Fugue, page 54
“Got a problem and it needs a human viewpoint.”
“I’ll find a human for you.”
“A more human viewpoint. More human than mine.”
“I guess I qualify on a technicality, having been one. Go on.”
“Rahýfel. He’s having second thoughts about the whole divinity thing.”
“His privilege.”
“Yeah, but he’s already halfway there. Here. Halfway done.”
“So?”
“Look, the worship forming the gods of the Tassarian Empire is an ongoing thing. The proto-gods are evolving—and it’s quite instructive, at least to me. Thing is, the so-called God of Wizards is pretty fundamentally tied into the existence of Rahýfel. In theory, we can isolate Rahýfel from the circuit and let him go back to being mortal, or as close as these wizards’ daisy-chain reincarnations get. What he was becoming, or what there is of him… how to put this? The celestial imprint is not well-developed on the energy-state plane.”
“So we take him there, let him imprint the place, and move on. Worked for us.”
“Yeah. No. You forget, you had a jump-start from Sparky and weren’t in your body.”
“He’s got a lot of celestial force from worshippers, doesn’t he? Won’t that work as well?”
“No.” He sighed and a hand came into the picture, rubbing his brow and temples. The details of how an energy-state being gets a headache were of interest, but not enough for me to derail his train of thought.
“Look,” he went on, “you didn’t digest the energy from Sparky. It was a… a… I don’t know what to call it. It wasn’t part of you. It was like a space suit. It let you survive in the celestial plane long enough to do stuff, put your bootprint on the heavenly moon, and head home again. You weren’t forced to adapt to the energies around you. Then you had the thing with the fountain and a lot of tuned energies flowed through you… and yeah, it’s complicated.”
“Okay. And?”
“If Rahýfel comes up here at any point… well, he’s already digested the energies in question. He’ll ascend. He’ll get hit with the whole surge of the energy-state plane and undergo a deification transformation. In chemistry, he’s like a supersaturated solution. Breathe on it wrong and it may crystallize.”
“So, you want me to play avatar for you and ground out some his energies again?”
“It’s gone beyond that. Before, he was metabolizing celestial energies into personal energies. They were… mmm. He consumed them and made himself a stronger mortal being. Now we’re dealing with a different problem. It’s not the amount of energy in him, it’s the changes it’s made. He’s only partially mortal and much of the energy he contains is pure celestial force.”
I sighed and put down the engraver. I pulled over a stool and sat down, peeling off my goggles.
“Clearly, this is going to take a while. Maybe you should tell me what it is you want from me.”
“Rahýfel is already more than halfway along in the transfiguration process. At least, I think he is. It’s not like anyone has a lot of information on how this works. Even the former mortals don’t remember it too clearly. It does something to you, I guess, and mortal life kind of drops away. You get uploaded from your meat-brain and become a pure intellect. Sort of.”
“Aaaaand…?”
“We’ve been discussing life up here and I’ve been sharing day-to-day experiences with him. Once he gets here, he’ll probably love it. We can work together to establish a better base of operations, get the proto-gods a bit more organized—or housebroken—and so on. Right now, he doesn’t have a lot of enthusiasm for building a pantheon in the wilderness. He’s not grasping how the change will alter his thinking.”
“I’m not, either.”
“I know, I know! But he’s trying to chicken out when he doesn’t understand the larger consequences. His big concern is his continuity of being. He’s afraid this will be disrupted. The essence of his being may continue as a god, but he might lose the sense of self that goes with Rahýfel. A real reincarnation, if you will, where the past life is lost.
“This is the major thing,” my altar ego continued. “He’s also got issues giving up minor stuff, too. Sex, drugs, food, drink—all the little things.”
“‘The little things’,” I repeated.
“From my perspective, which will become his perspective if he ever gets his face out of the food dish. Which is why I need someone with your perspective to help him get better perspective.”
“You do know I’m not all that sexual, don’t do drugs, have issues with food, and mostly drink blood, right?”
