Kanin Fyre: Chapter 33 - Before the Storm

“We’ve got five days, tops. Probably four,” I tell Dizzi that night.

“Less time to check our work than I would like,” the harpy says, fluttering her way around different angles of the giant spell circle we’ve drawn over the stone. “But I think we can manage it. The design is complete; the only limiting factor is storing enough mana for the spell. Although we should probably double-check that there are no mistakes in the circle before we rip a hole in reality.”

“Understandable.” Though after working with Siqi and Dizzi on the spell, I’m more confident than ever that it’s going to work. “Where are we at with the storage cubes?”

I’ve positioned a handful of Glow spells around the square to help Dizzi work. The chalk outline of the spell circle spans the whole square, much like it had in Emrox. Arrayed around it are six mana storage cubes.

Dizzi got Fyre to manufacture the cubes for us. Using the Dungeon Core, she conjured the blocks out of thin air—which I have to say is pretty darn handy. I took them up to the spell circle in a couple trips using my Inventory slots, and ever since then, the cubes have been absorbing ambient Storm arcana. Each night, Dizzi helps transfer some of that stored mana to me.

“Looks like they’re about halfway full,” I tell her as I Check each cube.

Dizzi clucks her teeth. “And how close is that for your spell requirements?”

“It’s enough to open the portal in one direction,” I say. “But I’ll also need enough to get back.”

Dizzi looks pleased. “Then we’ve got nothing to worry about. Now that the circle’s basically done, I can double the time I spend feeding the storm arcana into the mana filtration system. We should be able to hit your numbers over the next couple of nights, and we might even be able to make it with time to spare.”

“Still sounds like we’re cutting it close,” I say, even though Echo’s calculations agree with hers. I just don’t like waiting.

Dizzi crouches down to squint at a rune. “It won’t be the end of the world if you don’t make it in time. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved working on this with you, but even if we don’t save up enough mana, you could always just take Shirasil up on his offer, right?”

I cock my head. “I didn’t think you guys trusted him.”

Dizzi shrugs. “Lord Mirzayael doesn’t. I think Fyre is torn. And it seems like you trust him enough to take him up on half of his offer, at least.”

“I want to trust him,” I admit. “I need allies. I need gods who are on our side. But something about his behavior…” I can’t really put a finger on it. “He seems unpredictable. Maybe he does want to help with the best intentions, but that doesn’t mean he won’t pick his interests over our own.”

Dizzi listens to this with a thoughtful expression, still focused on the runes of the spell circle. She pulls out a piece of chalk and makes a tiny adjustment. “I haven’t met Shirasil, so I can’t really say. I did meet Lisari, though.”

“You have?” I ask, surprised.

“She was pretending to be a human.” Dizzi looks up at me with a grin. “I liked her! She was clever and curious, and she chatted with me about artificing. She was disguised as an alchemy scholar at that time—although, I don’t know if it’s right to say that part was a disguise. You can’t fake knowledge, you know?”

“I think I know what you’re talking about,” I agree, recalling the way she had acted in that tea house. “She’s clearly powerful and smart. It’s just the volatile aspect of her personality that worries me.”

“Fyre mentioned that, too,” Dizzi says, fluttering to a different part of the spell circle to carefully perch on one foot and examine the intricate lines. “I guess I haven’t seen that side of her yet. I’d like to, so I could be the judge of that myself. But I wouldn’t be surprised. She is a god.”

I laugh. “Meaning all gods are unstable?”

“No,” Dizzi says, before considering. “Or maybe yes. What I mean is, even if they weren’t totally different beings, they’ve lived for thousands of years. That much time in the world—you can’t expect them to think like you or me, can you?”

“I guess not.” I’ve never really given it much thought. I knew they’d have different priorities, but the idea that they might also think differently is something I find faintly concerning.

“I think it would be hard,” Dizzi continues. Her voice is soft and airy, distractedly musing while her full attention is clearly elsewhere. “Maybe you can document the process. Keep journals… Ah, we should double check if pah is the right rune here.”

I pull out one of the rune scrolls we’d borrowed from Fyre’s library and use a pair of extra hands to float it over to her. “What do you mean? You want me to document the gods?”

