The Dao of Magic: Book III

by Andries Louws

  Snorting in discontent, she hops down to the ground and saunters to the door. She barely manages to dodge the wooden slab as it suddenly flies into her face. She ignores the long-haired girl’s grabbing hands and slips out the door. She nearly bumps into the metal-smelling one who is carrying the angry furry one, who is sleeping.

  She hears the giver of food behind her but ignores him with her nose in the air. “Put her down over there. Good job. I see you guys spent the points already?”

  “That beast horde nearly her. Was that really necessary?” the metal one replies.

  “Ket, my boy, Are you growing all emotional and empathic now?”

  “Yeah, Ket, she’s a bitch. See ya later, Teach, we’re off to Tower.”

  “Bye-bye, make sure to use protection!”

  The door slams shut with ground shaking force as the black-haired girl and the metal boy storm out, both of their faces red. Lola glances at them as they speed off. There is a slight tinge of disappointment in her little heart at not being petted. She dodged her hands, sure, but that doesn’t mean she would keep dodging.

  A few people gather around the fluffy creature as she hops around for a bit, sniffing some grass and plants here and there. Lola sits still for a bit as she finds a very delicious yellow flower to munch on. Her appetite sated, she moves on before an even larger crowd starts gathering.

  She hops through the woods, kicking off here and there against a tree. Her ears twitch as the crashing sound of falling, splintered logs catches up with her. It’s so irritating that everything around her has become way too soft lately. Things got better for a bit, every tree withstood her gentle jumping and rocks stayed together longer. But then the big giver of food flapped his mouth for a long time, causing the air to become thick and swirl around. Now everything around her is soft and easily breakable again.

  Instead of slowing down, Lola simply speeds up so the sounds can’t catch up to her. She speeds off, leaving a storm of debris and tumbling followers in her wake. The golden glow of Tree surrounds her for a bit, and she feels its irritation she is causing by flattening large stretches of forest.

  She snorts but jumps in the air anyway. Kicking against the air takes a lot more energy, but Lola is an understanding rabbit. She barely felt any resistance from kicking against the trees or rocks. Rationalizing some more, the air-walking rabbit speeds off towards the large, cold mountain looming in the distance.

  Minutes later, a massive cloud of snow dust is thrown in the air as Lola reaches her destination. She smashes face-first into the ice-covered mountain flank, a shockwave of white displaying the fact that she greatly overestimated her braking prowess.

  Rubbing her nose with a white paw to wipe away the irritating cold spray, she moves higher up the mountain. The air grows colder, the further she climbs, ice blue eddies of super chilled qi swirl around the mountaintop. Her red mohawk begins glowing slightly, the hair moving as if in a strong wind. A wave of heat flows from the spot of concentrated heat-intent qi, covering her in a protective shell.

  Too late, she realizes the risk of melting ice in cold temperatures. The ice on her fur and under her paws melts in a flash, plastering her voluminous fur to her skin. She stops and puts a paw on her forehead, stopping the fur from generating heat. This causes the mighty heartcore cultivating bunny to turn into an ice statue immediately.

  The statue tips over slowly, causing her to roll down the mountain. A few minutes later, a massive snowball crashes into the evergreen trees slowly growing at the foot of the cold mountain. Lola hops from the snow pile as it melts, red swirls of qi evaporating any water and burning a few trees. She looks up at the mountaintop with an angry, determined look in her black eyes and starts bounding up the mountain again.

  ⁂

  Angeta wakes slowly.

  KLANG

  Now wide awake, the beastkin jolts upright. She reverts back to instinct as she springs to her haunches and crouches low. Her eyes adjust to the darkness quickly, allowing her to see a dark stone room. The only illumination present are a colourful collection of items and a fire.

  A forge fire.

  KLANG

  A forge fire that a shaded figure is working near. Sparks fly everywhere as the person smashes a large hammer down again, straightening a large slab of orange glowing metal slightly. Looking around some more, she realizes that the forge is likely to be a fresh addition to this room.

