Chapter XXI
Did I ever post this? Silas, by Zara!
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“Good morning,” Silas said as he stepped out of the home and fixed a hat onto his head. It wasn’t his Ordo hat, but rather something he’d picked up from a shop while doing the groceries. It was just a cap with a pair of flaps that could be pulled down to cover his ears. It wasn’t great, but his ears would appreciate it when he didn’t come back home with his lobes about to freeze off. He’d also purchased some better gloves and thicker socks.
It was far too cold. The Magical Society where he’d spent most of his life was only a half-day’s drive south, but it was still notably warmer. It was also a little further inland, so that might have had an affect on things, though it was hardly the time to speculate on such things.
“Morning!” Carrot said with a friendly wave and a grin that he suspected would be best described as ‘goofy.’
“Have you been waiting long?” he asked. She was sitting on the bottom-most step of the small landing just out front.
“Not really,” Carrot said as she climbed to her feet. “Just a bit. I was practicing my magic! It’s been my special interest for the last week!”
“I see,” he said. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he was sure that he didn’t care. “I spent the evening last night producing something and I think that we can take the day to spread it around.”
“Oh?” Carrot clapped her mittened hands together. “What did you make?”
He tapped the satchel by his side, then opened it and pulled out one of the devices he’d made. It was a magic detector, more or less attuned for daemonic magic, and with room for a modified version of an Alert spell he’d picked up a while ago.
Carrot took it, then looked between him and the item. “Mister Silas. This is a cup.”
“It’s a magical detection device,” Silas said.
Carrot raised the cup--the magical detection device, then pulled the lid off and looked withing. “Is this an arts and crafts thing?”
He sighed. “The sting is magically conductive, and the gylphwork is... adequate enough. I tested them all last night.” He rubbed at his face, and what a night it had been. His phone had had a spellbook in it with plenty of notes, but without that, he was working based off of old memories and some trial and error. “The cups were cheap.”
“Aren’t these from the coffee shop... right there?” Carrot pointed down the street to exactly the little chain coffee shop that he’d gotten the cups from, for free. All it had taken was a smile to the young woman working behind the counter and he’d come out with a dozen paper cups and covers.
“It’s stealthy. People will see it and assume it’s trash, so we can place them around the city with no issue.”
Carrot’s brows met together. “Mister Silas... that’s littering.”
“It’s for the greater good?”
“I don’t think people use that excuse for littering,” Carrot said.
He sighed. “Let’s just head out? I want to place these around the city then set up the spells on them. If my glyphwork isn’t awful, it should give us something like six hours to triangulate the location of daemons across the city.”
“Six hours?” Carrot asked. She did follow as he started to walk, then started to jog to keep up to his longer stride.
He made a vague gesture. “They’re based off of the same magic as the early-warning system magical society uses to detect surges of daemonic energy across the continent. Those are... admittedly better made.”
“Are there a lot of those?” Carrot asked.
“One in each city and probably each town, at least,” Silas replied. “More in larger cities. They’re made of more durable materials than paper and string, but I think that mine, for all that they’ll only last a few hours, should be a lot more sensitive.”
He plucked the cup that Carrot was holding away, then touched the glyph within. It came on and immediately started to buzz. He stopped walking.
Carrot did the same about five steps later, only then noticing that he’d stopped.
Silas pulled out her magical detection device and scanned the area around him, then looked up and down. There was nothing, only... he tuned the device to more specifically target daemon energy, then felt it buzz as he pointed the device at Carrot.
“Huh,” he said.
“Huh?” Carrot repeated.
“Have you been in contact with a lot of daemonic energy? Do you feel strange?”
“Maybe? And no, I feel fine.”
He aimed the device at her again. “Stretch your arms out.”
“Like... T-posing?”
He frowned, then shrugged. “Sure?” She spread her arms out wide by her sides and he scanned along them and across her middle. He wasn’t so uncouth as to ask her to remove her coat, not outdoors and in the cold, at least. In any case, the readings seemed accurate enough.
“Your spell, the one you use to absorb daemonic energy,” he said leadingly.
“Rite of Dark Purification?” Carrot asked.
“How do you handle the magical energy once it’s in you?”
There were probably a few ways to segregate and separate the dangerous, contaminated power and then expel it safely.
“I kind of just slurp it up, mix it with my own magic, and then squish out the bad bits. It’s like having something gross in some water. If it’s a bit of water, then it’s all contaminated, but if it’s like a pool, and you have one of those neat little pool filter things floating along, it’ll be fine sooner or later.”
