The effects of washing off didn’t last very long, but I was still thankful for them regardless. Over the next few days, I spent most of my time practicing lensing magic and trying to figure out optimal solutions for the power consumption problem. While I could just pop a wax pill every time I needed to utilize one of the more complex forms, there was no guarantee that I would always have access to the medicine, so making myself dependent on it was a bad idea. Thankfully, there were a few methods to improve the efficiency of my lensing magic techniques.

The first one was just the simple fact that the cost was directly related to only two factors: cross-sectional area of effect and deflection angle. Making my hand perfectly disappear when viewed from one direction was impressive, but wildly overkill for what it was intended to accomplish. Camouflage was a well-understood art by the time I was made on Earth, and even though perfect active camouflage was available it was rarely needed outside of special applications. Instead, the better method was to manufacture a pattern that would resemble the “background noise” of a scene at many distances and not risk expensive and delicate powered systems.

In terms of magic, this meant that making a thin “tube” that drew a single color from behind me and then magnified it out to a wider “splotch” in front of me in as straight a line as possible was a very effective way of manufacturing a moving wall of camouflage and obscuring my humanoid cross-section. It also meant that I could reduce power consumption by crouching and making my cross-section smaller. In both cases, the techniques were still magically exhausting to the point of eating nearly all of my stored power in only ten to twenty minutes at full strength, but that was where the second factor came in: Transparency.

As strange as it seemed, it was possible to make a magical lens partially transparent, which is to say that it was possible to make it only bend a portion of the light passing through it instead of all light. The scaling cost wasn’t linear, probably owing to magic’s approximation function needing to do some heavy lifting to make the effect work, but at half transparency an effect used somewhere around one-third less power, though diminishing returns kicked in past that point and made higher transparencies much less effective. Nearly doubling my effective camouflage time was very useful, but the biggest gain came the next day.

While trying to make a lens that could separate certain colors of light as an attempt to make flashbang-filtering eye goggles, I realized that the energy cost of refracting only a tight wavelength of purple light was drastically smaller than what I would have otherwise expected. It turned out that the lenses I had been making were bending all forms of electromagnetic radiation passing through them, or at least much more than just visible light. When I adjusted my technique to tell my magic to only bend light between deep red and high violet, I slashed my energy costs in half yet again. I still couldn’t make a “lens” that would change the wavelength of light, however.

Finally, an obvious thing that I hadn’t really considered added another layer of efficiency. The cost of a lens was constant because of the light passing through it, and most of my initial testing of expensive constructs was done under direct sunlight. In a shaded area, the costs for a large lens could fall by a factor of ten. In an indoor area illuminated only by torches or other low-power lights, it was half again as expensive as in shade, sometimes less. At night, even under a starry sky, a simple magic lens’ cost was reduced so much that maintaining one was no more expensive than creating a simple hologram of comparable size, making full-body omnidirectional cloaking viable for practical, if brief, usage.

If I had known about this earlier… was the only thing I could think about while I sat invisibly in my hammock, quietly seething. I think I’m going to have some words for my operator the next time I see him.

“Someone’s coming from up the road,” the soldier in front of me said in the late afternoon. “The commander wants you to take a look.” With a nod, I jogged up past them, quickly making my way to Shahpao’s wagon at the front and hopping on. I had disclosed the existence of my lensing magic to him since it had great scouting utility, and he raised an eyebrow expectantly as he looked over in my direction.

“Just up there,” he said, pointing to some shapes in the distance.

“Give me a second,” I replied, making some tiny lenses on the surface of my eyes. The whole scene lurched forward, then re-gained focus, and then lurched forward again as I added a second layer of lenses just in front of my eyes to gather more light and increase the visible detail. That’s a big wagon, I thought as I saw what the caravan was carrying. It looked almost like someone had added six wheels to a crate the size of a shipping container, covered it with a cloth from above, and then attached it to four animals to pull. No barracks wagon, I noted, only six escorts too.

“Can you show me?” Shahpao asked. Dismissing the magic lenses, I turned back to him and projected a small hologram of what I saw, approximating its three-dimensional shape and making it rotate. “Gods, what we could accomplish with a few squads like you,” Shahpao muttered, rubbing the short beard he was growing.

“Looks like a supply wagon to me,” I said.

