Althon’s Fortress of the Mind was…
Well, the spell was, as Althon had described, stripped down. On its own, it was a second Order spell, similar to Memory Palace. It had annotations for the changes he’d made to function using solely water mana. A neccessary adjustment for both the creator and its intended recipient.
Althon’s notes included the components required to elevate the spell all the way to the fifth Order. As I read, I realized I’d have to make changes of my own. I could run it with my existing affinities, all the way up to the fourth Order version. With how out of balance my affinites were, using water to power it would be inefficient.
It was exactly as much of a fortress as the name implied. There weren’t ways in or out. That’d defeat the purpose, supposedly. However, maybe it was all the other version I’d studied, but…
I was already noting ways it could be designed to fit with specific complements. Each version would have to be unique and dependant on the other casters… but he’d already created an adjustable framework. There was so much I could do with the design.
It was frustrating not being able to talk to my family, to gush about spells with them. Soon, I promised myself. We were nearly past the wall, then it’d be a straight shot to Aeternia’s expanded borders.
“I see you’re familiar with…” Althon trailed off, raising an eyebrow as I laid my hand on my grimoire.
“Back in a bit,” I said, slipping into my regular Palace. There was a lot I’d absorbed from his shelves to look through, and I had to design my own version of the spell.
I stopped, when I heard it. The beating of my eight hearts. Except it wasn’t the regular thudding, as it would’ve been in the hydra.
It was a smoother sound, one I’d grown up loving. Same sound that came from beneath the hood of the rebuilt truck I’d used to get around, after the old man passed. It was the purr of a well-tuned V8, all eight cylinders firing in rhythm. Not a single mistimed cylinder, unaligned piston, or faulty spark.
The sound hadn’t been there last time I’d been in Memory Palace. It was almost like…
I looked down at the spells I was studying, a grin cracking across my face. Of course it’d kicked in once I focused on the magic I loved most. A quick check confirmed my attunement had leapt up by nearly ten percent. More than I’d achieved after two days of concerted effort.
Shaking my head, I got back to work, the smooth purr of the V8 in the background. The modifications to the spell would be… annoying. More importantly, a fourth Order worlds spell was expensive. I did have the materials on me, but there were only so many changes I could afford to make.
Amusingly, at the moment, I’d have an easier time with the materials of a sixth Order version, thanks to the Forgelords.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got a bunch of fourth Order worlds materials I could have?” I asked, popping out of Memory Palace with a new library worth of information jammed in my head.
“Have, no.” Althon frowned, tapping his staff. “Though I suppose I could trade. I’ve heard you have a good supply of nature materials.”
There was no keeping the grin off my face, so I didn’t even try. Soon we’d made an exchange we both seemed happy with and I set to scribing his spell, along with the first set of components.
I decided to name my version Memory Fortress, mostly to keep it on theme. As was appropriate for a fortress, there was a watchtower. Even as I slotted it into a fourth Order slot, with the reinforcing components neatly sliding into a third Order, I tuned the components that would retain awareness of the outside world.
Kinda.
The ‘watchtower’ was more of a big screen TV. It hung against one side of the shop, over one of the toolboxes. Despite my eyes being closed, it displayed the vision from directly in front of me, along with the sound of the environment. Just like a TV, the sensations could be muted or shut off entirely.
Nearby was a crashtest dummy, the manequin with all the target symbols on it something I hadn’t thought of in years, though I remembered it fondly. I’d felt an affinity for the thing, like only it could understand the suffering me and the other pit fighters went through. I knew at a glance it’d register any touch or other changes to my body the TV didn’t capture.
At the moment, it was posed in one of the bean bag chairs, holding a book as if it was reading. Thankfully, it didn’t raise a hand and wave. Or move in any other way. With the incorporation of the hydra, split personalities seemed like a legitimate worry.
All of my efforts barely took half a day, in real time.
“So… I see you’ve grasped the details of how to allow a select few into your Fortress of the Mind,” Althon said, strolling back into the garden. I hadn’t noticed him leave. Not that I was surprised he had. I’d gotten rather lost in the spellwork, afterall. “Not something I included in my notes.”
“It’s an interesting spell,” I said, underselling it completely. Which could be blamed on the fact he’d offered another snippet of paper on it.
“The components to join with my own Fortress of the Mind. If you’re willing to trust me.”
Trust. The question reminded me of one I’d meant to ask earlier. “Is it you, blocking my ability to contact my family through the mirrors?”
“The City’s defenses do block any such magic not attuned to them. Even a Dragon-souled would find their spells failing.”
I wordlessly pulled my mirror out, holding it towards him.
