Soft, warm fur wrapped him into a cozy burrito and Ulric made ready to escape consciousness. Already, flashes of memory and nonsensical images floated, drifting from one to the next without pattern.
He was disturbed by a familiar form draping itself over him, and his head was dragged into the soft bosom of his Shadow. Resistance was futile and it was a nicer pillow than a folded pelt so his limp form remained pliable, while bare arms enshrouded his body. He hadn't removed his day clothes, so absorbed had he been about the revelations of his recent findings and sponging the learnings of a fellow adept, and the groping hands made this failing patently obvious.
"You did not come to bed with your boots again, did you?" A warning, muffled for its being buried in his back, sounded.
He had not, but that was because his body automatically removed them when he entered the shelter. It was a reflex, he didn't have to engage any nerves above the spinal cord to achieve it. His Shadow's displeasure at finding clay mud inside her bedding was only to be lived once.
"My feet are bare, Mistress, as you have commanded, so do I obey." Ulric intoned, deadpan.
A firm grip on the hair on the back of his head suggested consideration for punishment. The claw relaxed and returned to its investigations of his chest, roaming under the thick robes.
The idle hands, fascinating as they were, reminded him of the relative discomfort of being in a fur bedroll wearing layers of heavy fabric. He'd need lighter clothing if the temperature rose much more, already he grew a touch warm while active. Ulric hated the heat of summer. The only time he was remotely interested in being hot was sharing his bed with the clinging Elf behind him and soaking in a steamy bath. After adding "Too hot, thin cloth" to his mental checklist, his now fully awoken mind turned to consider his Shadow. Most of this was just him trying to slide into sleep while his subconscious made its meandering deliberations about whether or not to ravage the delicious Elf roving across his body with her delicate hands.
"Good. It is as well that you are capable of being trained. There was a time I despaired of binding myself to a half trained warmage of dubious heritage that was also unteachable." The clinging form notified him.
He patted her hand, full of understanding. There had been reservations on both sides of that. For a long time, he'd more or less been convinced he was tied to a murderous race supremacist that would take it into her head to dispose of him as soon as nobody was watching. He'd been correct, by the by, but she'd changed her mind before she got any chance to act on the first instinct, courtesy of Bald'rt's well thought out training regime. The one full of Elves strong enough and observant enough to keep her from enacting her plans.
In a way, he had the war to thank for her mind changing on that matter. Any who might have questioned the loyalties and convictions of Ulric Einar had only to consider the hair growing white upon his scalp, courtesy of the horrific burns he'd received. Some-motherfucking-body was going to pay for that, but the attack had catalyzed the cagey Elf's perspective in some way towards him. There were layers to that onion that he would never find the middle to, and he no longer sought to try.
The end result was that she'd decided to bed him, then, a little while later, she'd decided to keep on as a Shadow on her own account, even after she'd gotten a free pass to go her own way, courtesy of bizarre Elven courting customs. He could only laugh at the hands fate dealt; those he'd managed to satisfy twice over and, by their specific conditions of exchanges of things of value. You don't give gifts amongst the Elves lightly, the fae folk keep track of bargains, gifts, and oaths. He should have known, all kinds of hints were buried in Pre-collapse folklore that applied with spooky frequency on Varda.
Thinking on it, Ulric decided that, in the future, if he ever was invited to celebrate a holiday such as Christmas, that would actually be the trigger for a massive Iriel'en orgy. Elves. Those stories hadn’t covered them by half.
Ulric's destiny, for better or worse, was tied intimately to the Deep Wood and to its peoples. He was the patron of their holy land, just for starters. He also owed their healers for his own life and his Taipan's vigilance for the same about a dozen times over. Besides, Ulric had to grudgingly admit that he enjoyed her company, frowns, glares, twitching ears and all. His reverie ended when the soft form behind him snuggled even closer, bringing to bear her most potent weapons against his back and her hands made moves to begin the process for removal of his clothes. Formal declaration of intent made, Ulric decided to force her to do all the work. The mental image of an ecological archive video of a male lion being harassed by a lioness in heat flittered through his brain and he couldn’t restrain a smile at the comparison.
"I'm surprised you're still up, to be honest. I'd have thought you'd have exhausted yourself playing with Prenya." the Human told his Aes’r mate as she reached and pulled and, sometimes, lifted part of him up to assist in her peeling.
It was a game now, to give her no help whatsoever with the process and ignore what was happening. Last time, it was he who had to be the peeler and that was fun enough all by itself. The after part was a different kind of game with different win conditions. Moist ones.
A smug burble indicated that sexing her Plains-elf side nookie until they both collapsed was supposed to have to have been the plan. Fair enough. He might have tried the same thing had he not otherwise been fascinated. Occasionally, she managed to nearly echo his thought processes, alien though they were to one another. Now was another time. He'd ignored his wife just about all afternoon.
"She required penance for her cheek. Alas, she had a busy day with grass raking business and tired before I did, even absent your assistance. Your wife feels neglected, you were too absorbed in your attendance upon your fellow mage to join us and I did not want to distract you by inviting." Taipan's lilting voice teased softly behind him.
He could only shake his head at her, as he catalogued the location of his robe for later. He learned more about her all the time. So many layers. The girl, not his clothes; not anymore, at least.
Taking up a palm, whose callused toughness so greatly contrasted with the silken hide elsewhere, he kissed it softly to apologize for his distractions.
"Thank you, Taipan, for your consideration. It was a boon I won't forget. Meeting this Sauri throws me back to my old life." He told her quietly.
Her ears perked up. He knew that because they were long enough to make a sound when they did, under the blankets. She was listening fully intent now, he spoke fairly rarely of his old life, and even more rarely with fondness.
"It's like going to an academic conference, hearing the specialists in their own fields speak of their findings. Werona would have fit in perfectly with those scholars, she has a scientist's mind. Sort of like Shor, although I think that one would have been lost to the Mathematicians." He continued wistfully.
"I miss the exchange of ideas, the odd mix of preening arrogance, skeptical inquisition, and comradery that came with those meetings. They were worth dealing with decontamination, rad cleansing, and everything that comes with trip across the world. Gods was old Earth a sad sight from twenty thousand feet, with her ruin laid bare. Even so, the conferences were reward enough to witness it. Passions of a lifetime shared with the convictions of priests, and data arrayed like a conquistador's arms, ready to repel any naysayers. So much to learn, and a reminder that you would never know enough to say you knew it all. Those were the best times of my life." He concluded.
One of them, anyhow, he snarked to himself. The best time of his new one was a more or less continuously refreshing function of summing his experiences since waking up in the middle of fern gulley. Even the times he was ready to shit himself facing something fantastically dangerous, he'd never felt so alive. So free. In spite of the obligations he'd, somehow, taken on, in relatively short order: A land that had claimed him as much as he had claimed it, a Shadow that followed him as the name implied, and debt that had to be settled. Freedom didn't have to mean alone, a lesson learned far too late in his eyes.