“It is, it’s probably food for the fort,” Shahpao replied. Vaozey jumped up on the other side of the wagon, making it lurch a bit, and peered in at what we were discussing.

“Supply wagon?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“We should kill them,” she said.

“We should not do any such thing,” Shahpao replied, and I could nearly picture her frowning.

“You may be the commander outwardly-” Vaozey began to remind him.

“I am aware that you two outrank me,” Shahpao said, holding up a hand, “and I’m well aware of why you want to kill them, but Zownayveht, let me explain. We saw nobody besides that dead village the whole way from the fort to here. Nobody, not even bandits. If we kill them, it’s not going to take much thought to connect their deaths to us.”

“We can make them disappear,” Vaozey countered. “No bodies, we say we never saw them, nobody will know what happened. That teylm at the fort is a zaeternaaf, they might even blame it on her in the absence of evidence.”

“We are not here to act in an open military capacity,” Shahpao argued. “We are here to infiltrate behind enemy lines and aid the ihlzheyv in his attack on Zihzehshesk. Attacking them risks our cover.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” I interjected.

“We could steal their supplies too,” Vaozey said. “We can’t take them all of course, but we could bolster what we have enough that we could skip a stop in Muhryehv.” That’s a good point, I thought.

“How long is the planned stop in Muhryehv?” I asked. “I assume we have one.”

“Three days,” Shahpao said. “That’s assuming they process our paperwork quickly, and have enough food to replenish our stores.”

“We have enough food, don’t we?” I asked.

“The feed for the beasts is getting low,” Shahpao said, and I frowned. “We can feed them from our stores, or spend time gathering grass for them to hold them over, but it’s faster overall to just buy animal feed.”

“How much animal feed do you think they have?” I asked, gesturing up the road.

“That doesn’t matter if most of the volume is rations,” Vaozey cut in. “They can eat anything we can, the reason to buy feed is that it’s cheaper than food for people. In this case, the cost would be no object. That’s why we should do it.” The comment was directed at me more than Shahpao, probably because Vaozey knew she could just order him if it came down to that.

“We’ll be passing them in about an hour, near sunset,” I said. “We can talk to them first and find out what they’re carrying, then make a decision.”

“What about evidence?” Shahpao asked. “A cart that big wouldn’t just vanish. We don’t want to risk it being found.”

“Let’s table this until we talk to them, then,” Vaozey sighed.

“Hello there!” the leader of the passing caravan called out as soon as we were close enough to hear him. The sun was hanging low in the sky, making it hard to look directly at him, but I had already seen his bearded face from afar earlier. “Are you coming from Kuhtehsh by any chance?”

“We are,” Shahpao called back. “Looks like you have quite the load to deliver.”

“Food, weapons, and supplies,” the opposing caravan leader said, slowly approaching us as both his and our beasts lumbered forward, adjusting their paths so they wouldn’t collide. “Did something happen out there? Is that why you’re coming back?”

“Are you from Towrkah?” Shahpao asked, skillfully dodging the question.

“By way of Muhryehv, yes,” the other caravan leader replied.

“Ah, well, we were sent from Muhryehv a little while ago to reinforce them, but it seems they don’t have the food and supplies to house us,” Shahpao said, trying to project his feigned disappointment audibly.

“Perhaps you may want to turn around again and follow us back?” the other caravan leader suggested.

“No, we received orders to return,” Shahpao sighed. “We are only regular soldiers, the fort commander made it very clear that she had no use for us.” At this, the opposing caravan leader surprisingly tutted to himself. The two men talking were finally right beside each other, and both stopped their caravans.

“Mehtsiyahns,” the caravan leader grumbled, rolling his eyes. “Their effectiveness cannot be denied, but their attitudes…”

“Yes, indeed,” Shahpao grumbled back. “It is as though they think that we shouldn’t be allowed to fight unless we can slay a dozen normal men with our bare hands.”

“Meanwhile, our enemies make sport of them in open fields with magic no more complex than that of a child,” the other man scoffed. “It’s improper to say, but I do wonder if we should not be trying to copy their tactics.”

“I doubt it hasn’t been said before,” Shahpao replied, showing a thin smile of agreement.

“Would you like to share camp with us?” the caravan leader proposed.

“No, we have a barracks wagon,” Shahpao said. “We’re nearly home, I think my people would prefer to be back inside of some city walls with warm beds sooner, rather than later. Thank you for the offer though.”

