Chapter 40: 40. Icy Stasis

Excerpt from the Miluran folk-tale, ‘The Song of Heroes.’

“Wise Jaku, wondrous in her speed, ran laps around the beastly hordes atop her fearsome steed.
Mighty Yurg, blessed be his blade, slew ten-thousand beasts in one day and took one for his maid.
Awesome Svii, in dark she did hide, saved all the folk from here and there until the day she died.”

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With Tirk comfortably perched upon her back and Narasanha at her side, Yenna felt ready for anything. There was still much to discover about this realm—the mage felt as though she could spend the rest of her mortal days here in this little bubble and still not fully grasp the enormity of the magic at play here. Unfortunately, that was not to be.

“The moon, it’s…”

“You noticed too, mage?”

The three of them looked up at the darkened side of the massive moon overhead. After some focusing, Yenna could conclusively say that it was growing in size. The moon’s phase was changing over the course of minutes instead of days—it felt clear to the mage that nothing good could come of the lightless moon. Yenna took a look at the coin-mark on her hand, grasping the situation at hand.

“I believe the spell is being overtaxed. It wasn’t designed for all of us, and we’re running out of time.”

Though the mechanics of the spell still required further study, Yenna could understand the fundamentals. The spell had been imbued with a large amount of energy, intended to slowly release over time to allow Yenna to remain in the still realm as long as necessary—that energy, now being spent four times as fast, was bleeding dry at an astonishing rate.

Narasanha sighed. “A time limit in such a place feels almost ridiculous.”

“This entire situation is a little ridiculous, if you ask me.” Yenna couldn’t help but sigh in agreement. “But all the same…I’d guess we have a little over an hour before the spell weakens. We’ll need to escape this place before then.”

“Why? Wouldn’t the time running out just make this all go back to normal?” Narasanha gestured vaguely at the world around.

Yenna shook her head. “No. As far as I can tell, our time limit is for our protection from the stillness—whatever is giving it to us wants us to be very aware of how much time we have left. If it runs out, we may be trapped in here until someone outside of town figures out how to get us back.”

The mage refrained from noting aloud how long that might take—that if they were to let themselves succumb to stasis, that the town of Hilbar might be lost for weeks, months, even years. Yenna didn’t even want to think about the possibility that it couldn’t be reversed—that there would permanently be this intersection between reality and the strange land of stillness. There was far too little information to be succumbing to existential dread, after all.

Neither Narasanha or Tirk had anything further to say on the matter—it wasn’t a pretty thing to contemplate, after all. Still, they seemed aware that they had to do something.

“We should find Hirihiri, then look to see if there are any more beast-men. If they’re frozen too…” Narasanha gave a wicked grin, “I could always leave them a fine surprise.”

Yenna wasn’t sure how to feel about the bodyguard’s eagerness to inflict harm. Perhaps I should just be thankful she’s on our side.

As they moved out, Yenna spared one final glance to the ominous void sitting beside Chime. The urge was still there—drop everything, forget about the time limit, and stare into the void for answers—but it was much easier to ignore with a purpose in mind. Eager to be away from it, Yenna turned and moved on.

Finding Hirihiri was relatively simple. As a byproduct of maintaining the spell that shared her protection, Yenna had a tether directed towards the cook at all times. Following the strand of magic took them into the general store right by the town centre, with its door thankfully already open. Hirihiri was within, making sure members of the expedition were accounted for—when she saw Yenna through the doorway and Tirk peeking out from behind her, she sprinted over.

“Tirk, m’boy!” Sweeping him off Yenna’s back, Hirihiri spun around with energy belying her years. “Ah, I never doubted for a minute!”

Tirk giggled happily for a few moments before he squirmed free of the cook’s grasp. “We got things to do, no time for hugs an’ stuff!”

“I think the young master speaks true,” Yenna smirked. “We’re, um, a little short on time.”