Taipan saw fit to remind him with vigor and frequency. Just as she was winding up to do now. She could see in the dark so he had no doubt she had caught his amusement as she worked pants off of dead legs. He was a heavy bastard, even if she was much stronger than she looked. Ah, but there they go. Behind the backpacks, Ulric, you'll miss them if you don't actually walk over there, he noted as his sylvan lass made ready to begin her lovemaking in earnest. He couldn't see her in the gloom, but he knew when she was smiling. He was also familiar with the brush of finger tracing lightning carved scars across his torso, so light, so ephemeral he only noticed because of the heightened senses of his reforging.
Gently, Ulric took the first aggressive action since the play had begun, placing a hand on the knee that rode up next to his ribcage and running it along the line of her thigh up to its usual resting place at the top of her hips. A slight pat and firm cupping fired the sounding shot of the night's heavy breathing phase.
Later, once passion's fire burned to embers, they reveled in the postcoital spoon. Ulric had big spoon this time and abused his privileges to cuddle the Altars of his pagan worship, his idols to rival the Watcher.
"They will not run away if you release them." His partner noted, although not unhappily.
He firmed his grip a moment before relaxing. Never can be too careful. Who knew what magical bullshit lay in wait out there?
"I'm not taking any chances love. You practice dark magics, how am I to know you won't lock me away in fae lands beyond time if I turn loose?" He teased.
A distinctly musical snort accompanied her reaction to that sally. It wasn't even complete bullshit, she really did have a pouch that contained his…er…fluids, by which thaumaturgical link she could find him across all the reaches of Varda.
"I practice Iskios, shadow magics, and only with the facilitation of my class to guide my core's flows, and you know this Glade Chief. Touching the Dark is a fool's game." She replied to him, in response to his jest.
Touching the Dark was an Elven euphemism, of which their language practiced exceedingly few, which fact gave an indication of the perceived horror of that act. It stood for attempting to wield Caecus in its purity, the prime element of darkness.
More specifically, of absence of energy. Not the first spark of light in the universe existed but that Caecus didn't harbor resentment for its eternal umber. Trying to wield it with a mortal core resulted in its consumption of all the unwary victim's mana, the light shed by their electrons bouncing, the heat of their body. Any of it and all of it, instantly. Iriel'en boogeymen existed that bespoke witches that had sold their souls to Abyssals for the power to use Caucus a single time according to their wills. Then they would die, but they would complete one act of Power.
Horseshit, of course. But he would not begrudge them their few ghost stories, not when he had certain dispositions about the order in which his feet should be socked, booted, and laced, that had nothing to do with rational thought. Left sock, right sock, left boot, right boot, tie left, tie right, or suffer the wrath of the cosmos, as the gods intended. Taipan knew of this tic and razzed him mercilessly for it, going so far, once, as to hide the right boot to attempt to disrupt his ritual, the wily minx.
He hadn't decided whether to continue teasing her or to fall asleep. The decision was made for him when Taipan abruptly switched tone to her We Are Talking Now voice.
"I am unused to feeling jealousy, Ulric." A pause followed that near non sequiter, before the woman he'd have pegged to have never had reason to be jealous of anything continued.
"You do this thing in giving something that has your attention all of it, narrowing down to world that consists only of that which has interested you. It reminds me of a Hunter's focus on taking a killing shot but extended for ludicrous duration. When you were speaking to this Mage of magical theories I knew you were gone to a place I cannot follow. Where only those such as you and Mother Shor may walk, a space of ideation. It feels sometimes as if that is the place where you truly live and I am only witnessing a transient passage through the waking world."
He didn't know what to say to that. It was somewhat true, he did tend to become zoomed in on a singular train of thought to the exclusion of all else, becoming untethered to the world around him. It was a gift in the engineering discipline, a thing of training, to bend yourself totally to a problem and its solutions. It cost him in that most people don't like being ignored when some trigger or another sends the person they're talking to away to that distant space and they realize they've been, more or less, abandoned for a fantasy. He considered the fact that her statement made him uncomfortable about a facet of his personality he'd long since come to terms with a sign of growth. Normally it wouldn't occur to him to give a shit. Now though, he did. Very much even.
Taipan knew her partner well enough to understand that the silence wasn't his ignoring her, but rather that he was giving her statement careful consideration. It was a mark that he was taking her seriously, avoiding capricious reply that lacked depth. She was content to grant him the time and snuggled back into him to be comfortable while she waited.
"I have decided that I won't apologize." He informed her bluntly, at last.
She laughed lightly at that, tinkling bells of amusement ringing out gently, as it was characteristic of his disposition to refuse to utilize tact to get to the core of the issue. They both knew he was so bad at obliqueness that it was better for everyone involved that he take the straightest road. Anything else led to tangents that merely wasted time while he figured out how to just say the thing he would end up saying anyway.
He squeezed her gently, to make sure she knew he wasn't being dismissive while he outlined what determination he was able to make on the situation.
"An apology would be insincere, since I have no intention of, nor, in truth, the ability, to change this part of myself. It is a thing of birth and a lifetime of training. To abandon it would be to make me lesser, and I will not do that." Ulric told her, putting into words the nebulous analysis he was able to pin down only when he tried to describe it out loud.
"That doesn't mean that I don't regret what it does to the ones around me, especially you who have given so much of yourself to my cause and who have committed to walking this path with me. Consider it the relationship tax of being with me." Ulric said resolutely, deciding that it was only fair to concede that, sometimes, he simply sucked to be around.
He felt the rub of those brief, silken, locks of hair on his chest as she shook her head at him. Her voice was absent any irritation, was matter of fact.
"I would not ask for different, Ulric. My Glade Chief is an anomaly flitting between the world of the here and now and the land of idea and dream. It is a thing of Reforged, perhaps, to be split between worlds. I knew this when I decided to claim you." The Amazon admitted.
"So why would the much vaunted Taipan, so feared by mortals and beasts, have cause to be jealous?" Ulric asked, genuinely curious.
"Because you had only thought for that Otherkin Mage all afternoon, leaving your poor Taipan to her own devices. You would not attempt to bed her, would you? I cannot abide her having your body and mind both Ulric, that is simply too much."
He choked briefly on his own saliva, coughing roughly for a few moments. The slight shake of the form pressed against him gave away her silent laughter.
"I jest, Husband. Since you indulged my seduction of Prenya, for whom I know you held no particular desires, I will allow you to have the Sauri, if you wish. Or another, so long as I may vet them first, not just any will be allowed to share my lover. They must be excellent, must be worthy of our bed."
He'd always sort of known that Iriel'en weren't exactly monogamous and didn't innately value rigid mating pairs, outside of married couples raising their children, but it was a distinctly odd feeling to have it so…in the open. Oddly enough, it was sort of nostalgic for his old world, where things were conducted in a similar, if not so direct, manner. His Aes'r partner was making sure to keep the air clear between them regarding adventures of the romantic.
So. He had a pass, but only for someone who she would acknowledge? How very interesting. Not that he planned to make use of it, active pursuit of another was well beyond the required effort for this rookie adventurer. Maybe in a decade, when he finally had his shit together. On second thought, he might never satisfy that condition, better to just play it by ear.