“If we meet again, perhaps we might share a meal and discuss business,” the caravan leader replied with a grin. “You strike me as a merchant type, like myself. Though we are now soldiers, we must plan for the end of the war, after all.”

“If we meet again,” Shahpao echoed. “Good night to you.”

“We have to,” Vaozey pressed, gesturing to the now-stopped enemy caravan some distance away.

“It goes against orders from Governor Mawyeyz,” Shahpao countered.

“You heard him, they’re bringing weapons too,” Vaozey insisted. “There are probably thousands of arrows in there, new swords, ballista bolts, black powder, only the gods know what else. Allowing them to resupply that fort will mean more deaths on our side in the future.”

“And if this is somehow connected back to us before we can leave the mainland it’s worse,” Shahpao shot back. “We don’t know how long it’d going to take to get out of Duwbkaav, it could be weeks. If we were on a strict schedule we might outrun the consequences, but it’s too risky to attack them.”

“What if we sabotage them instead?” I suggested, getting the attention of both speakers.

“All the risk and none of the gain?” Shahpao blurted derisively, then his eyes went wide and he stiffened up. A reaction to speaking out of turn, I realized.

“Vaozey has a point about the effects of that supply caravan,” I explained. “I’m supposed to take actions to help you win, and weakening that fort will do just that. We don’t have to attack them conspicuously, we can render the contents of their shipment useless, delay the trip significantly, many things.”

“We should kill them,” Vaozey insisted angrily.

“If we do, it has to look like an accident on their part,” I replied. “Shahpao is right that it could be connected back to us if we’re not careful, but I know how to do these sorts of things.” In my mind, I started running through possible sabotage options. There were dozens and dozens of them, but strangely, one very obscure method stuck out to me. “Tell me, what are your oils made from?” I asked. The question raised two pairs of eyebrows in confusion, but Vaozey was first to answer.

“There’s a sort of oily grass called Voylzaojh, lantern oil comes from that,” she explained. “Other kinds are from other plants.”

“Not from a ground source?” I asked.

“You can get oil from the ground?” Shahpao asked back. “As in, buried?”

“You can,” I nodded. “Do any of those oils you spoke about tend to harden and dry after a while? Maybe ones used in painting or lacquering wood?” I can’t exactly ask if they undergo an exothermic polymerization reaction, I thought.

“Probably,” Vaozey shrugged.

“Wood-sealing oil does,” Shahpao said. “A few other kinds too.”

“And how likely would you say it is that they’re carrying wood-sealing oil?” I asked.

“Considering the season and the size of the wagon, it’s likely they have a barrel or two,” Shahpao replied with a grunt. “They’ll need it for any repairs of the wooden parts of the fort, especially the roofs.”

“Then we have a good place to start,” I said. “This will be a good field test of a new trick I’ve cooked up as well. Let’s set the caravan down once we’re another thirty minutes up the road and I’ll explain what we need to do.”

“You’re sure this will work?” Vaozey asked, tearing strips of fabric from some of the spare clothing in one of the wagons. “You’ve done this before?”

“Even if they don’t have the oil or it doesn’t work as expected, I’m going to damage the axle and wheels in a way that’s almost undetectable but will ensure that they’re useless within a few days,” I replied. “Are there any pouches specifically for holding these pills? I don’t want to accidentally puncture and waste one.” I didn’t intend to overuse my magic during the sabotage operation, but having a contingency plan was always a good idea. I decided to bring ten pills, enough to refill me more than five times over.

“Here, use this,” she said, tossing me a garment that looked like a coin pouch with a leather belt attached. “Are you sure about going with no equipment?”

“I don’t want the armor, it’ll make too much noise,” I said. “The weapons will also be too hard to hide. I’m not going there to kill them anyway, just do a few things I can do with magic. If it comes to fighting I can handle them barehanded unless one is a kehpveht and hiding it.” Actually, I can probably handle a kehpveht barehanded if they don’t know what I can do, I thought.

“We’ll be hiding in the woods to back you up either way, just in case,” Vaozey reminded me, and the group of soldiers who had helped me in the woods nodded. “I don’t see how you’re going to get past them though, I’m sure they’ll leave someone on watch at the back of the wagon.”

“Leave that to me,” I smiled, looking up at the night sky. “Looks like we have some clouds rolling in.”

