Vignette - A call to Action

For the thousandth time Joe Mason, he didn’t quite have the ego to think of himself as his title, Mayor, both blessed and cursed his second youngest offspring. The baths made a gorgeous vista of vine embraced artistically carved columns rising out of steam-clad tropical waters. The arched ceilings a good 20 plus feet above gave added dignity to the scene. If you took a look from the surface up it could be a cathedral of the old world. Possessing a subtle dignity that only a massive weight of stone hanging overhead with the illusion of lightness can do.

Then he would look down, and see all the unclothed or barely clothed people crowding up in the water. Dignity goes out the window and the shocking dichotomy between the two scenes strikes him yet again.

He was pretty sure it wasn’t planned. The original state of the public baths was a small poke at his wife, a child's joke that grew far out of its original bounds. The results had to be seen to be believed. Politicians, and oh how he hated to think of himself in that way, but self-denial wouldn’t get him anywhere useful, standing up on the stage, soaked through and dripping water. They might be wearing a nice set of trim trunks, as Joe was doing, but what did that even mean? A nice set of swim trunks? Was that like a formal towel? It boggles the mind!

No, having to swim through the baths to get to the stage, small rafts were used for instruments, did not offer much in the way of dignity. But it also suppressed the hell out of any built-up arrogance. The trappings of power were not available to lend strength to his appeals. All that he had was his reputation and his sincerity.

And neither of those things could be faked. Not on this stage.

It was time, he reached out in that curiously mental way they had all been forced to understand and injected a bit of himself into the runes beneath his dripping feet. Blending his aura and his intent into the stage and maintaining a light, continuous connection.

“Good Evening Runehold!” The glowing light that made his image visible throughout the room, despite the hanging mist, and the magnification that let his voice audible as well, flickered out for a moment.

“Well, good might be a stretch.” The light remained bright. “I’m here to tell you about a new threat, and to ask your help in dealing with it. Up and down the river this same conversation, or at least one very similar, will be occurring.” If it wasn’t then by god he would start sharpening the axes. “It’s about a large-scale migration, or you could call it an invasion, of high-tier beasts coming in from the North East.” It didn’t take him that long to lay it out. What they knew, what they suspected was causing it. The limits and powers of their defenses and the time limit they would be working under along with it.

“There may come a time where I will have to hold back information from you for security. This is not that time. I have told you everything I found important about this situation from our executive meetings and the only things that might not have been conveyed are due to the requirements of conciseness. Our meetings went on for over 3 hours. I somehow doubt you want a blow-by-blow account.” The light was still shining brightly about him, and it somehow became all the brighter as a volley of laughter and denials roared back to him.

“Good! So now it comes time for the appeal. I am here to request many of you to temporarily move up to the threatened holds. A similar conversation will be happening in the unaffected thresholds. Now not everyone can go. The beasts in this area still need to be kept suppressed. So the council has arranged some signup sheets for each affected hold. Once the sheets are filled, they’re filled. Please pick a different spot or stay here. Any questions?”

It took a good 20 seconds but then Joe leaned down to ‘help’ the questioner onto the stage; by free lifting the young man out of the water with one hand. It wasn’t physical strength that kept them alive these days but damn if it didn’t help with the interpersonal issues. There was something about large size and strength that humans were born revering. And, having been blessed in that department, Joe wasn’t fool enough to ignore the advantage.

“Mr. Mayor, why don’t you pick out the right teams and fill in the sheets yourself? I trust you to do a better job of it. Why ask us to muddle through?” His voice made it an honest question, as did the light that remained pure and bright around him.

“A good question, Strider.” He’d always had a good memory for names and faces, another blessing he abused the hell out of. From these simple tricks came peace at home and good morale all around. Far better to have the known ability to enforce your will than to have to repeatedly prove it. “I try, and the rest of the council with me, to make sure we respect the limits of our own authority. The hold is under our direct control. We restrict and limit the numbers and strength of guardians who can stay here because we have to. Too many in one place will put stress on the defensive enchantments. You all know this. What we don’t do, can not do, is tell you where you must live. Everyone in the union has the freedom to migrate to a new hold, or threshold, just so long as the destination will have them. That is a strong defense against any single hold leader getting too big for its britches and becoming a tyrant. If it happens, all you have to do is leave.”