"My thanks to you, Wife, for your consideration. Be at ease, I have no desires to find another for our bed at this moment, you alone are enough. Prenya is a spice that I am glad to add to our nightly entertainments, but I would not wish to try to balance multiple lovers for any length of time. So far as Werona is concerned, I just want to pick her juicy wizard brain, nothing more." He assured his partner.
Was that correct? Did she want him to be more explorative? Ulric had no attraction at all, physically, for the Sauri mage. Beastkin, generally, were still a touch too foreign to register on his radar. He wasn't a Captain Kirk, ready to sleep his way across the infinite galaxy. Certainly, they'd both enjoyed the Plains Elf addition, but he had a feeling that was more a transient thing for Taipan, a blowing off of steam, rather than a permanent fixture. Hell with it, she would let him know what she wanted directly. It was the reason they meshed in the first place; both were comfortable speaking their minds.
"Very well. May the Heartwood grant her strength and the Twins shed light on her soul that she unleash your endless questioning upon herself. I will busy myself on the morrow finding what news may assist our journey, rumors fly like vultures over a carcass with spring on the horizon." His Shadow declared.
Her tone grew fondly reminiscent, oddly disjointed from the actual meaning of her speech, "It is almost like old times, scouting for incursions into Orlethrem, hunting the scum of Prespang. Many were the fools that found their shadows holding my footsteps, to end up watering the roots. We will yet be reaping Prosper's agents, Ulric Glade Chief, mark my words." The Elf Huntress claimed, almost enthusiastic, before passing him his marching orders.
"While I obtain information and resupply our kit, you will grow your mastery of the arcane. Take tomorrow to wring Mage Werona of all that may be of use." Taipan directed.
"Aye, Aye, Taipan, this one hears and obeys." Ulric intoned, rubbing the scalp of this most deadly serpent, which was one of her favorite places for a relaxing massage.
“I’m a little surprised by your, let us call it, adventurousness with our friend Prenya. Back in Irielhos you were so damned standoffish, so on guard all the time that even your own kin seemed wary of you. If I may, what changed?” Ulric asked, voicing the curiosity that had plagued him for the last few days.
A hand softly traced his face.
“Mostly you, Glade Chief.” Was the Elf woman’s sincere reply.
He was immediately confused but she gave him no time to inquire.
“I lost the one closest to my heart when I was still a child, my brother, slain by outsiders, by the pigs of Prosper. As with all young Elves I had my own, how you call it, adventurous period. These things happen. It wasn’t long, however, before I felt that such things were a distraction, a betrayal of my brother’s memory. Besides, the headaches of being a daughter to the [Lord of the Deep Wood] proved many.”
He felt her intake of breath before she sighed.
“Before he married Shor, who gave him seven daughters to take attention away from me, I was the only marriageable heir of Bald’rt. The lordship of Iriel lay at my feet and I did not want it, but very many others did and they tried for it through me. A young woman’s heart is easily wounded once, but not twice, Ulric. My contempt for their boorish attempts to curry favor for future rule, at the expense of my body and pride were infuriating. So, I gave them the treatment they deserved. Afterwards there were only casual flings, which became ever more rare, thanks in part to my reputation.” Taipan summarized, the implications for violent reply clear.
His Taipan was a proud woman, and vicious when her dignity was offended. He knew first hand.
“Besides,” the Elf continued, unburdening herself of thoughts long held under her iron discipline, “My truest desire has always been for the wilds, as it was for my mother, before she became Lady of the Deep Wood. I wanted to be the Heartwood Spear, the weapon of my kin against our enemies. To punish them for taking my brother became all to me.”
“I understand all of that,” Ulric whispered into her hair, continuing his massage, and he did, mostly, “But how does that have anything to do with me?”
“Because you were my enemy. And I began to enjoy you in spite of myself.” She told him plainly.
“When I stopped trying to hate you and decided to embrace my choices and my life, and what I had come to feel, many of the other things fell away. Being fascinated by you did not. Later, I realized, being your Shadow, in many ways, freed me from what other expected. I no longer have to dwell in the image of Geyrt Iriel, first Princess of Iriel. Now, I am allowed to be only what I wish to be. It is interesting, is it not? That being free, my only desire since Father’s sentence, my first choice for my freedom was to remain bound to you. Life brings unexpected turns around the bends, many of them hiding perverse jokes, it seems.” Mused the woman, mirroring again Ulric’s own thoughts.
“And this relates to your being a relentless, perving lust beast how?” The man inquired.
He felt teeth scrape gently across his forearm. Just a warning bite.
“Because I need only make choices that makes myself happy, with you in mind, of course. Prenya, for all that she needed reminding that it is not the place of the grasswalkers to dictate terms to the Deep Wood, is a winsome woman of good cheer. And she slavers at the thought of being handled by the two of us. You do not object do you?”
Ulric shook his head before replying, “Negative boss lady. You’ve got good taste in third wheels. Just, you know, I wasn’t sure how all these pieces fit together. It helps to understand you a little better, so, you know, thanks for telling me all this Taipan.”
Hermits are, mostly, bad at communicating because they choose not to, not because they can’t. Ulric was being pulled, slowly, out from his cozy shell. Or, perhaps, it was more that the shell was being carved out to include room for one more. The Elf that was riding shotgun on his journey made the process not so repugnant as he’d have thought, back in the old days. Kept things interesting, anyways.
“This has been a fine adventure though, beyond my expectations.” Noted the Elf, a touch of drowsiness in her voice, “We have faced down great monsters, devious and treacherous men, and brought justice into the lands. It is as it should be. The plains have been a boon to our quest, greater than I had anticipated.”
"All things considered, Legranel has proven kinda laid back." He affirmed, "These have been some trying days, what with the ravening beasts, the slaver circle in Celestin, and the long leagues. I reckon we can only spend another day or two here before we need to get on with things, but we needed the rest. Speaking of rest, I am for bed now."
A murmured agreement was all that was needed. Silence descended on them and Ulric was again drifting in that land of whispering images and what might have beens. As usual, his untethered mind roamed far but always returned to a central lodestone. Even in his dreams, he felt the solid anchor that was his glade, so far away, awaiting its Lord to return.
Predawn. Earlier and earlier the soft purples replaced dark along the distant horizon. Sunsrise across the vastness of the plains was an experience. It also left little doubt as to the incoming weather. As the morning light put a painter's pallet to shame, Ulric got his ass swiftly into gear. The two of them broke fast lightly, a bit of bread and some bison bacon. He then ran through the set of balance exercises assigned so long ago, keeping his eyes closed as instructed while his body felt its way through the motions.
Magic was the order of the day. Mage Werona's insights were based on methodical experience, a framework built upon the foundation of a lifetime spent living in a world bathed in mana. A foundation Ulric lacked. Instead, his was built upon the accumulated lifetimes of genius scientists clawing their way out from the savagery of Earth, against the impossible odds, to record their truths for the future. It would have to do.