“No,” Dizzi says, gesturing for me to unfurl the scroll further. She jabs a finger at a line on the page. “I’m talking about you. If no one breaks your core, or if you keep renewing your spell, you’ll be around forever, right? It would be interesting to keep a journal or something. Even if you only update it once a year. Over a thousand years, there would be quite a lot of data points to see how the mind changes—if your priorities and morals shift. How thought processes might evolve.”

“Good god, Dizzi.”

She looks up at me in surprise. “What?”

I can only stare at her. “That is some heavy shit.”

She laughs. “Sorry! I just love thinking through hypotheticals. And I mean, I guess you could always just stop renewing your spell circle if you were ready to pass on.”

What a pleasant thought. “This is not getting any less heavy.”

“Sorry again!” But she’s still smiling. “Maybe I can find a way to stick my soul in a bottle and then I can document the process myself. Aha! There it is. Oh, looks like pah was right after all. Can’t hurt to double check.”

I shake my head, bemused. “No wonder you liked Lisari.”

Dizzi hops back out of the spell circle with a grin. “I’m choosing to take that as a huge compliment.” With a gust of wind and flap of her wings, she glides back over to me. “But don’t tell Mirzayael I said that. She really doesn’t like the gods. You ready to do some mana transference?”

I’m getting more used to the way Dizzi’s conversations bounce all over the place. “Let’s.”

Dizzi sits cross-legged on the floor beside the nearest cube, and I sit in front of her, removing my core from my chest. Dizzi places one hand on the cube, and the other on my core. A layer of void is cushioning it.

Since Dizzi is an artificer, like Zyneth, she can imbue inanimate objects with mana. Ink is also capable of integrating large volumes of mana directly into our void, as it did when we broke into Yedzaquib’s library. With both these mechanism working in tandem, Dizzi is able to pull the day’s worth of stored storm arcana from the cube and funnel it into me, with Ink helping to absorb the mana without it all going straight to my soul.

“Why is that?” I ask as the first crackle of magic tickles my glass. “What’s Mirzayael’s history with the gods? Besides just wanting to protect Fyre.”

“It’s our whole people’s history, actually,” Dizzi says, staring down at my core. She’s one of the few people that treats my core as my face rather than the glass I keep floating over my neck as a stand-in for a head. “Fyrethian history. I’m not surprised you don’t know it—even most of the people from our world have forgotten, it seems. You want the whole story?”

I can’t help but think about Dizzi’s comment on my mortality. Or, perhaps, immortality. “I’ve got nothing but time.”

“Well, everything I know is from stories and myth,” Dizzi admits. “It was almost a thousand years ago that all this took place, and no written accounts survived with our people. Maybe someone else in the world still has something, but—no, wait, I’m getting off track.” She smiles guiltily.

“I’m a bad storyteller,” Dizzi continues. “And since I’m a pretty good scientist, and I’ve got a bit more context about everything that’s going on with the Heavens now, I’m going to tell you what I think happened rather than what I was told happened. Okay?”

“Fine with me,” I say.

She nods, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “I think it’s all about the remnants.”

This doesn’t terribly surprise me—everything seems to have to do with the remnants—but Ink starts paying attention.

“See, our country’s founder, Fyreneth, built our city—literally. The Dungeon Core, the remnant that Fyre now has, was a powerful magical crown in the legends. It can control all stone and earth within its area of influence, and it was this power that was used to create the Fortress. But once Lorata heard about it, she sent her champions to take it from us. When Fyreneth wouldn’t give it up, the champions fought her for it. To protect us from the Heavens, Fyreneth she sealed our city away beneath the ice. Loretta’s champions, Fyreneth, and the remnant were all lost in the ensuing destruction. I guess Lorata thought that the remnant becoming buried was a good enough outcome for her goals.”

“Obviously, these remnants are powerful.” Dizzi gestures to Ink, who preens at the compliment. “But there’s lots of powerful magic in the world. It can’t be the only reason she didn’t want mortals to have access to remnants.”

This part, at least, I have some more insight into. Assuming Shirasil was telling the truth. Other types of magic may be powerful, but remnants would allow people to rival gods themselves. Not a surprise Lorata would want to bury a kingdom for that—although it certainly doesn’t cast her in a very sympathetic light.

“But by wielding the Dungeon Core again, aren’t you guys just painting a new target on your back?” I ask. 