He paused, letting the silence lend emphasis to his words. “Now, having reaffirmed the limits of our authority, I don't mind helping out. My office ‘door’ is open to anyone team that wants my advice.” He raised two fingers on each hand and flexed them up and down in bunny ears as he spoke the word 'door'. A gesture that got the laugh he’d hoped for. His office didn’t have a door on it. It was always open.

He smiled out at his audience, nudity and dignity be damned, these were his people. As he answered subsequent questions and reaffirmed his support for those that asked he kept that thought firmly to the front of his mind. They were his. And he would be damned before he let them down

Chapter 18

“Careful with that! Come on Arny, you are better than this.” Rafe was practical hopping with anger. Glaring at a slightly shorter man in a matching red-black ritual robe. At their feet, the polished obsidian-like floor was carved in a series of geometric shapes. A small circle filled with purified and enriched blood, practically mana given physical life aspected form, with a triangle surrounding that circle, touching tangentially at the middle of the three sides. A larger circle to the outside touching only at the three points. Then a pentagon tangent outside the circle with another circle outside touching its points. The pattern continued through a heptagon and all the way out to a hendecagon.

Thank you, Mr. Geo, a math teacher at paradise, for your expertise on that one. No way in hell would Timothy have remembered that particular name without the help of the almighty google. One, three, one, five, one, seven, one, eleven, one. Pseudo prime series for however that worked, and it did work. Apparently, thank the same math teacher, two was also a prime they'd neglected to include but a two-sided shape wasn’t anything possible. Not unless they had a line bisect the first circle? Right through the blood pool? Na. For that matter, one was apparently not prime. Whatever! Intent worked how it was intended. Sometimes that meant pseudo math worked just fine. In this case, it was about spreading out the connections. Blood would pour down through each consecutive shape and it needed to spread out fairly equally without unwanted patterns forming.

Even with that, the carved shapes were only the most basic setup. They were a blank canvas ready to be filled with specific controls and meaning by way of removable, reusable modifications. Modifications that took the shape of block letters fixed within the carved channels. The letters, it was much too confusing to refer to their completely different methods as ‘runes’, were made from a variety of precious and semi-precious materials that aligned with the desired aspects.

The entire shape was shaped like a very shallow volcano, with the blood pool at the very center as the highest point and the outermost circle beyond the heptagon as the lowest. Purified blood would be constantly resupplied by pouring in from the purification vats above then flowing down through the channels over and around the inscriptions, activation them and fueling the spell with the mana and intent now bound within the blood. Then, exhausted of both, the sanguine liquid would evaporate leaving only small amounts of powdered iron behind to be carefully sieved out of the bottom circle. Making the entire enchantment almost like a fountain. Constantly flowing out and down as the magic within it also constantly flowed in the desired form.

Or at least it would if the person setting up a portion of the inscriptions didn’t have a dyslexic moment. Everyone made a mistake every now and then, he tried to keep that thought front and center. He really did. But sometimes, the degree of fuckup was off the charts. If he was reading their rather fanciful script correctly he had just turned the protections of home to the protections of hemo. Protections of blood wasn’t an outrageous thing in his present company, but somehow he doubted it would have the desired effect.

Then again, Timothy glanced sidelong at a familiar slight perturbation in the magic field, he might have had a bit of help making that mistake. Not ‘help’ help. If he understood the devil in the room, likely but not by any means certain, it wouldn’t or couldn’t force anyone to do anything they might not have done on their own. He just made the more unlikely outcomes happen now. Something that they really all should be grateful for, even if it was pretty damn hard to be when it happened to you.

This enchantment would be under constant operation for months, possibly years if the outside conditions continued to escalate. Having as many problems come to life at the beginning as possible was in all of their best interest. Much rather now than for the spell to fail spectacularly during an assault.