After filling in Hirihiri, the group compared notes. Neither Narasanha or Hirihiri had located any more beast-men outside of the manor—not even teleportation circles, which indicated their enemies had likely only focused on the manor. Hirihiri had accounted for every member of the expedition apart from Mayi and Jiin, though Yenna had a fairly good idea of where they were. The only buildings the group had not explored were the manor, and the glass-roofed tower.

“Did neither of you enter the tower at all?” Yenna frowned.

“Ah, you’ve yet to see it. We’ve enough time to look, I should think.” Narasanha gestured for them all to follow and led them to the tower’s base.

It was a free-standing tower, its roof about as high as the manor’s. Instead of a door it had a wide archway, though it was blocked by an opaque milky-white barrier. A symbol of the moon and stars, the same symbol Yenna had seen in various places around the town, glowed in gold at the barrier’s centre.

“This thing is as solid as stone.” Narasanha put a hand against it to demonstrate, causing pearlescent waves to ripple across the otherwise unmoving surface. “I climbed up the side, but all the windows were shut—the glass on top is too cloudy to see through, too. I think I saw someone in there, but I can’t be sure.”

“Wait you…climbed up?” Yenna looked upwards and gulped—the stone of the tower wasn’t perfectly smooth, but it was still a sheer wall some few storeys high. Kesh weren’t exactly built for climbing up things like this, but even a yolm would have trouble. Narasanha really was something else, the bodyguard seemingly satisfied with this unspoken praise.

The barrier itself was definitely magical in origin. Inspecting it with her magical sight, it was being operated by another of those constellation-prayer spells. This one was remarkably simple, with a singular constellation of a man named Sholv the Wall. Yenna recalled the story’s vague outline—Sholv was a yolm hero known for his towering shield, with which he held a pass against some enemy or another for a year straight. Yenna narrowly avoided getting distracted by an age-old debate on how exactly one could even remotely achieve such a feat and instead focused on how the spell was creating this barrier.

“Ah, wait.” Yenna frowned and turned to the group. “Before I get stuck here…perhaps you two could check out the manor? If anything is amiss, just come right back.”

Hirihiri and Narasanha nodded—though the cook hesitated, looking down at Tirk. As was his uncanny habit, the boy asked the question that was on someone else’s lips.

“What about me, Master Yenna?”

“I…could use your help, actually.” Yenna gave him a smile. “It helps me figure things out when I have an attentive student to explain them all to. Would you mind if he stayed, Hirihiri?”

“Ah, I suppose he’s as safe here as anywhere.” Hirihiri gave a shrug. “Let’s go, Nara.”

The muscular bodyguard frowned. “...I’ve asked you not to call me that.”

With the two out of the way, Yenna went right back to her work. Standing up so high over Tirk felt odd, especially if she was going to be talking to him, so she sat down—the dirt beneath her felt uncomfortably solid. As another concession for Tirk, the mage replicated her magical sight spell, giving the boy a replica of her window into the world of magic.

“Wow! There’s so many crazy colours!” Tirk looked overjoyed, pressing his eye right up to the lens.

“Tirk, I want you to look up here—this is the spell we’re investigating today. Can you see it? A circle right in the middle of the barrier, with lots of little points. I believe this is a kind of spell that priests can use—a prayer.”

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“Is that a…consdell…consta-lation? Like, stars? The captain told me all about them! This one looks like…Sholv the Wall!”

That certainly saves me some explaining. “Precisely. I believe the meaning of the story relates to the function the spell performs. Now, the important part is how it’s achieving that, and how we may move it out of our way. Do you see the little strands coming out from it?”

Tirk nodded, tracing one with his finger. Like a spiderweb, the spell made an orderly lattice that extended right out to the stone of the archway, sinking slightly into the wall itself.

“It’s got lots of bits right in the middle, but barely any out at the edge…” Tirk put a hand on his chin in deep thought, and Yenna resisted the urge to ruffle his hair for how cute he looked.