“You still have a flesh-and-lots-of-blood body, don’t you? I’m handicapped. I was never a physical being in any sense.”
I had to admit, he had a point.
“All right, you have a point,” I admitted, since I had to. “What do you want me to do? I think I’ve already asked this before.”
“You needed to understand the situation. If I just told you what to do, you’d ask why, and then I’d have to go through all this, anyway.”
“Dammit, stop making me admit you have valid points.”
“Sorry. What I need you to do is talk to Rahýfel. If he’s going to abandon the road to deification, we need to sort a lot of stuff out. He can’t go on sucking up the worship of the masses—not if there’s going to be a God of Wizards. If he’s stealing all the food, the other one doesn’t grow!”
“But if he’s more than halfway to a celestial transmogrification—”
“He’s capable of backing away, if he has the right help. Just because you’ve been shot several times doesn’t mean you have to die. A surgeon may still save your life. If he keeps on as he is without help, he’ll eventually give up the ghost, so to speak, and ascend whether he means to or not.”
“Can’t we just write ‘ascension’ on the side of a box and stuff him inside?”
“Technically, yes. He’ll resist, though, and he’s an extremely old, extremely proficient wizard with access to a lot of celestial force.”
“So much for that idea. How about I try to reason with him?”
“Good idea. The other problem—what to do about the proto-proto-god of wizards up here—is more my area, but I’ll need you to do the physical mucking about.”
“Whatever you say. Tell me, what’s my line? Which way do I need to convince him? Deification or mortality?”
“Either way is fine, in the long run. In the immediate future, what’s absolutely vital is for him to make up his damn mind!”
“Ah. It’s like that.”
“Yes!” my altar ego declared. “The bastard keeps saying things like, ‘I need a little more time,’ ‘This is a big step,’ and ‘I don’t feel ready to give up Insert Something Here,’ whether he’s doing the inserting or not. What he doesn’t get is the more he delays, the farther behind any version of the God of Wizards is in the pantheon. Worse, he doesn’t seem to understand he’s going to have an involuntary ascension if he doesn’t take steps. Or he’s in denial.”
“It’s a nice river, if you can avoid the crocodiles.”
“You’ve been down it often enough,” he shot back. “Look, Rahýfel needs to make a decision. And soon. If he doesn’t, he may wind up being merged unexpectedly with this energy-state thing he’s sponging off of.”
“That’s bad?”
“If we don’t do this carefully, the existing energy-state entity and the human personality will conflict. We could wind up with The Mad God of Wizards, instead. It’s also possible both personalities could be destroyed and force a complete reboot on the celestial plane.” My altar ego sighed, then grumbled, “And I’m not sure that isn’t the answer to the damned problem. Start over without this ungrateful, meddlesome human sticking his ectoplasmic nose into the equation.”
“Is this any of your concern?”
“In a hundred years? Yes. The rest of these things are constantly evolving, progressing toward sapience, too. They’re self-aware, but they don’t really think, yet. When they get there, he—or it, if Rahýfel doesn’t ascend—better be prepared.”
“He might not care.”
“He’ll care if they decide he’s prey.”
“Ooo, good point,” I agreed. “Can I point that out?”
“Sure.”
“When do I need to have this chat?”
“I’ll see what I can schedule. I’ll call you back.”
“Fair enough.” I looked over my progress on the new firmament spell-slab and considered my options. “On the ring, please,” I added. “I might not be here. I need to pick up some power equipment that doesn’t belong in this timeline.”
“On it.”
Cutting equipment of the 1950’s is perfectly adequate for turning a slab of metal into a complex magical ideogram… if you want to take your time. There are good points to taking the time. It means you have the opportunity to enchant it while you’re cutting it.
On the other hand, if you have tons of magical power and can channel it, the cutting is generally the longest portion of the process. Generally. Turns out there’s an Earth timeline where they make a computer-driven plasma cutter fit to carve a complete firmament ideogram for me in slightly under seven minutes.