But it might also be that as an observer he had a much easier time saying that than Rafe did. The last several hours had been plagued by a collection of the most asinine and far-fetched fuckups that had to be seen to believe. Common words spelled wrong, Practice chants coming apart in dissonant snarls as a portion of the choir jumped an octave while the rest dropped a half, blood purifications that were interrupted at critical times resulting in a lost pool, some 2 dozen gallons in all. Considering a fully drained hog was something like 15 gallons before purification. That, while painful, wasn’t unsurvivable. It was just messy. There was no built-in channel to dump out the polluted contents. And other magics might interfere with the pool's own significant enchantments. No, they'd had to empty it by hand, then spend even more time cleaning it up to make sure nothing remained to ruin the next batch.

Each of these failures, and dozens more, needed to be slowly worked through. Multiple unrelated people each triple checking the inscriptions, fixing errors in copies of the page music as well as creating bleed-offs and cleaning protocols for future purification fuck ups. It wasn’t enough to just fix the current mistakes, they also had to make sure that they either didn’t happen again or if they did there were backups in place for mitigation.

It wasn’t anything Timothy hadn’t expected to see, although the sheer number of problems was surprising. He normally worked alone, and the screw-ups a team could pull off were another order of magnitude more tedious to fix.

On top of that, this was by far the most complicated and ambitious ritual that the blood brothers had ever done, and it wasn’t a one-and-done. Keeping it going for the foreseeable future would be a steady drain on both their resources and their patience. Just casting it would require a full conclave, thirty-one (1+3+1+5+1+7+1+11+1) chanters. Then continuous shifts of 5 (1 for each containment circle) to maintain it.

For at least the next six months.

Kind of boggled the mind, frankly. British blood cultists impersonating a Buddhist monastery where someone was always chanting. Not a bad surreal effect for wannabe vampires. At least they had taken the maintenance of the spell into mind when making the chants. It was the usual ‘blood this, blood that, home and protection’ sung at an extremely drawn-out tempo. Lots of slow easy vowels kept in time by the metronome-like drip of blood from the room above. Add in the room’s high vaulted ceilings and the result was vaguely gregorian. Beautiful really, almost sacred. Something meant to be sung in a cathedral.

Or the opposite considering the pool of blood pouring in through the roof… Meh.

This is going well don’t you think, Murphy? He’d spent some real-time refining his technique. He didn’t need to open his mouth and actually speak to pull it off now. But it did take a considerable degree of concentration. Actually speaking was something he’d spent 30 odd years getting used to, even his thoughts were in English. Breaking the habit of moving his mouth while projecting those same English thoughts took a bit of work.

I am enjoying it! Look at them dance and yell, it’s better than a clown routine.

Timothy gave the top-hatted, monocled, red scaly-faced apparition a sideways look. When did you ever see a clown show?

The scaled head gave a disapproving shake, Come now, I sprang into existence an adult, with an adult's memory of past events. If those events are strange, the monocle seemed to shine with a piercing, penetrating light for a moment, or twisted, then you know who to blame.

Timothy repressed a snort with difficulty, he really didn’t want to have to explain Murphy to Rafe in his present mood. He’d probably get a kick out of it… eventually. But best not to put any more stress on him at the moment. It might get a bit… messy. And when condensed, purified, enriched blood pools were involved that messy could go to extents Timothy had never imagined before. Put his nephew during the terrible twos to shame and he never thought anything could do that!

So what do you think? Will they be able to fix their mistakes? Or is it going to backlash horribly? Not that Timothy would simply sit back and watch if that happened. He was the backup for their backups. They just didn’t know it. And hopefully would never know it. A bit of fear about backlash, or a lot as the case may be, was damn healthy. If they were aware of the extra layers of safety, they might start to count on them. Fire insurance caused fires after all. People should fear somethings. Fear them enough to be incredibly careful.

Spoilers!

Timothy did snort this time. Ignoring the quizzical glances that were shot his way. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised at that response. Not like you would give me a warning. Out of character no doubt.

Rather.

The conversation petered out a bit, and perhaps that was just as well. Having silent conversations with an entity that might or might not be fully real, for whatever value real had, was probably not a good indicator for mental stability. Then again, it was the apocalypse, mental stability was a luxury resource.

At last, silence fell. The practice choir sessions were over. The channels had been cleaned, polished, and inspected till the inspectors' eyes crossed. The blood was ready and in quantities more than double what should be required. The inscription texts had been quintuple checked, both for spelling, content, and the quality of the aspected materials. Several letters had been thrown out even. Carving new ones had been part of those multiple-hour delays.

