Chapter 134: Chapter 134: Anacrusis

Easy tries a couple more times to get under my skin, with middling levels of success.

I mostly manage to ignore her, and talk about magical theory with Pat; he’s a Mote-wielder, though he takes it in a very different direction than I do or than Eternal did. Instead of turning a trio of Motes into spellwork bound into his flesh or having simple, stackable and amplifiable effects, he turns sets of Motes into full-on runic diagrams that take on a life of their own. He can’t manage more than two in parallel, at third tier, but they’re strong and they leave him with his full faculties and attention available to form basic spells—the kinds of spells that are my primary tools—with pure mana manipulation, using spacetime itself as their substrate.

Well, he says that’s what he does, but I don't miss the glance at Knives before he answers. At a guess, it’s something he can do, but what he actually does is something simpler and more flexible, like using that same mana manipulation to disrupt spellwork by other mages while his pre-casted Living Runes go about their business.

I get the impression that a lot of what he does isn’t actually Skill-mediated, which is his way of subtly—well, not that subtly—bragging about how good he is. Metaphysical perception doesn’t come without a Systemic link for anyone whose ilk doesn’t have it baked in, biologically speaking, but you can apparently train yourself to manipulate mana without a Skill through a variety of meditative states. His nonchalant, almost downplayed statements to that effect, and the demonstrations he gives of it, are fascinating to me, since my Visor can’t perceive the process and functionality of my own Manipulate Mana, much less figure out how my soul interfaces with the System to activate the Skill, but it’s also to some extent irrelevant; it took Pat a century and a half to become able to do what I can do now, and that was after he’d fully integrated some sort of mana-sight into his sensorium.

That conversation gets us through the end of the post-meal socializing, and without any particular fanfare, everyone starts drifting away. Pat says something vaguely ominous and vaguely encouraging about not letting her get into my head, which is kind of him but either a little bit too late or a fair bit premature, and to which I respond that I hope he gives Mote-wielding a better showing than Eternal did; he smirks at me, and Knives grunts out a laugh.

Easy pulls me into another hug, this one without our arms in the way. She’s taken the time to rearrange her clothes a bit, and one of her hands snakes into my hair to pull my face into her chest. She murmurs something about regretting that she couldn’t get to know me better, and that she’s going to look forward to showing me this and that; I don’t really pay attention to the words, because it’s been long enough since this morning that I’m thoroughly distracted. One of my hands works its way under her shirt, feeling the powerful muscles of her back, and the other reaches up to her head and pulls her into a deep, long kiss, much to her intense surprise.

I’m not any good, not any good at all, at stopping people from getting into my head; but I’m not bad at getting into someone else’s.

Once she gets over the surprise, I break off without a word. Smirking at her, I slip out of her arms, heading for what my feet inform me is my exit.

We fall in together by the time we’re out of the room. Zidanya is in front, Sara behind me, and Amber by my side, quirking an eyebrow at me in a mix of amusement and curiosity. I tap my forehead twice at her, and she shrugs. Maybe it’s psychological warfare or maybe I’m just easily led by the dick—well, one way or the other that one’s true—but I did manage to surprise Easy, and I’ll count that as at least an even exchange.

I get a surprise at the end of the silent, contemplative walk. Maarah, of all people, is there, in a wide-but-shallow room with a set of tables. There’s gear on the tables, some that I recognize—that’s definitely Amber’s armor and general equipment, I know the runes and glyphwork on that armor without even needing to resort to the Visor’s memory—and some that I don’t, and Maarah beckons to me at one of the tables with gear I don’t recognize. I glance at Sara, quirk an eyebrow, and get a small nod in return, and drift over.

Maarah is short even for a gamahad, but she’s squat with muscle and brimming with energy to the point where she feels like she’s looming over me even without the weight of sheer presence I know she can bring to bear. She leaves it to me to look over and evaluate the clothes on the table, and then just sort of looks at me with a flatly expectant look when I glance at her. I don’t bother protesting, but I do enjoy some deliberate sidelong—and not sidelong—glances at the rest of my party, or at least of Zidanya and Amber, as I strip down to my underwear and get dressed in the new gear.

Sara had been spending her time working on this gear, or arranging it to be made, or something, while I’d been playing with puzzles and messing around with magic and analyses of Systemic invocations. It shows; there’s her sparseness and deliberateness in the way the magic fits together. There’s more of what must be Maarah’s craft, or the craft of someone in her service, because it’s some of the finest and best-fitting clothes I’ve ever put on, even before it wriggles against my body to wrap around me more closely.

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I drift, as I get dressed, despite the view and despite the unfamiliarity and novelty of the clothes. I struggle for a while to figure out why; it’s not until I’m fully dressed that I can peel apart the layers of disquiet, not until I’m doing stretches to appreciative murmurs as the pants shift minutely to avoid binding.

It’s nothing actionable. It’s a dozen regrets, it’s distaste and a deep discomfort with how comfortable I’ve become here, how much I’ve enjoyed my time in the Tournament. It’s unease, too, at how much I took for granted that we would just… have gear, that Sara would make it happen, and I make sure to express my appreciation appropriately both to her and to Maarah and the other gamahad assisting us with the fittings.

It’s not going to get in the way of fighting, because I’m not going to let it. It’s going to have to get in the way of what I’d had planned afterwards, though, because I haven’t properly thought things through. Well, I did, but the information I have has changed, so I haven’t thought things through recently enough. Not that I can write anything down, even in the Visor, or talk it out with anyone, but the Tournament isn’t the Sky Kingdom, and it would be wildly unethical to act as though it were otherwise.

Not what I’d planned immediately afterwards, I correct myself, and that thought is complicated enough and has enough layers in it that before I’m done wrestling with it and with how I feel about it, we’re done in the arming room.

The others give me some space as we walk to… wherever we’re going, I guess. I nod at them, thinking about fighting and about Vonne. I don’t know how the society of the Tournament hangs together, how it’s laid out or what its component pieces are, but it’s clear that there’s a genuine society here somehow. A society that’s thriving, in a way, doing magical research that surprises Sara, who’s a prodigy of the surface, creating art in its varied forms, creating and solving puzzles.

What I don’t understand is why, though I do manage to remember an offhand remark Lily had made. Something about chaos, and the way that the Temple siphons energy from… somewhere. I don’t think I’m getting a conversation about that, and without more information, my mind just churns uselessly at the problems of future action before concluding that the same plan I’ve had since before Amber’s creation is as good as I can manage for now.

I come back to myself when Zidanya taps me on the arm, holding out a pair of waxy cylinders, no winder around than my pinky finger and no longer than the nail. Not having any idea what they are, I raise an eyebrow at her and she makes some sort of hand gesture I don’t understand. She shakes her head when I open my mouth to ask a question and hands the pair over to Amber, who puts a hand on my shoulder in an unmistakable gesture of stay still.

I look around, obediently not moving from where I’m standing. That’s apparently too much motion for her; she kisses me, which is always nice, and grips the side of my jaw to hold my head perfectly still, which feels nice in a rather more specific way.

Then she slips the cylinders first into one ear and then the other, and I realize they’re earplugs, which makes perfect sense. Enchanted earplugs, clearly, since I can’t hear anything at all despite them being so comfortable that I almost immediately stop feeling their presence.

A moment later, as Amber gestures for me to take point, the doors we’re standing in front of open, and we walk onto the grass-and-sand of the killing field.

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