Taipan swatted him firmly on the ass as she departed, leaving him to his studies. He swore he didn't know what had gotten into her. She was far more outwardly affectionate, or possessive, maybe both, since she'd stunned him with her notice that they were, in the eyes of the Iriel'en Houses, married. Friggin Elves. Might as well be pointy eared Comanches. Lithe, wondrous, lethal, and passionate Comanches.
His partner was sallying forth to find all news that might inform their travels forwards and to obtain what they needed to prepare for departure away from the Legranel Moot. Prenya had gone arm in arm with her to enjoy their time whilst they might; The Plains Elf knew the pair was readying to depart and she'd handled her Herdrider business, alongside informing her clan's elders about the dangers of the beasts, as warned by Ulric and his Shadow.
Ulric stirred coals and replenished the supply of Legranel's finest bison brick. The previous day had brought a combination of success most joyful, accompanied by a disappointing failure. The spiffy new adept core that was giving him trouble with his old spells, lacing them with sometimes unexpected side effects due to being contaminated by lightning magic, was no longer crippled. Ulric had figured out how to "filter" his magic to revert it to its unaspected form much more efficiently. Unfortunately, He had not managed to successfully juggle the combinations of Incendere and Aquae that he'd posited would grant his [Cinder Shield] the ability to draw and render ambient spellworks.
Part of the problem was in dual casting elemental magics. He had been somewhat successful in that application thanks to his class ability, [Prismatic Weave], which allowed him to use a more precise means of handling mana flows. That, coupled with the other features of his Elementalist class, [Synergism] was accelerating his ability to control his magic, it sort of buffered the possible interference between the manaforms, as near as he could figure it. But not enough. Damn. Missing something. He took a deep breath, calming himself for the next effort. It was hard to remember, sometimes, that he was still learning.
"Practice you must, Padawan. Around the corner is success, but to you it will not come." Ulric said, in imitation of a tiny green wiseman in a galaxy far, far away.
After a couple of minutes review of Mage Werona's lesson he decided that his initial concept, while sound, was simply too complicated. Keep it simple, stupid. He ran through the process of creating the spell frameworks again, first the [Cinder Pearls], the crystalline flame that would act as a manasink, drinking the energies directed against his shield, turning them into fire magic that he could use. Next, he worked through the elastic manaweave again, the hard part. It linked to the [Cinder Pearls] by a scaffold of fire magic, surrounding a flow of water magic, which would carry the mana the shield was absorbing.
Fingers snapping at his leg he went away for a while. Optical and heat conductivity, thermal capacity, reflection vs refraction, total internal reflection, prisms, his brain went through analogues to handling the movement of light and heat, the only pure energy applications he could think of that were modeled well enough for him to actually have something to work with regarding his mana problem. Problem was he had to tie it all together and also shape white mana into two forms while weaving them together. He could make the white mana now, more or less on demand. White. Or, should he think of it as clear? Clear, like a diamond.
Click. Oh! Thanks brain, he told himself.
Sometimes genius is seeing the obvious before somebody else has to tell you about it. Ulric Twice Born, had a moment of clarity. His [Cinder Shield] was currently only really efficient for handling incoming fire magic, on account of it was only made of fire magic, using water to distribute the heat to those nifty little jems of solidified pyromancy. What if, instead of a jewel of Incendere, he made the same type of spell but using unrefined, unaspected mana? A dense, crystalline matrix of rigid mana, completely, perfectly, isotropically pure. A clear gem. A diamond. It would absorb anything. Any mana at all. And, if physics and magic interacted at all the way he thought they did, the "diamond" should be able to conduct the magic it absorbed with incredible efficiency, the magical "phonons" or vibratory waves of energy transmitted at fantastic rates. After all, real diamond was amongst the most thermally and optically conductive material known to man, right behind its "cousin" graphene. The same graphene he'd spent years studying. In this, Ulric Einar was likely the Varda's foremost expert. For better or worse.
By using white gems, Ulric wouldn't need to juggle two mana types, he'd just use the one. This approach did simplify the construct. It also led to new problems.
Problem One: Unaspected mana was incredibly, dangerously reactive at high density and his matrix was just the bees knees at packing mana densely. In other words, the act of creating a construct from the base harmonic of mana was going to give rise to a phenomenally sensitive bomb, if it couldn't be stabilized.
Problem Two: The white gems would then need to be connected to each other and, if Ulric was already flirting with disaster just by creating those little magic diamonds, he'd really have his balls in a vice by connecting them with more rigid constructs of unaspected mana. That's too much reactive magic in one place. He'd never even tried manipulating white magic outside his core, always it was harmonized towards a specific manaform prior to its use casting.
First things first then. Could Ulric even create an unaspected mana crystal? For reasons involving mana being everywhere, it may well be that the act of externalizing that magic would result in its immediate dissolution by ambient magic. It might just poof into a gust of wind, or convert into a little cloud of water vapor, or disorganized heat, or some shit. For once, Ulric actually managed to remember caution in the midst of his intense curiosity.
An ever so brief application of [White Interference] reverted the lightning natured magic in his core to its basal form, where it was protected from interference within the arcane nexus of his core. Next, the construct. Just as when he'd crafted the [Cinder Pearl] under the guidance of master thaumaturgist Shor Iriel, Ulric formed the image in his mind for a three-dimensional lattice of specific geometry, each locus of energy precisely dictated, and, sort of, pushed the energies into that image. Just as when the pearls of fire condensed, there was a spin up, a whirl of force. This time, however, it was magic in its pure form, sheer potential.
Ulric had used the crystal pattern of a diamond, specifically, the intersecting face centered cubic lattice of eight nodes. The diamond lattice was responsible for its incredible properties, carbon atoms on their own lacked the interactivity of electrons to create the kinds of bonds that metallics could generate. Arranged in their organized form, however, carbon atoms attained properties unmatched in materials science as he'd known it: durability, compression, atomic density, hardness, broadband optical transparency, thermal conductivity, electromagnetic inertness and thus tremendous resistance, it was a fantastically stable substance, all the way down to the quantum scale. And the savages in Pre-Collapse had used them for jewelry. Pearls before swine, was a most appropriate metaphor.
There, smaller than his thumbnail, hovered a sublime fragment of unreality. A perfect, faceted chunk of pure magic, beautiful to his eyes, and not only because he'd been the one to make it. Ulric was so fascinated by the little flake of snow-white majesty that his concentration slipped for a moment. Panicked, he resumed control and in a fraction of a second. The jewel of white mana pulsed, throwing a flare of alabaster fire limned by prismatic light. Then again. Another mini solar flare made him squint.
"Is…it doing something?" Ulric asked aloud, intensely focused on the [True Diamond], as he'd come to think of it.
Another flash, brighter this time.
"I think something's wron-"
Instantly, the floating gem turned vantablack, so dark it looked like a hole in the world. Then it exploded soundlessly, knocking him flat on his ass in a flash of metaphysical force that nearly scattered the fireplace and rustled canvas for a hundred meters around.
From his back, looking at a blue sky whose thin, wispy clouds promised rain for somebody, Ulric meditated on what might be defined as "success".