That was not one of the good responses he was idly hoping for.
“You... may want to stop using that spell so casually. It certainly seems to be making you more powerful, but you’ve absorbed enough daemonic energy that it’s starting to leak off of you.”
“Oh,” Carrot said. “Okay then.”
“That’s it? No arguing?”
“You shouldn’t argue about things that make you safer,” Carrot said as if it were the most common of common sense. “So, is my magic wrong or something?”
“No, it’s likely not that bad. Like I said, just... slightly corrupted? Remind me to show you a spell for magic refining later. It’s a good way to practice your control in any case.” And that kind of spell was mandatory knowledge if one was working with certain materials or reagents. He never had the pleasure of being assigned to that kind of work, and the Ordo Venator weren’t frequently called in for that anyway, but he had been forced to sit through a week-long lesson about it a couple of years ago for a certification. This would be the first time putting it to use.
With that done, they continued into the city, grabbed a bus, then stopped by the main road. He turned on the first of his devices and then found an alleyway to set it in.
Leaning down, Silas cast the Alarm spell into the paper cup. The actual detection magic would last... well, not that long. The glyphs were scratched onto printer paper and written in the cheapest magical ink out there, and they were connected together vis string he’d pushed a bit of magic into.
He expected that they would last three or four days, at most.
The real trick was the Alarm spell. It would tell him when the detector did its job, but he also had to keep the spell going, which didn’t require a lot of concentration, but it was still some small amount. He wouldn’t be able to do that and keep awake, and if something big happened, he was sure to lose it.
He cast, then placed the device down next to an over-full trash can, then frowned as it immediately went off.
“It’s making a buzzing thing,” Carrot said. “Like, not a noise, but in the magic around it?”
“That’s because its detected something,” he said.
“I’ll back up?”
He nodded, but the alarm didn’t stop, nor did it shift in intensity. Frowning, he pulled out another from his pocket and turned it on as well only to get the same result. It wasn’t strong. In fact, he had set the device up to have about five levels of alert to it, and each one was made so that they were all as close as could be to each other.
The idea was to create a potential heatmap of Daemonic energy across the city that he could then triangulate. Right now, both devices were reading at the second lowest level.
“We might be onto something,” he said.
“Already?” Carrot asked.
He nodded, then grabbed the cup he was holding onto and slipped an Alarm spell into it. “Can you run this down to the end of the road? I’ll go the other way, and we can meet back... at that coffee shop across the street.” That last choice was made by his stomach reminding him that he had kind of skipped breakfast.
“Okay!” Carrot said.
Having her run off would also let him see if she was the reason the devices were triggering, but seeing as how the level didn’t decrease as she moved away, he didn’t think that was the case.
He took a brisk walk to the far end of the street, activating the next device as he went. He frowned as it ticked up to the third level almost as he was reaching the end of the street. He tossed the cup in the trash which looked like it had been emptied recently, then turned and walked back.
The device that Carrot had set moved down from the second level to the first.
So, something was definitely triggering his new sensors, and he had a vague idea of the direction it was in.
When he met with Carrot at the coffee shop, he gave her a couple of bills to grab him something off the menu (and something for herself) and then sat down and pulled out a small map of the city. He started drawing lines across it, with dots for the approximate location of each sensor and the level it was at next to those dots.
“Back!” Carrot said as she placed a warm pastry and a drink next to him, then sat across with her own food. “Oh, and here’s your change! Did you figure anything out?”
“Not quite, or at least, nothing accurate enough to work with just yet.” He showed her the map, then drew a rough circle with a magic pen. “This is the area that I think the source is in.”
“That’s about a third of the city,” Carrot said.
“Yes. We need to place more sensors. I’m thinking one here, then another here. Basically to the south and north. If one is stronger than the other, then we’ll be able to narrow our search. Once we have a decently strong reading, we can go quadrant by quadrant.”
“Okay!” Carrot said.
They still took their time eating. He was curious, but not in that much of a rush.
Last night, he had sent out three more letters to the Magical Society, each one addressed to different Ordos, with a copy (it had taken him longer to figure out the printer than to write and post the letters) of the previous message he had received, a copy of his report, and a long note detailing how he suspected that things weren’t normal.
If a team did show up--and he hoped that they would--then he wanted to at least be able to impress them with some amount of knowledge of what he’d discovered. The location of a daemon or two and maybe some clues into the whereabouts of the so-called Master would help.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
“Yup! Let’s go kick some demon butt!”
That might also help to impress.
***