It can also be set to run more slowly, which can be useful. Computers don’t care what you’re doing. They just run through the process and you better keep up!
There are pros and cons to enchanting an object as you make it. Taking an existing ring and enchanting it usually means I can go back and edit my work, adding, subtracting, or changing the spells embedded in the object. My Ring of Many Micro-Gates is a good example. It started with one micro-gate and now has half a dozen. Or my other magic ring. The ring has a basic self-repair enchantment, but the real fun is the diamond chips embedded inside the metal. I can keep adding more of those until I run out of room.
On the flip side, if you know exactly what you want in an enchantment, you can make a bespoke object in which to place said enchantment. For all practical purposes, the object and the enchantment become one thing, indivisible and unalterable. You break the enchantment if you try to change it, so you better know what you want the first time. If you break the object—“break,” as opposed to “damage”— you also break the enchantment. But, as far as the enchantment goes, it will be robust. You’re unlikely to disrupt its functioning by attacking the spell matrix. About the only way to shut it down is to put it in a low-magic environment sufficient to starve it. Even then, the enchantment will be waiting for fresh power input—it won’t, it can’t, consume itself for power.
I don’t need such a level of commitment on a secondary firmament plate. I have primary plates built to take a beating, so I’m making backups—things to hold off the encroaching chaos long enough to evacuate safely. These secondary plates don’t require so much effort. Spending a week pouring molten metal into a mold, hammering it out, drilling, carving, and chiseling it into shape, all the while investing it with the forces I want… no. Just no. If it was something important, like forging a single, unique, master ring to control other rings of power, sure. One backup firmament plate out of half a dozen? Not so much.
While I was installing a plasma cutter in voidstation #1, I also brought in an industrial wire 3D printer. I can feed it orichalcum wire in any gauge and it will happily construct whatever shape I want.
This is something I feel I should try. If it lays out the base of a firmament plate, I can invest more power into each layer as it builds up to the correct thickness. This could be hundreds or thousands of layers, depending on the wire. It could also be days or weeks of work, but at least I won’t be pumping a bellows and hammering on an anvil.
Eat your heart out, Sauron!
Time differentials being wondrous useful, I made great headway. The plasma cutter worked perfectly. The secondary firmament plate is already installed. As for the new, 3D-printed firmament ideogram, the enchantment went superbly well. I decided to pause it after each layer to prepare for the next one, which helped settle the enchantments into the physical matrix.
Then I refined my technique even further. Since I had the spell laid out already in the lower layers, why not have them replicate as the next layer was added? It’s a variation on my self-replication function for energy conversion panels and the like. This is considerably more complex for an enchantment, but the principle is the same.
Usually, the issue with automating an enchantment is the trouble with variations between objects. No two swords are exactly alike. Every ring has subtle differences even when made from the same mold. The enchantment has to fit perfectly, so an enchantment built for one ring won’t last long if you try and fit it into another ring. You’ve got to do it by hand—observing, adapting, and using judgment—if you want to keep it from shorting out in a few hours or days.
But the level of precision in my new equipment is phenomenal. The alloy is perfectly homogenous and the printer is laying it out with micrometric precision. There are also dozens of layers already included in the matrix, each one serving as an element in the overall enchantment, averaging out. If I also enchant the printer head to prepare the wire—much like feeding osmium through a divinity-tuning setup—it seems to work much better.
My modified printer is laying out a new layer while the spell tries to replicate the enchantment. I’m watching it closely. This might actually work.
It works. Hooray! I can now make firmament ideograms for my voidstations without spending all day in the barn carving the things! They’re cheap knock-off versions—sort of a plastic-and-fiberglass version instead of the carbon-fiber-and-titanium models—but they work. In a nautical metaphor, these are the inflatable boats, not the solid lifeboats. But I’d rather have an inflatable boat than nothing.