Soft, warm fur wrapped him into a cozy burrito and Ulric made ready to escape consciousness. Already, flashes of memory and nonsensical images floated, drifting from one to the next without pattern.
He was disturbed by a familiar form draping itself over him, and his head was dragged into the soft bosom of his Shadow. Resistance was futile and it was a nicer pillow than a folded pelt so his limp form remained pliable, while bare arms enshrouded his body. He hadn't removed his day clothes, so absorbed had he been about the revelations of his recent findings and sponging the learnings of a fellow adept, and the groping hands made this failing patently obvious.
"You did not come to bed with your boots again, did you?" A warning, muffled for its being buried in his back, sounded.
He had not, but that was because his body automatically removed them when he entered the shelter. It was a reflex, he didn't have to engage any nerves above the spinal cord to achieve it. His Shadow's displeasure at finding clay mud inside her bedding was only to be lived once.
"My feet are bare, Mistress, as you have commanded, so do I obey." Ulric intoned, deadpan.
A firm grip on the hair on the back of his head suggested consideration for punishment. The claw relaxed and returned to its investigations of his chest, roaming under the thick robes.
The idle hands, fascinating as they were, reminded him of the relative discomfort of being in a fur bedroll wearing layers of heavy fabric. He'd need lighter clothing if the temperature rose much more, already he grew a touch warm while active. Ulric hated the heat of summer. The only time he was remotely interested in being hot was sharing his bed with the clinging Elf behind him and soaking in a steamy bath. After adding "Too hot, thin cloth" to his mental checklist, his now fully awoken mind turned to consider his Shadow. Most of this was just him trying to slide into sleep while his subconscious made its meandering deliberations about whether or not to ravage the delicious Elf roving across his body with her delicate hands.
"Good. It is as well that you are capable of being trained. There was a time I despaired of binding myself to a half trained warmage of dubious heritage that was also unteachable." The clinging form notified him.
He patted her hand, full of understanding. There had been reservations on both sides of that. For a long time, he'd more or less been convinced he was tied to a murderous race supremacist that would take it into her head to dispose of him as soon as nobody was watching. He'd been correct, by the by, but she'd changed her mind before she got any chance to act on the first instinct, courtesy of Bald'rt's well thought out training regime. The one full of Elves strong enough and observant enough to keep her from enacting her plans.
In a way, he had the war to thank for her mind changing on that matter. Any who might have questioned the loyalties and convictions of Ulric Einar had only to consider the hair growing white upon his scalp, courtesy of the horrific burns he'd received. Some-motherfucking-body was going to pay for that, but the attack had catalyzed the cagey Elf's perspective in some way towards him. There were layers to that onion that he would never find the middle to, and he no longer sought to try.
The end result was that she'd decided to bed him, then, a little while later, she'd decided to keep on as a Shadow on her own account, even after she'd gotten a free pass to go her own way, courtesy of bizarre Elven courting customs. He could only laugh at the hands fate dealt; those he'd managed to satisfy twice over and, by their specific conditions of exchanges of things of value. You don't give gifts amongst the Elves lightly, the fae folk keep track of bargains, gifts, and oaths. He should have known, all kinds of hints were buried in Pre-collapse folklore that applied with spooky frequency on Varda.
Thinking on it, Ulric decided that, in the future, if he ever was invited to celebrate a holiday such as Christmas, that would actually be the trigger for a massive Iriel'en orgy. Elves. Those stories hadn’t covered them by half.
Ulric's destiny, for better or worse, was tied intimately to the Deep Wood and to its peoples. He was the patron of their holy land, just for starters. He also owed their healers for his own life and his Taipan's vigilance for the same about a dozen times over. Besides, Ulric had to grudgingly admit that he enjoyed her company, frowns, glares, twitching ears and all. His reverie ended when the soft form behind him snuggled even closer, bringing to bear her most potent weapons against his back and her hands made moves to begin the process for removal of his clothes. Formal declaration of intent made, Ulric decided to force her to do all the work. The mental image of an ecological archive video of a male lion being harassed by a lioness in heat flittered through his brain and he couldn’t restrain a smile at the comparison.
"I'm surprised you're still up, to be honest. I'd have thought you'd have exhausted yourself playing with Prenya." the Human told his Aes’r mate as she reached and pulled and, sometimes, lifted part of him up to assist in her peeling.
It was a game now, to give her no help whatsoever with the process and ignore what was happening. Last time, it was he who had to be the peeler and that was fun enough all by itself. The after part was a different kind of game with different win conditions. Moist ones.
A smug burble indicated that sexing her Plains-elf side nookie until they both collapsed was supposed to have to have been the plan. Fair enough. He might have tried the same thing had he not otherwise been fascinated. Occasionally, she managed to nearly echo his thought processes, alien though they were to one another. Now was another time. He'd ignored his wife just about all afternoon.
"She required penance for her cheek. Alas, she had a busy day with grass raking business and tired before I did, even absent your assistance. Your wife feels neglected, you were too absorbed in your attendance upon your fellow mage to join us and I did not want to distract you by inviting." Taipan's lilting voice teased softly behind him.
He could only shake his head at her, as he catalogued the location of his robe for later. He learned more about her all the time. So many layers. The girl, not his clothes; not anymore, at least.
Taking up a palm, whose callused toughness so greatly contrasted with the silken hide elsewhere, he kissed it softly to apologize for his distractions.
"Thank you, Taipan, for your consideration. It was a boon I won't forget. Meeting this Sauri throws me back to my old life." He told her quietly.
Her ears perked up. He knew that because they were long enough to make a sound when they did, under the blankets. She was listening fully intent now, he spoke fairly rarely of his old life, and even more rarely with fondness.
"It's like going to an academic conference, hearing the specialists in their own fields speak of their findings. Werona would have fit in perfectly with those scholars, she has a scientist's mind. Sort of like Shor, although I think that one would have been lost to the Mathematicians." He continued wistfully.
"I miss the exchange of ideas, the odd mix of preening arrogance, skeptical inquisition, and comradery that came with those meetings. They were worth dealing with decontamination, rad cleansing, and everything that comes with trip across the world. Gods was old Earth a sad sight from twenty thousand feet, with her ruin laid bare. Even so, the conferences were reward enough to witness it. Passions of a lifetime shared with the convictions of priests, and data arrayed like a conquistador's arms, ready to repel any naysayers. So much to learn, and a reminder that you would never know enough to say you knew it all. Those were the best times of my life." He concluded.
One of them, anyhow, he snarked to himself. The best time of his new one was a more or less continuously refreshing function of summing his experiences since waking up in the middle of fern gulley. Even the times he was ready to shit himself facing something fantastically dangerous, he'd never felt so alive. So free. In spite of the obligations he'd, somehow, taken on, in relatively short order: A land that had claimed him as much as he had claimed it, a Shadow that followed him as the name implied, and debt that had to be settled. Freedom didn't have to mean alone, a lesson learned far too late in his eyes.
