Chapter 22: 22. Conscious Stream

Excerpt from Suil of Yul Fami’s ‘On Magical Beasts.’

“It comes as no surprise to the layman or the learned man that arcanobiology is a dangerous field of study. It is unusual to find a beast willing to sit down and tell you about its physical characteristics, unless that same beast is telling you its feeding habits as some kind of witty prelude to announcing its favourite snack is inquisitive scholars. Therefore, it is recommended that you either prepare spells to defend yourself, or simply leave the field work to the professionals. In my next chapter, I will describe some useful defensive techniques…”

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The revelation—that a water elemental was controlling the beast-march—came not with gasps of surprise, but confusion.

“What does that mean? Is that good, or bad?” Eone sheathed her sword, listening as she kept an eye on their surroundings. She reached behind her to pluck out the small quills the thornflinger had sprayed her with, and winced with pain with each one removed.

“Is it why the beasts here kept firing blasts of water at me?” Narasanha nodded to her injury, and Yenna realised she should probably help. The mage prepared a spell to close the wound, and reached her hands towards the bodyguard’s wounded stomach. “Wh-Where are you aiming those hands, mage? I’ll remove them!”

Yenna stopped and looked up at Narasanha’s face, the woman’s red skin taking on a slightly deeper crimson around the cheeks. Realising what she was about to do, without even asking, Yenna also began to blush. “I– Sorry, I should have warned you. I’m going to close your wound, but I need to put my hands, erm, there.”

Despite the tense atmosphere, Eone couldn’t help but giggle—though it didn’t do anything to alleviate the blush on Yenna’s face as she ran her hands across Narasanha’s stone-solid musculature. Eager to stop thinking about it, the mage began to talk about the elemental.

“Water elementals, like most of elementalkind, are strange creatures composed partly of magic, and partly of physical representations of whatever element they are associated with. Depending on how much of them is made of either magic or tangible elements can make them more like beasts or more like spirits.” Yenna made a point of looking Eone in the eye as she did this—she didn’t need to look for her sealing spell to do its work, and it was getting embarrassing to stare down there.

“That sounds interesting, but it’s all a little bit over my head.” Eone gave a shrug. “What does it mean, in layman’s terms?”

Yenna thought for a moment. “Spirits are made of magic, and so their minds are made of magic—they can think, despite having no physical organ to do so. A water elemental that’s mostly water will act mindlessly, like a beast, while a water elemental that’s mostly magic can think. They can be smart, like a spirit can, with all the inscrutable logic and motivations that a spirit shows. In short, we’re dealing with an intelligent leader that’s using its elemental power to influence or control many beasts. We can’t underestimate it.”

With her wound sufficiently sealed, Narasanha took a step back from Yenna’s groping hands. She drew a dagger from a selection of many at her hip, flipped it as though to test its weight, caught it by the tip and put it back. “Can we kill it?”

“It will likely take, um, magical intervention. We might be able to figure out why it’s doing this, and reason with it—but its beasts won’t talk to us. Those, we will need to fight through.”

“There’s a lot to carve through.” Narasanha fished in her shirt for something, and Yenna had to look away. “I tried to get into the centre of the town, but there were too many beasts. I had to retreat—it seems there’s only a handful out here.”

After a moment, Narasanha pulled out Mysilia. Yenna could have sworn the mereu looked quite upset to be removed from her hiding place, but she straightened herself out upon presentation—after she wriggled herself free of the bodyguard’s mighty hand. Eone extended a hand for the tiny woman to perch on—Yenna had to keep reminding herself that Mysilia wasn’t small enough to alight on anyone’s hands, it was just that Eone was extremely large.

“Could you scout ahead?” Eone looked towards the centre of the town—there was certainly a ruckus going on over that way, but there were far too many buildings in the way to know for certain.

“I can’t really fly around. There are too many creatures in the air.” Mysilia pointed up, and everyone followed her gesture to the numerous creatures patrolling the skies. “I could possibly fly back out to the group, but not further in.”

“In that case, we may have to charge in full-force instead—head back, and bring Chime up. We’ll need their strength. Yenna, I need you to work your magic. Find a way to tip this in our favour.”

Mysilia took to the air, keeping low, while Yenna thought carefully about the situation.

“You know I’m not a combat mage, but… perhaps we could lure them into a trap? Not that I’d know much about how to corral an enemy into some specific locale.” Yenna gave a sigh—she had somewhat dozed through the military parts of her history lessons.

