said thoroughly annoyed at being shouted at. Margaret watched him for a moment. There was a shift in her posture, subtle but deliberate, as though she had reached a decision she had been circling for some time and was now choosing to act on it.

"Let's do the purchase then." She glanced at Hollen who waved her off, the old man had sunk into his chair and was rubbing his temples aggressively. The pair headed back to the clerk desk. Before Margaret began ringing up, she threw her sweetest smile at Alric.

"Would you consider forming an atelier?" she asked. Alric looked at her with another deadpan expression.

"What is that?"

"A formal magical school," she said.

"Registered and recognised. With authority to train others." Alric frowned slightly.

"No. I don't know any magic."

"You have the capacity," she said.

"That is all you need to register. Teaching and such can be… delegated."

"Why?" Alric asked feeling his annoyance and skeptism soar. Margaret inclined her head.

"Uh... So you can have mages on call. Also, lets just say another atlier in the capital might make a big difference with the king." Alric considered that. It did not take long.

"It sounds like a pain, no thanks." he said. Margaret's expression did not change, but something in it settled, as though she had expected that response and had already prepared for it.

"Look, I …" She paused looking for the right words.

"I am a very minor noble," she began.

"Distant enough that there is no real support. I cannot advance further without rank. I cannot obtain rank without an atelier." Alric said nothing.

"There are two girls, my cousins," she continued.

"They have strong magical aptitude."

"And?" Alric asked. Margaret hesitated.

"They are… attractive," she said. Alric frowned. For a moment, the words did not connect. Then they did. His expression shifted.

"Ah, other nobles?" he asked wincing.

"Yes." She said avoiding eye contact. Alric looked away, then back at her.

"No," he said "This is not something I am getting involved in." He turned, already stepping toward the door. Margaret did not move.

"An atelier can order magical components directly from adventurers you know," she said. Alric stopped. He simply did not take the next step. He stood there for a moment, his back to her, the movement he had begun left incomplete.

"It needs at least five members, they all need to be registered," she added. Alric exhaled slowly. There was a long enough pause that it suggested the thought had not been dismissed, merely… set aside for evaluation.

"I'll think about it," he said. He did not turn around. He walked out. Margaret stood where she was for a moment longer, then allowed herself a small movement, a brief tightening of her hand that did not quite become a gesture but came close. Behind her, the old man reached for a fresh sheet of paper. He dipped his pen, stared at the page for a moment as though considering how much of what had just happened he intended to include, and then began to write.

"Your Majesty," he wrote.