“I’m afraid I’ve kept it secure. Only devices I’ve built will work with their pair. Getting one to your family would be a great deal more work than simply stepping outside the city. Something we will be doing when we visit the gate.”
“Fair enough. I suppose… I suppose I do trust you, enough for this at least.” Considering his lower affinity for the magic, I wouldn’t be at as much of a disadvantage as I was simply sitting in the garden with him anyway.
His portal appeared in my upgraded fortress at the edge of the shop’s yard. It was bound by a barbed wire fence that didn’t exactly instill a ton of confidence. If that was an accurate representation of my mental defenses, I needed to improve them.
At least the door itself was made out of heavy steel. There was another door on the other side of the short passage of twinkling starlight that connected our fortresses made of white stone.
It felt like I should’ve known what his Fortress was gonna look like before I ever set foot in it, yet somehow the City on the Water hadn't occurred to me. I emerged on the steps leading from the lake to the palace, thought I doubted we were headed inside. Not with the way he was gazing outwards.
“City really does mean a lot to you, doesn't it?” I asked, stepping up to the balcony railing next to him, ignoring the nearby stack of books and chairs for the moment.
“I've invested most of my life into helping these people,” Althon said simply, gesturing out from the balcony at the city.
Those words had a different meaning from a man I knew was centuries old, old enough he'd seen the fall of the Altean Empire and the rise of the Forgeborn. If some of the latest things I’d heard from Sidhe were to be believed, old enough to have seen the rise of Terra Vista itself.
“You know, I have to wonder… Why put all this time and effort into a single city?”
Althon didn’t respond, other than to bob his head slightly side to side, leaning against the balcony railing. Not for several long seconds. Finally, he shrugged. “Why else do we do great deeds? Fear? Greed? Love?”
There was obviously more to the story but if that's all he wanted to tell share, fair enough.
“Now, on to why I brought you here.” He gestured to the side, and a trove of books appeared.
As was only polite, I grabbed a chair and dove in. In addition to those I'd scanned, there were archives he refused to keep in written form. Proto-spell designs lay in several of them, not a proper spell as I might find in a grimoire but a lot of the design work. The sort of work someone who didn't have access to Memory Palace’s enhanced features would’ve done, I suspected.
To my surprise the gate wasn't very well understood.
It’d been studied plenty but Althon was nearly entirely a water mage. Secrets of Telthen wasn't just the most powerful third Order worlds spell he’d been willing to share. It was the most powerful third Order world spell he could use. As a dragon-souled, it gave him enough mobility to visit the entirety of the City on the Water in seconds. However, it also meant there was a lot he couldn't understand, not more than at the surface level.
“You don't know,” I said as I set the books down, looking over. He hadn't moved from the balcony, remaining there to stare out over the water. I got up and moved over to stand beside him. “How it works, I mean. The gate. You just know what it does, where it takes you, and that it requires…” I flipped open to a specific page, reading through it, “three weeks and two days of worth of mana to fill.”
The old Dragon-souled nodded, still looking out over the city. “An empty city doesn't look right,” he said instead of responding, “It feels flat without the singers. Maybe that's why I spend so little time here.”
“What are the singers anyway?”
“Hmm,” he mumbled in response, turning away from the railing and snapping his fingers. An empty gondola appeared at the base of the palace steps.
I tried again. “They're not ensouled, not like I'm used to, not any sort of magic I've seen. They are the music.”
“Musician. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘the art is the artist’?” Althon asked, leading me down to the water.
“I think so… maybe?”
“It's a ridiculous phrase, the art, at best, is the surface of the water, the artist the infinite depths that lay beneath.” He paused at the edge of the water, staring into it said depths. Unlike the actual City on the Water, they were obscured. At least to me.
He took the pole, nodding to the seat across from him. I sat.
“So too is magic. We touch upon the surface, break through it, and draw forth from what's beneath. No one knows what magic is. I've learned that much in my studies. Even the ancients didn't know. They had theories. The most convincing was it came from somewhere beyond our universe. Which didn’t explain anything. Even then, that was only a bare majority.”
“I mean we can only know what we know, right? We're all just the universe experiencing itself. Maybe two of them, if magic’s from another.”
“Ha!” Althun laughed, shaking his head as he pushed us out across the water. “I have not heard that refrain in some time.”
“Read it a long time ago. Always stuck with me.”
“It’s a good ways wiser than the cults who worship me and my peers, thinking they’ll somehow gain power by being something other than themselves.”
“That’s how we learn, though. Emulating others. Especially at first.” I’d done more than my share of copying, that was certain. Wouldn’t be where I was if I hadn’t.