Taipan saw fit to remind him with vigor and frequency. Just as she was winding up to do now. She could see in the dark so he had no doubt she had caught his amusement as she worked pants off of dead legs. He was a heavy bastard, even if she was much stronger than she looked. Ah, but there they go. Behind the backpacks, Ulric, you'll miss them if you don't actually walk over there, he noted as his sylvan lass made ready to begin her lovemaking in earnest. He couldn't see her in the gloom, but he knew when she was smiling. He was also familiar with the brush of finger tracing lightning carved scars across his torso, so light, so ephemeral he only noticed because of the heightened senses of his reforging.
Gently, Ulric took the first aggressive action since the play had begun, placing a hand on the knee that rode up next to his ribcage and running it along the line of her thigh up to its usual resting place at the top of her hips. A slight pat and firm cupping fired the sounding shot of the night's heavy breathing phase.
Later, once passion's fire burned to embers, they reveled in the postcoital spoon. Ulric had big spoon this time and abused his privileges to cuddle the Altars of his pagan worship, his idols to rival the Watcher.
"They will not run away if you release them." His partner noted, although not unhappily.
He firmed his grip a moment before relaxing. Never can be too careful. Who knew what magical bullshit lay in wait out there?
"I'm not taking any chances love. You practice dark magics, how am I to know you won't lock me away in fae lands beyond time if I turn loose?" He teased.
A distinctly musical snort accompanied her reaction to that sally. It wasn't even complete bullshit, she really did have a pouch that contained his…er…fluids, by which thaumaturgical link she could find him across all the reaches of Varda.
"I practice Iskios, shadow magics, and only with the facilitation of my class to guide my core's flows, and you know this Glade Chief. Touching the Dark is a fool's game." She replied to him, in response to his jest.
Touching the Dark was an Elven euphemism, of which their language practiced exceedingly few, which fact gave an indication of the perceived horror of that act. It stood for attempting to wield Caecus in its purity, the prime element of darkness.
More specifically, of absence of energy. Not the first spark of light in the universe existed but that Caecus didn't harbor resentment for its eternal umber. Trying to wield it with a mortal core resulted in its consumption of all the unwary victim's mana, the light shed by their electrons bouncing, the heat of their body. Any of it and all of it, instantly. Iriel'en boogeymen existed that bespoke witches that had sold their souls to Abyssals for the power to use Caucus a single time according to their wills. Then they would die, but they would complete one act of Power.
Horseshit, of course. But he would not begrudge them their few ghost stories, not when he had certain dispositions about the order in which his feet should be socked, booted, and laced, that had nothing to do with rational thought. Left sock, right sock, left boot, right boot, tie left, tie right, or suffer the wrath of the cosmos, as the gods intended. Taipan knew of this tic and razzed him mercilessly for it, going so far, once, as to hide the right boot to attempt to disrupt his ritual, the wily minx.
He hadn't decided whether to continue teasing her or to fall asleep. The decision was made for him when Taipan abruptly switched tone to her We Are Talking Now voice.
"I am unused to feeling jealousy, Ulric." A pause followed that near non sequiter, before the woman he'd have pegged to have never had reason to be jealous of anything continued.
"You do this thing in giving something that has your attention all of it, narrowing down to world that consists only of that which has interested you. It reminds me of a Hunter's focus on taking a killing shot but extended for ludicrous duration. When you were speaking to this Mage of magical theories I knew you were gone to a place I cannot follow. Where only those such as you and Mother Shor may walk, a space of ideation. It feels sometimes as if that is the place where you truly live and I am only witnessing a transient passage through the waking world."
He didn't know what to say to that. It was somewhat true, he did tend to become zoomed in on a singular train of thought to the exclusion of all else, becoming untethered to the world around him. It was a gift in the engineering discipline, a thing of training, to bend yourself totally to a problem and its solutions. It cost him in that most people don't like being ignored when some trigger or another sends the person they're talking to away to that distant space and they realize they've been, more or less, abandoned for a fantasy. He considered the fact that her statement made him uncomfortable about a facet of his personality he'd long since come to terms with a sign of growth. Normally it wouldn't occur to him to give a shit. Now though, he did. Very much even.
Taipan knew her partner well enough to understand that the silence wasn't his ignoring her, but rather that he was giving her statement careful consideration. It was a mark that he was taking her seriously, avoiding capricious reply that lacked depth. She was content to grant him the time and snuggled back into him to be comfortable while she waited.
"I have decided that I won't apologize." He informed her bluntly, at last.
She laughed lightly at that, tinkling bells of amusement ringing out gently, as it was characteristic of his disposition to refuse to utilize tact to get to the core of the issue. They both knew he was so bad at obliqueness that it was better for everyone involved that he take the straightest road. Anything else led to tangents that merely wasted time while he figured out how to just say the thing he would end up saying anyway.
He squeezed her gently, to make sure she knew he wasn't being dismissive while he outlined what determination he was able to make on the situation.
"An apology would be insincere, since I have no intention of, nor, in truth, the ability, to change this part of myself. It is a thing of birth and a lifetime of training. To abandon it would be to make me lesser, and I will not do that." Ulric told her, putting into words the nebulous analysis he was able to pin down only when he tried to describe it out loud.
"That doesn't mean that I don't regret what it does to the ones around me, especially you who have given so much of yourself to my cause and who have committed to walking this path with me. Consider it the relationship tax of being with me." Ulric said resolutely, deciding that it was only fair to concede that, sometimes, he simply sucked to be around.
He felt the rub of those brief, silken, locks of hair on his chest as she shook her head at him. Her voice was absent any irritation, was matter of fact.
"I would not ask for different, Ulric. My Glade Chief is an anomaly flitting between the world of the here and now and the land of idea and dream. It is a thing of Reforged, perhaps, to be split between worlds. I knew this when I decided to claim you." The Amazon admitted.
"So why would the much vaunted Taipan, so feared by mortals and beasts, have cause to be jealous?" Ulric asked, genuinely curious.
"Because you had only thought for that Otherkin Mage all afternoon, leaving your poor Taipan to her own devices. You would not attempt to bed her, would you? I cannot abide her having your body and mind both Ulric, that is simply too much."
He choked briefly on his own saliva, coughing roughly for a few moments. The slight shake of the form pressed against him gave away her silent laughter.
"I jest, Husband. Since you indulged my seduction of Prenya, for whom I know you held no particular desires, I will allow you to have the Sauri, if you wish. Or another, so long as I may vet them first, not just any will be allowed to share my lover. They must be excellent, must be worthy of our bed."
He'd always sort of known that Iriel'en weren't exactly monogamous and didn't innately value rigid mating pairs, outside of married couples raising their children, but it was a distinctly odd feeling to have it so…in the open. Oddly enough, it was sort of nostalgic for his old world, where things were conducted in a similar, if not so direct, manner. His Aes'r partner was making sure to keep the air clear between them regarding adventures of the romantic.
So. He had a pass, but only for someone who she would acknowledge? How very interesting. Not that he planned to make use of it, active pursuit of another was well beyond the required effort for this rookie adventurer. Maybe in a decade, when he finally had his shit together. On second thought, he might never satisfy that condition, better to just play it by ear.