“If you want to avoid a spiderweb, how would you get around it?”

“Um…” Tirk looked left and right, up and down. “I’d go around it, or under it…but there’s no room. I can’t.”

“Well, you can’t go through solid walls,” Yenna nodded, “But what about your magic?”

“...Oh! But how do we make the spell go where we can’t see it?”

It was a good point. Yenna could extend her sight out with a spell, passing it through and around, but that felt a bit wasteful. At the same time, sending a spell through into an unseen location greatly increased the chance of failure without massively overcomplicating the spell—the teleportation circle the beast-man had used was a good example, with a variety of hardening spells designed entirely to prevent any of the downsides of casting to an unseen location. She could sit here for the next twenty minutes designing a spell to look through the wall to identify a good location for a spell—but then what would she even cast?

Blasting the stone wall open felt impractical—the stillness would greatly dampen any kind of explosive or motive magic, as well as the vacuum effect involved in activating a location with said magic. Turning ethereal and moving through it was a spell well beyond Yenna’s grasp, and if she were that adept at spellcasting then a simple barrier like this wouldn’t be an issue in the first place.

That was when the thought struck her. “It’s stone! Of course! Why use magic to move past it, when we can use magic to move it past us?”

Tirk screwed up his face. “Master Yenna…that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Right, I never spoke to you much about the basics of witchcraft…” Yenna wasn’t sure if she wanted to inflict the rather dramatic downsides of the more emotion-based spellcasting discipline on such a young child, so she opted to avoid a detailed explanation for now. “I’ll show you what I mean, okay?”

Standing back up, and getting Tirk to step away, Yenna focused on the stone arch. Certainty, the yellow colour of earth, required Yenna to be, well, certain. This wasn’t a matter of hoping it would work—Yenna knew it would work, if she only tried. Even amongst mages, it was well known the relation between Earth and Stone, with the latter possessing some traits of Ice—specifically, its commitment to staying solid when it could be otherwise.

Thoughts about stillness gave Yenna some ideas, but for now she concentrated. The mage moved her hands forward as though to grasp the sides of the archway, and imagined the stone as one singular piece. Her influence over magic flowed out, undirected by arcane symbology. Coordinated instead by her certainty of purpose, it gripped the very stone itself and traced an imaginary line where Yenna had arbitrarily delineated between ‘archway’ and ‘tower.’ Then, with an emphatic pulling of her hands, Yenna yanked the stone forward, barrier spell and all. Casting it somewhat dismissively to the wayside, stillness overtook the stone before it could even hit the ground, leaving it floating slightly.

“Well! Door’s open!” Yenna quietly wished that Narasanha had been there to see it—a sight more impressive than slamming through a wooden door, I should think.

Tirk clapped excitedly, which Yenna felt was oddly patronising. With a sheepish nod of thanks, the mage turned her attention to the interior of the tower.

The ground level was fairly simple. A spiralling ramp of wood decorated with a fine black carpet led up to the top of the tower, leaving only room for a simple stone altar. It was only enough space for a handful of people to be inside at a time, with no seating whatsoever. The walls, however, were covered in star charts, constellation diagrams and banners bearing the moon-and-stars symbol. These decorations extended all the way up the walls, even to places Yenna thought would be very difficult to reach, and were layered upon one another. Given the nature of the prayer magic she had seen, Yenna guessed that these were some manner of devotional offering.

With nothing else to do, Yenna and Tirk ascended the spiral ramp. The wood was notched and the carpet provided a surprising amount of grip—it was clearly designed for kesh to ascend, and Yenna’s hooves had no difficulty in the climb. At the top, the ramp gave way to a circular wooden platform that allowed the light from the glass dome roof to shine down to the bottom of the tower—or to cause discomfort in those wary of falling from a great height. Yenna did her best to remain away from the hole in the centre.