“It is good that you're protecting so many, bringing them under your aegis,” Althon said, taking us deeper into the City, to somewhere I didn’t recognize. It was a place full of steps, with channels that… the clothes hanging nearby gave its purpose away.
A laundry.
“I help my people. Looking beyond my borders… it is difficult for me now. I can barely bring myself to leave these lands even when the need is most dire.” We passed through the lines of hanging laundry, the water growing soapy. “I'm a coward. Terrified I'll lose the one thing I have left of them.” Before I could ask him who ‘them’ was, Althon continued, “You've adopted a daughter, haven't you?”
Given the weight of our conversation, I knew it wasn't a random tangent. Still, with the tone of his voice, I wasn't sure I wanted to know where it led.
“I have,” I admitted.
“And you’d do anything to keep her safe, wouldn't you?” His gaze was fixed on a line of clothes, dresses, similar to the ones Lady Gwen had been wearing.
“Of course. Though I generally prefer the philosophy of giving her the tools to keep herself safe.” Considering how hard it was for me to even talk to her at the moment, I felt it was the right path.
“That is… not how I did it. Perhaps if I had…” Althon shook his head.
We drifted for a time then, each of us alone with our thoughts.
Without any apparent change in direction, we soon found the gondola bumping up against the steps of the palace.
“Should this doddering old fool leave you alone?”
I looked at the books. I’d already absorbed them all. I’d merely been going over them, using them as visual aids, to work through my thoughts. “No, I'm done, I said. Let's go take a crack at this gate.”
Althon clapped my shoulder, nodding. Then he thrust me backwards, ejecting me from his Fortress into my own. A reminder that even if it wasn’t his natural affinity, it had been his mind we’d been wandering.
Wasn’t long after we that we were standing before the gate, just me, Althon, and Lady Gwen. A wave of his hand and we’d passed through his version of Secrets of Telthen, which was much smoother than my own.
There was just the minor obstacle of the transparent dome. It rose high overhead, the gate shoning on the other side. The dome came down right atop the mountain range that had been my first glimpse of the Frigid Peaks. It didn’t seem to stop either, descending straight through the stone.
“Does it go all the way down?” I asked, kneeling on the rock, hand laid against where the the transparent material met stone.
“Only way to be sure,” Althon said, stepping forward. The haze in front of us faded away.
I quickly stood and we moved through. Despite being visible from the pond where we arrived, it was a five-minute flight to the Gate. The area had been subjected to a great deal since I’d seen it last. Blast marks, twisted metal and fractured stone was everywhere. Only the Gate stood unscathed.
None of the road I’d once traveled with Calbern had survived, other than a small patch of smooth stone. In the landing area where the tracks had been, it looked as if someone had crashed multiple meteors, the craters overlapping.
“A worlds mage of the fourth Order is rather unusual,” Althon said as he sat down next to the structure, waving at the gate behind him. “Most don’t have a strong enough sacrifice to continue.”
“Got lucky. Taking it down was certainly tricky.” I stared at the gate, trying to decide which spell to use first. I settled on Reveal Magic.
“Any good sacrifice would be. No Djinn-souled I’ve met has become so without a worthy challenge in acquiring their sacrifice.”
As I started to inspect the flow of magic, I frowned. “Any advice about making it through Djinn-soul?”
“Impatient, are we?” Althon asked with a chuckle. “Perhaps, in time. Best you survive to reach such heights first.”
“Just a lot to protect, is all,” I grunted. The gate was… complicated. Too complicated for reveal magic to penetrate.
I closed my eyes, activating the low-powered Shield as Bahama had taught me, using it to feel out the edges of the gate. It was a far superior method, at least for the gate.
“An interesting technique,” Althon commented from his perch leaning against the gate. His own aura was impenetrable, even more than the gate’s. “One not often seen these days. More expedient to use a spell.”
I nodded my agreement. It would’ve been.
Except the gate didn't feel the same when I’d used a spell. There was a separation between me and the magic.
There’d been that same separation when I started using the shield. Now it was more like I was able to read the magic with my aura. As soon as I had that realization I let the spell drop and discovered I could read the Gate with my aura.
And not just the gate. I inspected Althon, the ground, Lady Gwen and even the wind. It was there, at the edge of my awareness a constant low buzz. No. Not a buzz. The purr of a V8.
Just as I was about to use my new sense to dig deeper, I noticed a tag in my interface.
The Gate had a System tag.
Stabilization engine three of four.
Power: Depleted!
Stability: Critical!
Status: Urgent maintenance required.
I almost laughed at the words stabilization engine three of four. I’d been wondering where it was. Along with everything else I needed to fix.
Turned out I'd found the first component I needed to repair to bring the world shield online.