  An otherwise normal sitting room takes up half the space, complete with sofa, curtain-covered window, and soft looking rug. The other half is naked stone, tools, and rough stone troughs and boxes. Metal tools cover a large section of the bare wall and a large moving bellows hangs from the ceiling.

  Another loud noise startles her again, and Angeta turns just in time to see the large metal slab disappear into the bed of glowing coals. A bed of coals that must be larger than it seems, as nearly the entire two-metre length of metal is submerged in glowing charcoal.

  “Ah, you’re awake. Having fun?” The bearded face of Teach looks at her, his normally bright blue eyes hidden by the reflecting orange of the forge. A thick apron covers his entire front and his lanky hands and arms are covered by thick mitts.

  Angeta sits ten meters away from the fire and she realizes that she is drenched in sweat. The fire is not burning at a heat that Angeta is familiar with, that much she knows. The couch suddenly catches fire after smouldering for the past five minutes, but it fails to catch either of the room’s occupants’ attention.

  Touching herself all over, Angeta finds only smooth skin and fur. Her left ear should be hanging by a single strand of flesh, cut off by the razor-sharp feather of a massive spider. Her stomach should still be pierced by that millipedes’ spiked shell. Her tail, eaten again, was still there. Or there again? Bewildered and confused, she looks up at Teach. “Having fun?…, what?”

  “No anger this time? I don’t believe that you got it all beat out of you that quickly.” Teach turns his back on her and pulls the slab from the fire. The dark room brightens as he puts the fiercely glowing object on a large anvil. The next few minutes are filled with furious hammering as sparks fly everywhere.

  Teach walks over to a large stone vat, constrained by something glowing blue. He puts the still slightly-orange metal object in, causing blue liquid to splash everywhere. A penetrating hissing sound is accompanied with lots of weirdly glowing steam. Teach swings the object around a bit, splashing the floor with the liquid. Ice crystals form and melt wherever the droplets fall.

  Angeta starts to wonder what the thing might be. It’s too large for a sword, even though it has the basic shape of one. He unceremoniously shoves the thing back into the glowing coals and faces her again. “Still no anger? Did it work or was it convinced you died? Did its influence vanish? Hello? Anyone in there?”

  The finger tapping against her forehead enrages her. How dare he just casually touch her face? She stands up snarling, about to lay into him, but the fire leaves her quickly. Even recalling how he left her there, to be trampled by mere animals does little to stoke the fires of her rage.

  She just feels numb and confused. Vague memories churn in her foggy skull. One of them is of being spat on by a trusted member of her father’s household she thought lost. The other is of a human mage - a despicable human mage - healing her. Vox helping her. A smith’s apprentice she had a fling with saying words that opposed every single line he had ever said to her before. And punching her… in the face.

  Ket and Tess saved her, she realizes. She looks up at Teach again, confusion on her face. “I don’t feel well. My body feels fine, but my head feels… blank.”

  Teach nods. “Thought so. What do you know about your ancestry?”

  Angeta just stares at him for a bit. Teach moves away after a full minute of staring and starts another round of hammering on the massive metal object. He dips it in the ice liquid again before shoving it into the fire. He then stands before her again, patiently waiting.

  “Our line has the favour
of the Flight, that much I know. My great-grandfather was a powerful warrior and manipulator of plants. I think that’s where I got my plant affinity from.”

  Teach nods to himself. “Hmm, that’s the Flight blood, yes. Makes sense. No use engineering a race without fail safes. Need to inform Rhea and test the dilution limit… Hmm.” Angeta is trying to make sense of those comments as she watches Teach walk away and start messing with stuff on a stone table.

  The next moment, Angeta is hanging from the ceiling, her tail puffed up to maximum volume as she tries to put as much distance between herself and that table. “WHY DO YOU HAVE THAT? And what is that other thing? What are you going to do, kill us all?”