There was also a large metal astrolabe set on the far side of the room, which to Yenna’s great surprise was in motion. The golden rings that would be used to measure the movements of the stars orbited around a central sphere at considerable speed, propelled by unseen force. Yenna could sense a great magic being focused through it, and brought up her magical sight to inspect it.

The view was absolutely fascinating, a veritable waterfall of magic pouring from above into the astrolabe to be distributed outwards. Following that flow upwards it looked as though the glass dome of the tower acted as its own lens, coalescing unbelievable amounts of magic into a singular stream to feed the astrolabe in whatever it was doing. Paradoxically, the spell looked like it was consuming its own output—half of the magic flowing outwards was picked up by the glass dome and forced back down into the astrolabe. Such a spell should have fizzled out and failed in a matter of moments as it consumed the very magic that defined what it did, and Yenna couldn’t tell why it hadn’t. In fact, she couldn’t see anything defining what it did—except for the astrolabe itself.

“Um, Master Yenna?” Tirk tugged at Yenna’s robe until the mage looked down, worry written on his face. “Something’s meant to happen here. My horn is telling me it’s meant to be really important, but it feels like it…can’t happen?”

Yenna frowned. “What do you mean? Can you elaborate?”

“I don’t know!” Tirk stared at the spinning astrolabe, shaking his head. “It’s meant to happen, but it can’t! It’s still, but it wants to move!”

After a moment’s thought, an idea occurred to Yenna. Reaching out with her magic sense she felt the flow of magic, gaining a more intuitive understanding of its purpose than her magical sight could ever give her. Not abstracted behind her spell’s translation of magic to sight, her own actual mana sense told her one very important thing about this spell—it was one of purest stillness.

The way that it moved was, ironically, the key to how it became still. The magic flowed eternally in a loop, never changing its patterns, merely cycling forever. The astrolabe too would inevitably spin into the same configurations, time after time, predictable and static in its nature. Yenna could feel it—the cold, the stillness, the refusal to change. It all hinged upon that final colour of magic.

“Stasis.” Yenna felt the word on her lips and shuddered. An unchanging world was simply incompatible with everything she stood for. It didn’t even feel right for magic itself to succumb to such a thing—this massive spell of stillness needed the magic to move without truly moving, because magic wasn’t able to sit still without stagnating. Even stagnation was a kind of change, a fact that Yenna wasn’t sure how to reconcile with her current knowledge. Stasis felt like an immense paradox, and recognising that was a revelation.

Reaching out with her magic, just like she had done with the archway and its barrier, Yenna tapped into the great spell passing through the astrolabe. The magic felt deathly cold, eager to drag her into the unchanging loop to prevent disturbance and chaos. The mage cursed quietly under her breath—reaching out had caused it to sap some of the magic from her protection, and the mark on her hand was now that of a waning crescent moon. By her reckoning, she had lost several minutes in one motion.

Yenna looked down at Tirk. “The spell is moving in circles—it’s not going anywhere. It wants to move, but it can’t. Is that what it feels like to you?”

The boy nodded emphatically. “Yeah! You get it! The magic goes in the spinny-thing over and over and over, but it never gets to the important part.”

“If we could let it move on, then…it will remove the stillness! Or, no, that’s not quite right—the stillness is an absence. This is the motion that’s been robbed from our world, frozen in place by…someone, or something. It’s all tied up here, waiting to get out.”

“Th~en,” Tirk’s voice took on a sing-song quality, “We make sure everything’s okay, then we can let it all go!”

Yenna prepared to leave in order to find Narasanha and Hirihiri. As she checked her tethers to find where they were, she was shocked to find the bodyguard was racing towards them—and Hirihiri’s tether had been severed.

“Mage! Incoming!”

Narasanha’s shout heralded the arrival of a dark shadow. A grim figure of a beast-man emerged from the hole at the centre of the room, its wings outstretched, a predatorial gaze fixed on Yenna.

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