"My thanks to you, Wife, for your consideration. Be at ease, I have no desires to find another for our bed at this moment, you alone are enough. Prenya is a spice that I am glad to add to our nightly entertainments, but I would not wish to try to balance multiple lovers for any length of time. So far as Werona is concerned, I just want to pick her juicy wizard brain, nothing more." He assured his partner.
Was that correct? Did she want him to be more explorative? Ulric had no attraction at all, physically, for the Sauri mage. Beastkin, generally, were still a touch too foreign to register on his radar. He wasn't a Captain Kirk, ready to sleep his way across the infinite galaxy. Certainly, they'd both enjoyed the Plains Elf addition, but he had a feeling that was more a transient thing for Taipan, a blowing off of steam, rather than a permanent fixture. Hell with it, she would let him know what she wanted directly. It was the reason they meshed in the first place; both were comfortable speaking their minds.
"Very well. May the Heartwood grant her strength and the Twins shed light on her soul that she unleash your endless questioning upon herself. I will busy myself on the morrow finding what news may assist our journey, rumors fly like vultures over a carcass with spring on the horizon." His Shadow declared.
Her tone grew fondly reminiscent, oddly disjointed from the actual meaning of her speech, "It is almost like old times, scouting for incursions into Orlethrem, hunting the scum of Prespang. Many were the fools that found their shadows holding my footsteps, to end up watering the roots. We will yet be reaping Prosper's agents, Ulric Glade Chief, mark my words." The Elf Huntress claimed, almost enthusiastic, before passing him his marching orders.
"While I obtain information and resupply our kit, you will grow your mastery of the arcane. Take tomorrow to wring Mage Werona of all that may be of use." Taipan directed.
"Aye, Aye, Taipan, this one hears and obeys." Ulric intoned, rubbing the scalp of this most deadly serpent, which was one of her favorite places for a relaxing massage.
“I’m a little surprised by your, let us call it, adventurousness with our friend Prenya. Back in Irielhos you were so damned standoffish, so on guard all the time that even your own kin seemed wary of you. If I may, what changed?” Ulric asked, voicing the curiosity that had plagued him for the last few days.
A hand softly traced his face.
“Mostly you, Glade Chief.” Was the Elf woman’s sincere reply.
He was immediately confused but she gave him no time to inquire.
“I lost the one closest to my heart when I was still a child, my brother, slain by outsiders, by the pigs of Prosper. As with all young Elves I had my own, how you call it, adventurous period. These things happen. It wasn’t long, however, before I felt that such things were a distraction, a betrayal of my brother’s memory. Besides, the headaches of being a daughter to the [Lord of the Deep Wood] proved many.”
He felt her intake of breath before she sighed.
“Before he married Shor, who gave him seven daughters to take attention away from me, I was the only marriageable heir of Bald’rt. The lordship of Iriel lay at my feet and I did not want it, but very many others did and they tried for it through me. A young woman’s heart is easily wounded once, but not twice, Ulric. My contempt for their boorish attempts to curry favor for future rule, at the expense of my body and pride were infuriating. So, I gave them the treatment they deserved. Afterwards there were only casual flings, which became ever more rare, thanks in part to my reputation.” Taipan summarized, the implications for violent reply clear.
His Taipan was a proud woman, and vicious when her dignity was offended. He knew first hand.
“Besides,” the Elf continued, unburdening herself of thoughts long held under her iron discipline, “My truest desire has always been for the wilds, as it was for my mother, before she became Lady of the Deep Wood. I wanted to be the Heartwood Spear, the weapon of my kin against our enemies. To punish them for taking my brother became all to me.”
“I understand all of that,” Ulric whispered into her hair, continuing his massage, and he did, mostly, “But how does that have anything to do with me?”
“Because you were my enemy. And I began to enjoy you in spite of myself.” She told him plainly.
“When I stopped trying to hate you and decided to embrace my choices and my life, and what I had come to feel, many of the other things fell away. Being fascinated by you did not. Later, I realized, being your Shadow, in many ways, freed me from what other expected. I no longer have to dwell in the image of Geyrt Iriel, first Princess of Iriel. Now, I am allowed to be only what I wish to be. It is interesting, is it not? That being free, my only desire since Father’s sentence, my first choice for my freedom was to remain bound to you. Life brings unexpected turns around the bends, many of them hiding perverse jokes, it seems.” Mused the woman, mirroring again Ulric’s own thoughts.
“And this relates to your being a relentless, perving lust beast how?” The man inquired.
He felt teeth scrape gently across his forearm. Just a warning bite.
“Because I need only make choices that makes myself happy, with you in mind, of course. Prenya, for all that she needed reminding that it is not the place of the grasswalkers to dictate terms to the Deep Wood, is a winsome woman of good cheer. And she slavers at the thought of being handled by the two of us. You do not object do you?”
Ulric shook his head before replying, “Negative boss lady. You’ve got good taste in third wheels. Just, you know, I wasn’t sure how all these pieces fit together. It helps to understand you a little better, so, you know, thanks for telling me all this Taipan.”
Hermits are, mostly, bad at communicating because they choose not to, not because they can’t. Ulric was being pulled, slowly, out from his cozy shell. Or, perhaps, it was more that the shell was being carved out to include room for one more. The Elf that was riding shotgun on his journey made the process not so repugnant as he’d have thought, back in the old days. Kept things interesting, anyways.
“This has been a fine adventure though, beyond my expectations.” Noted the Elf, a touch of drowsiness in her voice, “We have faced down great monsters, devious and treacherous men, and brought justice into the lands. It is as it should be. The plains have been a boon to our quest, greater than I had anticipated.”
"All things considered, Legranel has proven kinda laid back." He affirmed, "These have been some trying days, what with the ravening beasts, the slaver circle in Celestin, and the long leagues. I reckon we can only spend another day or two here before we need to get on with things, but we needed the rest. Speaking of rest, I am for bed now."
A murmured agreement was all that was needed. Silence descended on them and Ulric was again drifting in that land of whispering images and what might have beens. As usual, his untethered mind roamed far but always returned to a central lodestone. Even in his dreams, he felt the solid anchor that was his glade, so far away, awaiting its Lord to return.
Predawn. Earlier and earlier the soft purples replaced dark along the distant horizon. Sunsrise across the vastness of the plains was an experience. It also left little doubt as to the incoming weather. As the morning light put a painter's pallet to shame, Ulric got his ass swiftly into gear. The two of them broke fast lightly, a bit of bread and some bison bacon. He then ran through the set of balance exercises assigned so long ago, keeping his eyes closed as instructed while his body felt its way through the motions.
Magic was the order of the day. Mage Werona's insights were based on methodical experience, a framework built upon the foundation of a lifetime spent living in a world bathed in mana. A foundation Ulric lacked. Instead, his was built upon the accumulated lifetimes of genius scientists clawing their way out from the savagery of Earth, against the impossible odds, to record their truths for the future. It would have to do.