“There are no good firing angles to hit everyone,” I whispered to the group as we sat fifty meters from the enemy camp, crouching to get cover behind the bushes. “Eight of you cover the tent, the rest go down by the road to get a perpendicular firing line.”

“I’ll be honest Yuwniht, I probably can’t hit anyone from here with this thing,” Vaozey whispered back, gesturing to the musket. She was also out of her plate armor like me, except she still wore chain mail underneath her clothing.

“If I do this right, you won’t have to,” I said, then I closed my eyes and focused on the complex magic I was intent on testing. Working from the feet and shins up, I began to create volumes of lensing magic that would bend the light around me. Manually, such a complex series of structures would be nearly impossible to create, but by allowing the magic to fill in the gaps for me I could manage it. By the time I got to my chest, I could feel the power draw on my magic fuel and adjusted the concentration in my blood to compensate. The most complex section of the full-body cloak was my head, where I had to leave two holes to allow binocular visibility. I nearly faltered when the movements of the bushes allowed moonlight to touch me and disrupt my magic fuel equilibrium, but another adjustment to my blood concentration let me finish the technique successfully.

“In Rehv’s name, we have witnessed a miracle,” someone breathed as I opened my eyes to see shocked faces.

“Just magic,” I replied quietly, making two soldiers jump. “I’m on limited time with this, you all know what to do. Don’t shoot unless you’re sure I’ve been spotted.” I almost thought the whole set of constructs would fall apart when I began to move, but somehow I held it together because the relative positions of each effect were anchored relatively to their positions along my body. I still avoided the bushes, pushing them aside would make noise and attract attention, but I was confident that I wouldn’t be spotted. That confidence was soon justified when the caravan guard standing near the rear entrance of the wagon looked almost directly at me as I emerged from the bushes, scratched his head, and then looked away.

I could literally feel the power draw of my cloak multiply several times over when I got close enough that the light from the central fire of the camp started to pass by me. It still wasn’t even close to as high as it would have been indoors, let alone in the daytime, but I knew that I needed to get back into full darkness as soon as possible. Walking slowly and stepping with just my toes to avoid making tracks, I crept by the guard and climbed up onto the back of the massive wagon, then pulled one of the doors just far enough open to slip inside after testing to make sure it wouldn’t creak, latching it behind me quietly with force magic.

I didn’t need the cloak inside the wagon, but letting it drop would mean I would need to spend a second or two bringing it back up, so instead I just allowed nearly all light to pass through the magic lenses, rendering me visible again. The power draw crept back to almost nothing, and I lit a tiny, dim orb just in front of my neck so that I could find what I was looking for. The smaller crates and barrels inside the wagon were packed tightly but had just enough space between them to let someone squeeze through, thankfully. Even better, the contents were labeled.

Sealing oil… sealing oil… I thought as I walked between the cargo, meticulously checking every label. Some of them were written so poorly that I could barely make out what they were supposed to say, but for the most part, I understood what I was looking at. The majority of the wagon was taken up by preserved meats and vegetables, with a quadrant near the front filled with replacement armor, weapons, and ammunition. Finally, I thought as I saw a barrel labeled ‘wood oil’, which was close enough to what Shahpao said that it was probably the same thing. It was stuck under a bunch of other barrels, but that wasn’t an issue to me.

After drilling a hole in the barrel with force magic, I popped one of my pills to top my magic fuel reserves back up to full, then began the first phase of the plan. The strips of fabric that Vaozey had been making out of some of our spare clothing, when combined with the oil, became a form of time-delayed incendiary device that was so inconspicuous that I doubted the Rehvites would be able to determine what happened to them. When the first strip was soaked, I balled it up and stashed it between two crates just across from me, then soaked the second, and repeated the process twenty times until the entire wagon smelled of oil and had potential ignition points all around.

I should have sabotaged the axles first, I thought as I made my way back over to the exit, let my light go out, and re-enabled my cloak. The guard was still outside, about three meters away, but getting out of the wagon was going to be a bit harder than getting inside was. Or maybe not, I thought, sending magic fuel down into my feet. I was already burning power quickly, so a few more bursts weren’t going to hurt. I stepped down from the door quickly, using force magic to catch myself in midair and slowly levitate to the ground, then shut the wagon door again. As I was about to crouch down and begin crawling under the wagon, movement from the guard’s direction in the corner of my eye made me freeze.