“Give me what you can—there’s a reason we’re a team here, Yenna. Narasanha, see if you can’t find us a map—check those stores over there. Let’s stop here for a moment and work out a plan.”

While Narasanha went looking, Yenna and Eone made certain there weren’t any nasty surprises in the area, and found a building to take shelter in for the moment. The windows at the front had been smashed, and the door and a bit of the doorway knocked down by something large—given the marks on the door itself, Yenna guessed the beetle from earlier had knocked it open. 

As Eone picked up a knocked-over table for them to make their plan on, Yenna couldn’t help but think about how this careful planning didn’t suit the captain’s image. She had half-expected the woman, upon hearing there was some powerful enemy to defeat, to shout that they would heroically charge in—Yenna was certain such recklessness would see them all dead or worse. This outing had already dispelled certain assumptions she had made about the captain—Eone was showing the reason she was so respected.

Narasanha came back with a map. It was a slightly torn outline of the town’s streets and points of interest, more than likely used to guide newcomers around town as opposed to being any definitive or exact guide. Still, it was all they needed. The town was roughly circular, a stream running through its centre and bisecting it, with the roads awkwardly weaving between haphazardly placed buildings. This was a town that hadn’t expected to become big, and its poor planning made navigating it a pain.

“As far as I can tell, we’re here.” Eone pointed to a building on the map about halfway into town. Yenna noticed a lack of injured or dead on our way—no doubt, this creature’s taking them somewhere. If so, it’s likely they gathered them here in the town square.”

The square itself was an open plaza on the opposite side of the stream, featuring a statue of the town’s founder and what would have been a lovely place to sit and read—covered benches dotted the stream’s banks. The stream itself was going to be a problem, Yenna  was certain.

“As a water elemental, if it’s sentient enough to be commanding beasts, it can use magic to manipulate water.” Yenna ran a finger across the stream on the map. “Without seeing it in action I can’t say for certain, but its abilities in the water are limitless. We cannot beat it in terms of raw strength.”

Narasanha had sheathed most of her weapons, except for a dagger she flicked between her fingers. Throwing it into the air, she caught it by the handle and used its point to cut two lines into the map—Yenna swiftly removed her hands from the paper. “If it is unbeatable in the water, how about we cut the water off?”

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Yenna opened her mouth to protest, but that made sense. However, it was a plan that sounded far simpler than it would be to execute.

“I could block the flow, but the elemental would likely have some plan in place to protect its precious water supply. It might have posted guardians upstream, or prepared some kind of spell. We would need to strike fast and move in before the elemental had a chance to rectify the situation.”

As Yenna spoke, her answer came to her in the form of the familiar sounds of myriad feet and deep chiming. Chime peered in from outside, their serene face a comforting sight. Mysilia hovered in from atop the silupker’s back, taking a seat on Eone’s shoulder.

“Um, assuming Chime is up for it,” Yenna began anew, “We could use them to leave the town, head around to a point upstream and block it up. We won’t have long—any blockage we make will only temporarily hold back the water, and then the tables will turn on us if we’re still fighting this elemental and the dam bursts.”

“Sounds risky.” Eone thought for a moment. There seemed to be some mental calculations, the captain quietly muttering to herself as she eyed the map. She looked up at Yenna. “It could work. Are you certain there is no way for one of us to defeat this elemental? It has to be done by magic?”

“Attacking it with mundane weapons is, quite literally, as effective as striking water.” Yenna shrugged. “I would be able to weaken it by disrupting either its magical or material form. I was thinking I might try and evaporate some of its water away to force it to flee.”

Narasanha gave her a look. “And if it won’t?”

Yenna’s voice caught in her throat, and Eone came to her rescue. “I’m sure our mage will choose the best course of action. Now, I had a thought—couldn’t you put some magic into our weapons? That way, one of us could strike a blow against the creature without putting you directly in harm’s way.”

“That… could work! They would be enchanted for a very brief period of time, perhaps a minute or two, but that may just tilt the odds in our favour. I could maybe hold an enchantment on one weapon at a time, if I’m also to hold back the water. What will I enchant?” Yenna held out a hand, and the three women looked between each other.

“Narasanha can–”
“The captain is–”

Both of them spoke at the same time, paused a moment, and then Eone continued. “Narasanha can duck quite a lot more nimbly between beasts than I can, and her skill in battle is unsurpassed. If any of us are going to get in there, it will be her.”