Taipan swatted him firmly on the ass as she departed, leaving him to his studies. He swore he didn't know what had gotten into her. She was far more outwardly affectionate, or possessive, maybe both, since she'd stunned him with her notice that they were, in the eyes of the Iriel'en Houses, married. Friggin Elves. Might as well be pointy eared Comanches. Lithe, wondrous, lethal, and passionate Comanches.
His partner was sallying forth to find all news that might inform their travels forwards and to obtain what they needed to prepare for departure away from the Legranel Moot. Prenya had gone arm in arm with her to enjoy their time whilst they might; The Plains Elf knew the pair was readying to depart and she'd handled her Herdrider business, alongside informing her clan's elders about the dangers of the beasts, as warned by Ulric and his Shadow.
Ulric stirred coals and replenished the supply of Legranel's finest bison brick. The previous day had brought a combination of success most joyful, accompanied by a disappointing failure. The spiffy new adept core that was giving him trouble with his old spells, lacing them with sometimes unexpected side effects due to being contaminated by lightning magic, was no longer crippled. Ulric had figured out how to "filter" his magic to revert it to its unaspected form much more efficiently. Unfortunately, He had not managed to successfully juggle the combinations of Incendere and Aquae that he'd posited would grant his [Cinder Shield] the ability to draw and render ambient spellworks.
Part of the problem was in dual casting elemental magics. He had been somewhat successful in that application thanks to his class ability, [Prismatic Weave], which allowed him to use a more precise means of handling mana flows. That, coupled with the other features of his Elementalist class, [Synergism] was accelerating his ability to control his magic, it sort of buffered the possible interference between the manaforms, as near as he could figure it. But not enough. Damn. Missing something. He took a deep breath, calming himself for the next effort. It was hard to remember, sometimes, that he was still learning.
"Practice you must, Padawan. Around the corner is success, but to you it will not come." Ulric said, in imitation of a tiny green wiseman in a galaxy far, far away.
After a couple of minutes review of Mage Werona's lesson he decided that his initial concept, while sound, was simply too complicated. Keep it simple, stupid. He ran through the process of creating the spell frameworks again, first the [Cinder Pearls], the crystalline flame that would act as a manasink, drinking the energies directed against his shield, turning them into fire magic that he could use. Next, he worked through the elastic manaweave again, the hard part. It linked to the [Cinder Pearls] by a scaffold of fire magic, surrounding a flow of water magic, which would carry the mana the shield was absorbing.
Fingers snapping at his leg he went away for a while. Optical and heat conductivity, thermal capacity, reflection vs refraction, total internal reflection, prisms, his brain went through analogues to handling the movement of light and heat, the only pure energy applications he could think of that were modeled well enough for him to actually have something to work with regarding his mana problem. Problem was he had to tie it all together and also shape white mana into two forms while weaving them together. He could make the white mana now, more or less on demand. White. Or, should he think of it as clear? Clear, like a diamond.
Click. Oh! Thanks brain, he told himself.
Sometimes genius is seeing the obvious before somebody else has to tell you about it. Ulric Twice Born, had a moment of clarity. His [Cinder Shield] was currently only really efficient for handling incoming fire magic, on account of it was only made of fire magic, using water to distribute the heat to those nifty little jems of solidified pyromancy. What if, instead of a jewel of Incendere, he made the same type of spell but using unrefined, unaspected mana? A dense, crystalline matrix of rigid mana, completely, perfectly, isotropically pure. A clear gem. A diamond. It would absorb anything. Any mana at all. And, if physics and magic interacted at all the way he thought they did, the "diamond" should be able to conduct the magic it absorbed with incredible efficiency, the magical "phonons" or vibratory waves of energy transmitted at fantastic rates. After all, real diamond was amongst the most thermally and optically conductive material known to man, right behind its "cousin" graphene. The same graphene he'd spent years studying. In this, Ulric Einar was likely the Varda's foremost expert. For better or worse.
By using white gems, Ulric wouldn't need to juggle two mana types, he'd just use the one. This approach did simplify the construct. It also led to new problems.
Problem One: Unaspected mana was incredibly, dangerously reactive at high density and his matrix was just the bees knees at packing mana densely. In other words, the act of creating a construct from the base harmonic of mana was going to give rise to a phenomenally sensitive bomb, if it couldn't be stabilized.
Problem Two: The white gems would then need to be connected to each other and, if Ulric was already flirting with disaster just by creating those little magic diamonds, he'd really have his balls in a vice by connecting them with more rigid constructs of unaspected mana. That's too much reactive magic in one place. He'd never even tried manipulating white magic outside his core, always it was harmonized towards a specific manaform prior to its use casting.
First things first then. Could Ulric even create an unaspected mana crystal? For reasons involving mana being everywhere, it may well be that the act of externalizing that magic would result in its immediate dissolution by ambient magic. It might just poof into a gust of wind, or convert into a little cloud of water vapor, or disorganized heat, or some shit. For once, Ulric actually managed to remember caution in the midst of his intense curiosity.
An ever so brief application of [White Interference] reverted the lightning natured magic in his core to its basal form, where it was protected from interference within the arcane nexus of his core. Next, the construct. Just as when he'd crafted the [Cinder Pearl] under the guidance of master thaumaturgist Shor Iriel, Ulric formed the image in his mind for a three-dimensional lattice of specific geometry, each locus of energy precisely dictated, and, sort of, pushed the energies into that image. Just as when the pearls of fire condensed, there was a spin up, a whirl of force. This time, however, it was magic in its pure form, sheer potential.
Ulric had used the crystal pattern of a diamond, specifically, the intersecting face centered cubic lattice of eight nodes. The diamond lattice was responsible for its incredible properties, carbon atoms on their own lacked the interactivity of electrons to create the kinds of bonds that metallics could generate. Arranged in their organized form, however, carbon atoms attained properties unmatched in materials science as he'd known it: durability, compression, atomic density, hardness, broadband optical transparency, thermal conductivity, electromagnetic inertness and thus tremendous resistance, it was a fantastically stable substance, all the way down to the quantum scale. And the savages in Pre-Collapse had used them for jewelry. Pearls before swine, was a most appropriate metaphor.
There, smaller than his thumbnail, hovered a sublime fragment of unreality. A perfect, faceted chunk of pure magic, beautiful to his eyes, and not only because he'd been the one to make it. Ulric was so fascinated by the little flake of snow-white majesty that his concentration slipped for a moment. Panicked, he resumed control and in a fraction of a second. The jewel of white mana pulsed, throwing a flare of alabaster fire limned by prismatic light. Then again. Another mini solar flare made him squint.
"Is…it doing something?" Ulric asked aloud, intensely focused on the [True Diamond], as he'd come to think of it.
Another flash, brighter this time.
"I think something's wron-"
Instantly, the floating gem turned vantablack, so dark it looked like a hole in the world. Then it exploded soundlessly, knocking him flat on his ass in a flash of metaphysical force that nearly scattered the fireplace and rustled canvas for a hundred meters around.
From his back, looking at a blue sky whose thin, wispy clouds promised rain for somebody, Ulric meditated on what might be defined as "success".