Every part of me was invisible in the dark except for two: my left and right eyes. The only other distortions caused by the cloak happened where my body contacted other objects, where discontinuities would be visible to the keen observer. Holding my breath, I began slowly turning my head away from the guard, preparing an electric shock just in case. I heard a sound come from him, then my cloak nearly shattered as lantern light poured out from behind me. Just in time, I squeezed my cores and saturated my blood enough to keep everything intact, but then the guard started to move in my direction.

Without even daring to take a breath, I slowly and gracefully stepped out of the way, putting distance between me and the lantern. Once I was nearly in darkness again, I looked back and saw the man fiddling with the door on the back of the wagon.

“Damned thing never stays shut,” he muttered to himself as he re-latched the door, pulling on it to make sure it was sturdy. I used his distraction as an opportunity to creep to the front of the wagon and lay down, snaking myself under to get access to the axles and wheels. The expensive carriage that Vaozey and I had ridden around in Awrehrehzha came with a suspension system and all metal pieces, but most Uwrish designs weren’t nearly so complex. The three axles on this wagon in particular were made of only hardwood, with metal reinforcements around the friction points to ensure durability. The wheels were also made entirely of wood, barring their centers where they attached to the axles that had metal, and had sixteen wooden spokes each.

For the stresses of standard use, the wagon had a good design, but its stresses were about to become far from standard. First, I went and sabotaged a number of spokes on each wheel by cutting them near-imperceptibly with force magic. The cuts didn’t go all the way through, but they were made at sharp angles so that the stresses of the wheel would eventually cause them to snap. Next, I compressed sections of each axle until I could hear faint snapping, destabilizing the internal structure of the wood. After that, I also used force magic to scratch and score a number of metal parts on the rotating contact points, increasing friction as well as potential wear.

For now, the cart would be fine, but after a few days on the road, it would be a miracle if it hadn’t broken down. I popped another one of the magic fuel pills while I was still safe, then slowly slid myself out from under the cart, opting to exit on the opposite side to the guard whom I had nearly alerted minutes ago. Once I was back on my feet, I took one more look around the camp, then started walking back to where Vaozey’s group was waiting for me. Curiously, one of the tied-up pack beasts seemed to notice me, its head tracking me while I walked by. Maybe they see more at night than Vaozey thought, I mused, stepping back into the bushes.

How do I tell them I’m here without scaring them and risking exposure? I wondered as I looked at Vaozey and the group from just two meters away, aiming guns at where they thought I was. I had almost spoken up or decloaked abruptly before remembering how jumpy they could be and reconsidering. Maybe this will work, I thought, winding up a low-powered laser and pointing it at the ground in front of them. I sent out three quick pulses, and at least two of the soldiers noticed them.

“That was the signal,” one whispered.

“What?” another hissed.

“The shoot signal from last time, it was right there,” the first one said, gesturing to the spot with his chin. Maybe we should make some basic signal rules to avoid this, I thought, turning the laser back on continuously.

“Do we shoot?” someone else asked.

“You morons, that’s light,” Vaozey chastized them quietly. “How could he get it all the way through the bushes?” Lowering her gun, she reached out to touch it, then determined the path it had taken and looked at me. I slowly, deliberately let the cloak drop as I crouched down, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. There was still an aura of shock in the group, but at least nobody yelped.

“I wanted to make sure I didn’t cause any accidents,” I whispered.

“Did you do it?” Vaozey asked.

“I did,” I confirmed. “This time tomorrow, I’d be surprised if that whole wagon isn’t in flames, and if that doesn’t work, the wheels or axles will definitely snap before they reach the fort.” A few of the soldiers quietly huffed in laughter before Vaozey shushed them and gestured that they should gather the others near the road.

“The only thing we saw was the door move a little bit,” Vaozey replied. “Did you use the pills?”

“Just three,” I said, popping one into my mouth and wincing as I had to expand my cores to avoid oversaturating my blood with the rush of power. “Including that one.”

“Okay,” she frowned.

“Something wrong?” I asked. “As far as I can tell, this was a huge success.”

“It’s nothing,” she sighed. “Just a bit disappointed that we won’t be killing anybody tonight.”

We never did find out what happened to the supply wagon, and a few days later I woke up to find a familiar sight outside: the city gates of Muhryehv.