I was in my industrial park world, drawing a fresh batch of orichalcum wire for the printer, when Dusty rang my ring. Since I didn’t have a convenient dustpan, I popped back to Iowa—still during the same night, thankfully—and transferred the link.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I spoke to Rahýfel. He’s willing to have a sit-down with you. Can you be ready in the morning?”
“Morning here or morning there?”
“Morning in Tauta.”
I checked the time.
“Yes, I think so. I’ll start my timeclock skipping you ahead. You call me just before dawn so I don’t overshoot.”
“Got it.”
We hung up and I ticked off the minutes and hours in Tauta. My ring rang and I reconnected.
“Okay, sunrise in five minutes.”
“Thanks,” I told him. With the timeclock now holding the two worlds stable for the moment, I considered. Both here and there, dawn was right around the metaphorical and actual corner. I hurried to catch a shower here before shifting.
Afterward, dried, dressed in my armor, and wearing my saber—Firebrand was happy in the gas fireplace and Phoebe had my cloak—I went through my shift-closet, this time aimed for Tauta. Specifically, I hit the closet in the keep, rather than the barn, and headed for the scrying room. A couple of new people looked up as I came in, did double-takes, and did the hand-rotating-up-and-out thing they use for a greeting or salute.
I sighed inwardly. Leisel had people on scrying duty, so there must be something she wanted to watch. Unfortunately, this also meant using the largest of the mirrors as a personal gateway was going to raise eyebrows.
Screw it. I’m an avatar of a god, or so they think. I don’t have to explain. I consulted my altar ego, confirmed Rahýfel was still in his threefold tower complex, and gated myself to the early-morning street outside.
Behind me, I heard squeaky, gasping noises. If not for those, I might have heard eyebrows hitting hairlines. I didn’t bother to look, just closed the gate and headed for the main entrance to the tower. I knocked and they let me in without argument, treating me as an honored guest. It was an improvement over the last time I visited.
The interior of the place was much more finished and slick-looking. Where there had been rough stone, now there were mosaics or reliefs. Doors were smooth and polished, opening and closing silently. The air held a faint trace of perfume. Incense, probably.
Strangely, there were fewer wizards roaming around. One man minded the storefront area and another escorted me through the towers.
Rahýfel was on an upper floor. From the looks of him, he was not only in a new body—a youngish man, fairly fit and muscular—but also entirely comfortable. He was half-dressed, wearing only loose, baggy trousers of a purple, satiny material. The surroundings reminded me of Baja’s House of a Thousand Delights, but with less class. Sort of a cross between “Sultan’s Harem” and “Disney Whorehouse.” The remains of a lavish meal lay on a low table next to the couch whereon Rahýfel reclined. He waved at me as I entered.
“Ah! The lord of House Lucard!” he cried. He used the word manzhani, rather than lord, but it’s basically the same thing. “Come in! Come in! Be welcome!” He gestured at a servant—young, scantily dressed, female, pretty—and she poured wine for both of us. He quaffed half of his while I occupied an ottoman or unreasonable facsimile on the opposite side of the table. When you wear armor and a sword, chairs are sometimes problematic.
“I am delighted to see you again,” he went on. “I trust all is well in your happy valley?”
“Everyone seems happy,” I agreed. “That may be because I kill anyone who isn’t happy, but I can’t be certain.”
He laughed at my joke for more than it was worth. I suspected he was a couple of cups of wine ahead of me, possibly a couple of pints. I sipped lightly at my own, purely to be polite.
“It pleases me to hear it so. I take it you are not here socially?”
“Only in the sense I am visiting a friend. One who has a big decision to make.”
“Ah! Yes, it is a difficult choice, is it not?” he asked, slapping a serving-girl lightly on the rump. She didn’t seem displeased by it, but I don’t see inside people during the day. Clearly, she was being paid, but for what services? No doubt she was a member of a caste that expected this sort of thing. Did she enjoy her job, or was she a good actress? Not my culture, not my business.