But finally, it was ready. The conclave took their places. Not simply surrounding the outer surface, but with one person at each line segment for the polygons. Only the 5 responsible for the containment circles were standing around the outsides. Their ritual robes, practical for hiding the inevitable blood splatter, Timothy had finally found out, although he was sure that secretly the brothers enjoyed the pageantry of it all, blending in with the floors in the dimly lit chamber. At the centermost triangle, the three brothers glanced at each other, a speaking glance that Timothy could clearly see, but wasn’t able to interpret. Siblings were often like that. He could hold a short conversation with Jason merely with a few glances, shrugs, and pointed looks.

All three raised their hands, pausing for a few beats then began. He’d only thought it was beautiful before. Each successive ring of singers came in a half stanza behind the ones in front of them. Each singing a slightly different chant but somehow still harmonizing together. Timothy was no music buff, but that couldn’t have been easy to do.

Music might not be his stick, much as he enjoyed it, but the magic bound up in this song was a very different story. It was also beautiful, brilliant even. The chanting wasn’t inherently powerful. Not really. It added a certain stately pomp to the situation, which was definitely helpful. It was why good weapons needed to look impressive. A few jewels and some nice polish helped people to believe that it was worth the expensive cost. And the belief had power. But more than just appearances was going on here. Specific intent was bound up in successive notes. The chants didn't just align the choir's music, it kept the magic that backed it up aligned as well.

They didn’t have the brotherhood to simply force a mind-meld. They’d had to learn to do it the hard way. Like singing the ABC’s they were mnemonics. Tools that helped people remember long chains of information complete with a built-in timing feature. The overlay of consistent intent was incredible to see and represented a considerable amount of practice and sacrifice on these men and women's part. Each circle had spent the last couple of years living out of each other's pockets. It wasn’t enough for everyone to think of a pink elephant at the same time. They needed to think of the same pink elephant. And that took very close relationships indeed. Relationships, shared culture, shared inside jokes, and shorthand. That and a massive amount of practice.

Practice that was paying off in spades. The magic built-in layers took as much as ten minutes each. Blood continuously poured down through the channels to empower each new change to the magic model taking form above the center pool. The chanters shifted through new verses at the three blood brothers' conductor-like hand movements, adjusting on the fly to forming imperfections or a lack of definition. Repeating some versus multiple times to reinforce a particular position, then doubling the tempo on the next chorus when the magic took quicker than expected. As the first hour passed, the various portions of the magic model slid closer and closer, blending fully at last like the pieces of a tetras puzzle, all previously frozen in space, and now allowed to fall in perfect positions for a complete whole. A whole that appeared to be a soap bubble, gleaming lights from its surface showing glimpses of complex scripts and shapes but hiding most of its complexity.

A novel written in pure magic, ripe with meaning and purpose. The bubble rose, expanding and contracting at the same time in a way that would cause the uninitiated a brain freeze. The bubble contacted from the size of the room to conform to the long snakey looking shapes of the union's river settlements. Finding purchase on the large spike-like nails that fixed the locations of the thresholds. At the same time, it expanded out of the room to make contact with those same locations in the real world. As to the small, so to the large.

Timothy froze as the bubble tensed oddly. Shaking as it gripped at the guiding spikes. Almost fraying. His hands hidden in large pockets became white-knuckled around a stylized, runed iron essence spike. A grounding spike, it had taken him weeks to create and days to fully charge it up. It was a one-use object, a sacrificial replacement for the backlash that might just flood this room soon. It would burn out in the act, but hopefully, the minds around him would not.

Something to think about over the next week or two he would have to spend in bed. Nothing about magic was free after all. He was fairly certain, as much as he could be without having tested it, that he was in no danger of death or burnout. But in exchange for that safety, he would be in for some real suffering.

Prepared as he was, the sound of rapid and focused changes in the chanting pulled at his will, begging him to take a closer look. Trust, it said. Trust in the Brothers. This was not their first rodeo. Frays mended before they really took form, the quivering was still there, but stabilizing into a pulsing heartbeat. Regular, predictable, and healthy rather than chaotic and damaging.