Dizzi grins. “Fyreneth might not have had time to finish her plans, but she didn’t leave us empty-handed. Fyre and I have been working on completing some spell networks that were started at the inception of our kingdom. And once we activate them, we won’t have to worry about gods anymore.”

That’s a bold claim—and one I doubt the gods would like.

Well, Shirasil probably would.

“Sounds dangerous,” I remark. “I hope you get them functional sooner rather than later.”

Dizzi gives me a wink. “Don’t you worry about that. I wouldn’t be up here helping you if I had bigger problems to solve.”

Somehow, that comes off as more ominous than reassuring. But I’m starting to see why Fyre is willing to host any Travelers I bring back. Even if she’s worried about not being useful during the jailbreak, it seems she’s confident she’ll be able to protect anyone I can free once they’re here.

Now I just need to hold up my end of the bargain.

#

Noli sticks her head into the library as I’m bent over a book on rune theory. It’s not much of a library compared to the Athenaeum—or even compared to Earth libraries—being a room in which Fyre is beginning to collect haphazard stacks of books. But it’s better than nothing, and with Echo to translate for me, the fact that most of them are in various Dunmorish languages is no obstacle.

Ink perks up at Noli’s presence; she’s bound to have something more interested in mind than reading books.

“Hi!” Noli waves at my back. “I thought I’d find you in here.”

I finish jotting down some notes as I send a couple signing hands behind me to reply. “Not much else to do around this Fortress while Zyneth’s not here.”

Noli lifts her eyes to the ceiling in an amused yet exasperated expression. “Honestly, a year ago you were trying to do everything yourself, and now you don’t know what to do when you’re alone.”

Well, I’m about to break into the Heavens alone—but I probably shouldn’t counter with that. “I guess you’re a bad influence on me.”

Noli laughs. “Come on, let’s get some fresh air. Unless you’re doing something important?”

Studying magic is starting to seem more important by the day, especially as tomorrow night is when I plan to activate the Planar Linkage spell. I almost turn Noli down, but Ink bats my objections aside. We spend so many days reading. It’s so boring! We should spend more time with our pack.

Now you’re the bad influence, I think.

What? Absurd. It is an excellent influence.

Sure, bud. But it’s right that reading is pretty boring to me, no matter how important, and frankly I’m not sure what I could learn in the next twenty-four hours that would make much of a difference with my heist. In fact, maybe a break before things get intense isn’t a bad idea.

“Nah, I could use a change of pace,” I reply to Noli. “What have you got in mind?”

I set the book aside and add my notebook back to my Inventory. Real handy, that. Once I get back from the heist, maybe I can get Dizzi to help me collect some extra mana to help me divide my Inventory into more slots.

“Some of the Fyrethians taught me a new game,” Noli signs as I meet her at the door. “It’s fun! You throw cloudstone balls all over the court, and your teammates can change if they get hit—oh! And you can use magic.”

“Sounds chaotic,” I sign.

Noli laughs. “That’s what makes it fun! Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you at first.”

“Ink is looking forward to it.” And it might be a better way to practice and level up my spells than the sparring matches I’ve been doing.

Noli’s eyes light up. “Really? Ink likes games?”

“You and Zyneth are to blame for that,” I tease. “All those sparring sessions. Though I’d say it’s more accurate that Ink likes to win.”

A mischievous look passes over Noli’s face. “Well, who doesn’t?”

It’s at that moment I realize she will not, in fact, go easy on us.

As we’re heading out to one of the courtyards, Dizzi comes stumbling out of one of the rooms. She pulls up short when she spots us. “Oh! Kanin. What are you doing here?” There are bags under her eyes, and her feathers are ruffled and messy.

“I’m… walking. Are you alright?” I ask. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“I was,” she says. “But then I had an idea about a new artificing project. It woke me up. Have to leave a note to myself in my lab before I forget.”

“An idea woke you up?” I repeat skeptically.

“Yeah. You don’t get that? Oh, right. You don’t sleep. So jealous.” She turns to blink blearily at Noli, as if she only just noticed we weren’t alone. “Oh, hello.”

Noli returns the greeting with a wave, probably lip-reading at least a little of Dizzi’s rambles.

I introduce the two women as Dizzi stifles a yawn.