  “No, no need to worry. You recognize this one, eh? I was astounded at the energy potential in this little rock. Very cool.”

  “That’s not cool at all! There is a single one of those stones in the beastkin capital. It warms the entire noble district. The previous Tooth tried to hoard it for himself, but that thing needs to be cooled to prevent it from melting everything it touches. He melted as a result, and our dragon was not happy.”

  “Your dragon?” Teach asks.

  “Oops…” She holds her hands over her mouth, causing her to fall to the ground immediately. “I can’t tell you, not unless I want to risk having every single beastkin killed.”

  “I’ll spank Rhea later for keeping secrets. How did you guys get a self-sustaining fire mana rock?”

  “Nobody knows. It’s always been in the capital. Why are we not dead yet?”

  Teach grabs the large rock, it’s internal fire swirling angrily as he tosses it from hand to hand. “Qi shield. Mana is an energy with a lesser energy potential, but it does have some interesting properties. Squeeze a lot of the stuff together and you get a perpetual energy device.”

  “Where did you get that one? It’s even bigger than the one in the capital.”

  “The volcano I kidnapped. Tree has been filtering and channelling all the fire mana it can get its leafy hands on towards it. That caused these interesting crystals to form. I think Lola has been learning from it. Anyway, we were talking about you. Do you feel yourself again?”

  At this sudden question, Teach drops the rock and pulls the metal thing from the coals again. Angeta recovers from a near heart attack at seeing him handle such a dangerous item so carelessly. She then watches as he hammers the slab some more, pondering the question and everything he has been implying.

  She is loathed to admit it, but the thing should be a sword, right? While the two-meter length is not very unusual for a sword, the thickness and width of the blade are very much so. Five centimetres thick, the straight-edged sides taper off into a sharp blade on both sides. Teach hammers at the metal until a crude bevelled handguard surrounds the thin piece where a handle would go. She can see a certain kind of balance forming, this will be a weapon meant more as a club than as something to cut with. A weapon meant to slay large foes.

  Ah, she understands now. Punching those large mana mutants doesn’t do shit. And you’d need a very long blade to pierce any vital organs. But why bother with precision if you can smash half its body in a single swing?

  “I never really got this angry back in the capital or in the Treefields. I was so scared when they enslaved me, too busy keeping my food to myself to bother with anger. Then you freed, no, kidnapped me. I thought it was the qi, but qi doesn’t need emotion to be worked. Nature mana is based on anger. My own cultivation is just qi with an intent.”

  “Hmm? Yes, I think I was on some shit-list the moment I let that qi energy signature radiate everywhere back in that cave. You must have been the easiest one to influence.”

  “Who? Who is messing with my head?”

  “No idea, honestly. Something. Something that keeps sending those large mutants everywhere it detects loose qi. I really hope no pieces of my stomach landed inside a large city. That would be unpleasant…”

  Angeta crouches down in a corner of the room, wrapping her arms around her body. A very disturbed expression is on her face. “How did it leave me and how can we stop it?”

  “I think it believed you couldn’t have survived. I modified everyone’s rings to stop this type of thing from happening. I myself cannot detect its meddling, but this dimension’s will can. It was telling me to be wary before it even properly formed. So, I linked everyone’s ring via Tree and Database. It shouldn’t be able to influence anyone wearing a ring anymore.”

  “What is it?”

  “That, Angeta my dear, is an excellent question. I do know that I will have to spank Rhea very hard for keeping secrets of this magnitude.” Teach shrugs and goes back to the forge.

  Angeta sits there, letting the noise, heat, and smoke wash over her as she sits still, and thinks for the first time in weeks.

  chapter fifteen

  Manufacturing

  “Test, one, two, three. Test, test.” A distorted and crackling voice comes out of a small black object. A glossy wire extends from the dark object attached to Re-Haan’s ear. She winces, pulls the item loose, and holds it in front of her mouth.

  “Yes, you come across loud and clear. A bit too loud. This is meant to be a stealth mission, so the volume needs to be fine-tuned.”