Clever! He relaxed his grip a bit, mentally and physically. Stepping back metaphorically to watch the show. That had not been in the plans but faced with a powerful discordant ripple in the weave they'd co-opted it instead of trying to stop it. Guiding it into a useful form rather than hopelessly fighting against something too powerful to stop. Like a floodway off a river rather than a dam of fragile sticks.

Stable now, albeit with a rhythmic heartbeat, the chanting began to draw to a close, In the reverse of the starting situation, the Brothers ceased together, leaving the harmony to the lower, and larger circles. Each in time stopped as well, till only the 5 containment specialists continued with a slow drawn-out chant.

Their replacements were already in place behind them, but the stability of the spell would be better if the original casters maintained their watch for a while. A watch they didn’t hold alone. No one left their positions when their chants came to a close. Remaining in place, eyes glued to the brother's backs, trusting the pathfinders with their more precise magic vision to detect any issues, and direct them appropriately. Another hour passed as the chanting continued in a roundelay of circular breathing (Timothy had no idea what that actually entailed, but apparently it meant they didn’t need to stop singing to breathe?).

At last, the backup chanters took a step forward in response to Donald's gesture. Matching their voices to the first five for a full minute before they brought their chant to a close and stepped back. Leaving the new shift to take up the load. With another gesture the room began to empty, each circle of now silent chanters carefully filing out in a pre-arranged order. Exactingly careful about where they were stepping and who they were stepping near.

Waiting till the last circle stepped down, Timothy joined the brothers as he walked towards the doorway. Or at least 2 of the brothers. Rafe, largely the architect of the last few hours, gestured for him to continue on, then sat down with a silent sigh on a bench built into the wall beside the doorway. A water skin and what looked like a cheese and meat tray proved the decision was anything but last minute. He would keep an eye on the spell for a time.

Stepping through the doorway, Timothy waited a bit longer. Letting Donald firmly, if silently, shut the door.

“Impressive gentleman! Damn me if that wasn’t something to see. And to hear!” Timothy kicked it off. Speaking not just to the brothers next to him, but to the 23 other members who were already collapsing into waiting chairs grabbing at the waiting drinks and food. The chairs were of the kitchen dining variety in wood. But with comfortable tan brown hog leather cushions on the seat and backs, considerably plumped out with stuffing. The tables were rather elegant stone spindle affairs. Extending up from the floor like a martini glass, only with a much shallower bowl and a flat top. Flat tops that were covered in gentle foods at the moment. Hot soup tureens next to the ubiquitous tea kettles.

All the things a well-used throat could use. The subtle scent of ginger in the air meant it was not just sore throats that would benefit from the tea. Timothy had to suppress an almost pathological instinct to grab a cup. He already drank the stuff like water, no need to do so when he wasn’t mentally overdrawn.

Exhaustion was present on most of the faces before him. Not from overdrawing their magic reserves -they'd kept well within the safety zone by spreading the draw over so many people- but from the concentration required over an extended length of time. Still, exhaustion or no, he got more than a few jubilant smiles and excited looks. It was something else, being involved in a major working like this. An ecstasy that came from not only performing beautifully but also in taking control of the natural world in a way that they never had in the old world. They gave a command to the world and the world obeyed.

Could there be anything more exciting?

The only thing that could make it even better was having an appreciative audience. Enter Timothy, praise in hand, or at least in mouth. A cheer was out of the question, there was already plenty of stress on their throats, no reason to push it, but many raised clasped hands above their heads in a victory pose.

Knowing his place as an audience, he continued to regale them with his pleasure at the performance. It was even true. It had been impressive as hell, and he’d learned quite a bit watching it. Not that he hadn’t peeped in on more than a few previous rituals, but this one he’d had a hand in preparing. He knew what the desired effect was, he knew what aspects were included, and the general plan for building up the spell model. It was like having the program and front row seats for a concert versus listening in from the lobby. Both ways heard the music, but one made it much more understandable.

Still, all good things must, in their time, end. He patted Donald and Mike on the back, shook their hands one more time, and took his leave. The ward was now up. It was time to take advantage of it. Timothy might prefer learning and study to gratuitous violence but there was a time for everything. And, as that old movie said, “I said I never had much use for one. Never said I didn't know how to use it.”