“I won’t keep you,” Noli signs, gesturing for Dizzi to continue on her way. “But it was a pleasure to meet one of Kanin’s new friends!”

Dizzi’s gaze follows Noli’s hands with a spark of interest, despite her obvious exhaustion. “Thanks,” she signs awkwardly back. “Sorry, new at signs. It fun! I love licking new things.”

“Learning,” I correct her. How did she even mix those up? The signs aren’t remotely similar.

Dizzi nods along and then pats me on the shoulder. “Right. That. Well, it was nice to meet you, uh, Kanin’s friend. Sorry, I already forgot your name. Anyway, good night. Or morning. Or whatever.” The harpy stumbles off down the hall toward her lab.

Noli giggles as we continue outside. “She’s an interesting one. A bit of a night owl?”

“Yeah,” I sign, hesitant to elaborate given the nature of our work. “Her schedule’s currently flipped. But she’s helped a lot with my magic research.”

“That’s great.” Her expression softens. “I’m glad to see you making new friends.”

Is Dizzi a friend? Yeah, I guess so. Fyre, too. Not so sure I’d use that term for Aquenno, Mirzayael, or even Sandro, but it is nice to have more people who talk to me like… well, like I’m just any other guy. Maybe I won’t have to rely on the illusion disguise as much as I’d feared. The thought warms my soul.

Ugh, okay, enough mushy crap.

“What are you, my mom?” I tease Noli. “I’m an adult! I’m perfectly capable of making friends.”

“How old exactly do you think I am?” she throws back, arcing a mischievous eyebrow. “And careful how you respond.”

“You’re forty-seven,” I sign. “Echo told me. Which means you really are old enough to be my mom.”

“Betrayed!” Noli fakes a gasp. “But I’m not nearly ready to be a mother! Forty-seven in elf-years is twenty-four in human-years, I’ll have you know.”

“And what is that in homunculus-years?”

Noli freezes, blinking up at me with a totally blank look. “I have no idea.”

I laugh, and she jostles my shoulder as she breaks into a grin as well.

#

“So, she seems nice,” Dizzi remarks that night as we settle into our final routine of mana transfer. She wiggles her eyebrows suggestively.

“What, Noli?” I ask. “Uh no—I mean, yeah she’s nice. But not that way. You know Zyneth and I are an item, right?”

Dizzi shrugs. “So?”

“Noli is also already married.”

Dizzi blinks like she’s not seeing my point.

“And I’m just into dudes,” I add.

“Oh,” she says. “Why didn’t you start with that?”

I don’t even know how to respond to that. But I think I finally am catching onto what she’s implying. “Are poly relationships common here?”

“Sure,” she says. “Wait, are they not on your planet? Weird!”

“That’s probably one of the least weird differences between our planets,” I say. Magic and void monsters being toward the top of my list.

Dizzi laughs. “Tell me more! I want to hear all about your weird world. Especially technology! Maybe I could learn something that I could use here.”

Her thirst for knowledge is insatiable. The other night I even showed her the gravity spell I learned from Siqi, and she about had a fit she was so excited. The whole rest of the evening was spent with her babbling about cargo.

“I don’t even know where to start,” I say. Maybe cars and trains. Our modes of transportation are pretty different. But if she asks me anything about engines or batteries, I’ll be entirely useless.

I’m still considering what topic to dive into when a faint boom echoes through the valley. Both Dizzi and I go still. A faint breeze stirs Dizzi’s feathers as we both listen intently to the ensuing silence. Ink, who had taken some of our void to go exploring the area while Dizzi and I worked on the mana transfer, moves its attention back toward me.

Dizzi’s hand on my glass feels tense. “Look,” she whispers.

At first, I’m not sure what she’s talking about. Then, very faintly, I  realize the clouds are beginning to glow.

A red glow. It starts incredibly dim, but the color grows more noticeable by the second, and from the stretch of the shadows, the source is beneath us.

Ink rushes over to the edge of our level before I can ask it to do the same.

Far beneath us, we can make out the Fortress. A glowing red circle has appeared around it. And as we watch, the magic bleeds inward, like it’s reaching for the city. From our skewed perspective, it takes us a moment to understand what we’re witnessing.

It’s forming a dome.

At the same moment, I notice a new notification in my Interface. It’s a message from Fyre. It only contains one word:

Hide!