  “Some people are already working on that one, ma’am. What should we work on next?”

  Re-Haan is about to respond, but stops and thinks for a moment. “We should test the range now. I’ll fly off into space with the test signal running.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Starting test signal now.”

  A high-pitched sound comes from the small device Re-Haan is holding. She wiggles a finger in her ear again and starts floating upwards, sighing internally. She put three quests on Database days ago, one for each of the items she felt she needed for the mission. None of them have been finished. Every single person working on them bothering her for additional information and specifications.

  The communication device she is holding is the latest in a long line of failed prototypes. The first few exploded spectacularly, so she imposed some safety regulations for working with electricity. Just because all kinds of wonderfully dangerous chemicals and materials can be ordered through Database does not mean that they should.

  She had to ban the use of certain types of electricity generators very quickly. The usefulness of a long-term battery or easily controlled power supply does not outweigh the risk of radiation poisoning or molten minerals, respectively. Especially not when the potential bomb was to be inserted into someone’s ear.

  The headache when those smart idiots proposed the idea of having an item at a temperature five times that of boiling water inside their own ears is still fresh in her mind. They actually looked disappointed when she told them that she had no desire to have molten salt near her brain.

  In the end, she had proposed transforming qi into electrical potential. A single sliver of compressed qi crystal could power a communication device for years under heavy use. All the braincores looked near-offended that their own convoluted ideas were shoved aside for a qi crystal and a small formation.

  Then, there were the other research groups. The news that massive mana mutants were coming for qi users had everyone in a frenzy - a frenzy of making the best murder weapons as quick as possible. Database still needs to intervene once every hour or so to prevent large portions of Tree being annihilated by explosions or other high energy chain reactions.

  Teach might advocate chaos as a way of progress, but Re-Haan wants to stay alive for a little longer, thank-you-very-much. She has changed some other things in Database - using her elevated privileges - to promote new ideas, but with a focus on safety, not dying. A hefty fee of points and a temporary Database block policy made short work of the more reckless experiments.

  It wasn’t even just the braincores. She understood fully how you could get lost in a maze of ideas, theories, and possibilities. Re-Haan consciously leaves all of that stuff to processes now, keeping her conscious mind as an overseer that takes
in all the summarized data without diving too deep into any specific subject.

  One of those processes alerts her to a generated report. She looks it over briefly, reading about a collection of heartcores that were about to dip themselves into highly concentrated acid… for resistance training.

  Another report tells her that Database just blocked a material order. Some gutcore wanted to train in poisons and neurotoxins and had ordered enough toxic protein to murder half the planet. She immediately puts the substance - botulisomething - on the “absolutely prohibited” list.

  She sighs again, breathing in the thin air. She looks at the moon that’s growing smaller by the second. Tree and its accompanying lands and mountains are also shrinking, growing smaller beneath her. The sky around her becomes darker by the moment, as the air around her becomes sparser the farther she moves away.

  The device between her fingers keep beeping, its volume slowly diminishing with range. She hears the speaker crackle, now and then, interference from tests being run on the moon and Tree. A process informs her that it has measured the device’s range in centimetres with a margin of error of four nines. She could return now but decides to keep going, just to be absolutely sure. A ninety-nine dot ninety-nine percent chance still has a massive zero dot zero-one percent chance of being wrong, after all.

  Letting her processes take up the majority of her thinking capacity, she ponders the nature of information for a bit. She smiles wryly as she recalls the stupefied face of a braincore researcher that was being held in a containment field by Database. She had to explain to the overeager human that while yes, making a working nuclear device would be a great experiment, setting it off in Tree would not.

  Reading information from Database feels like reading a hyper-clean version of a book. The shape and form the information comes in usually tells a message. A book tells a lot about its creators by the choice of paper, the font size and shape, the spacing and amount of text on a page. Handwritten information is even more personalized, the way it’s delivered telling a whole story in and of itself.