The woman in question sighed and gave a four-armed shrug. “I am certain that the captain could deliver a more decisive strike, but if it must be so…”

Narasanha pulled a hand-axe off of her belt and handed it to Yenna, who turned it over carefully. It was heavier than she expected, nearly dropping it as it was deposited into her hands, and very sharp—it was clear the guard took good care of her equipment. After sizing it up to shape a spell specifically for it, Yenna handed it back and they got to drafting the final part of the plan—execution.

First, all of them would head towards the point where they would block the stream. With everyone’s help Yenna would dam up the flow of water, temporarily redirecting it. Then, as no spell she could produce quickly would last for particularly long, they would take advantage of the momentary loss of water to charge directly into the centre of town and defeat the wicked water elemental. The only part of the plan that bothered Yenna was their lack of information regarding said plan.

Yenna spoke up. “While it should be weakened by the emptying of the stream, the elemental may be clever enough to pivot into a hostage situation. With your permission, there is one thing I could do to get a look at the situation in the midst of the town.”

“More information is always useful.” Eone tapped a knuckle to her chin in thought. “But, it sounds like there’s a downside, otherwise you would have just done it already.”

“Erm, yes.” Yenna gave a meek nod. “If you’ll recall, when we encountered Demvya, I used my magical sight spell to check what was ahead, only to be spotted in turn by the spirit. Unfortunately, most magical surveillance comes with this kind of issue¹, especially around intelligent magical beasts—actively using magic to look will alert the elemental to not only our position, but the fact that there is a mage nearby capable of such a feat. It’s a risky proposition, but it doesn’t entirely give away our hand.”

“It doesn’t?” Narasanha tilted her head. “How so? Won’t it be bad if the elemental knows we’re coming?”

“It will know a mage is here, but it won’t know anything else—as long as it can’t scry right back. But, I’ve never heard of an elemental that’s also an Arcane mage, so we should be safe on that front. It won’t know our plans, or anyone that’s with me. It will, um,” Yenna gulped, “Quite undoubtedly… target me. Aggressively.”

Eone’s frown cracked into a big smile. “Then, there’s nothing for it! You look, and we’ll keep you safe! Let’s do it, and then run like the wind!”

Slightly reassured, but still relatively nervous, Yenna used magic to draw a spell circle on the ground. More complicated than her usual spells, she needed a physical drawing to maintain it—and using the dirt on the floor of this ruined building meant it would be easy to break the spell too. After a few moments of inscribing, arcane muttering and general calming of nerves, the circle flashed to life. Yenna put one of her front hooves in the middle of the circle, and another right next to the outer ring—ready to shatter the spell. The other women watched tensely as Yenna covered her eyes with her hands.

Yenna began to see shapes, then colours, as the scrying spell slowly came into being. The spell functionally created a set of magical eyes in the desired location, receiving light and sending that information back to the caster. This left a huge magical trail between the caster and their magic eyes, but it was as good as personally looking from any vantage point one could desire. Yenna had set her eyes over the centre of town, some distance up in the air—the sight made her gasp.

There was a water elemental, as expected. It was expressed as a solid sphere of rippling water, from which various tendrils emanated—Yenna thought she could see something floating within the blue depths of its watery body. The surprising part was what it was doing. Beasts of all sorts approached the elemental, dragging with them some poor victim from the town itself, leaving them before the elemental like offerings. For each such ‘offering’, the elemental would feed the beast some tiny droplet of its own water, and then force that same water into the mouths of the person laid before them. That person would then stand and walk over to join several fellows in a dream-like shuffle. In the several seconds it took for Yenna to observe this bizarre interaction, she felt the weight of the elemental sensing her—in mere moments, it knew exactly where she was.

Yenna flicked out her leg, scattering half the spell-circle. Her vision painfully snapped back into her own head—an unfortunate consequence of this method of aborting the spell—and she pulled her hands away from her eyes. Blinking a few times to clear the stars from her vision, Yenna reached out to Eone.

“It’s time to run. Now!”

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¹ - The myriad methods of magical surveillance across the multiverse are truly fascinating, but at least amongst the mages of Aulpre it seemed their desire to see without being seen never manifested enough to create a truly undetectable sight spell. The main problem is in the way magic must be manipulated. A spell done at range is, typically speaking, supported by some kind of tether of magic linking back to the caster. In the case of, say, a beam of energy fired upon a foe, it is quite clear. However, something like sending one’s sight elsewhere manifests a thread visible to those who can see magic. The information cannot return without that thread, so one must expose their location to surveil another. Fortunately, or unfortunately if you are being spied upon, there are many ways to mislead the target of one’s spying—and, of course, those that cannot see or sense magic are entirely without defense.

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